“If by ‘they’ you mean the popular English press in India, I don’t think they say much that is complimentary about Narendrabhai. Usually it is innuendoes and unsupported assertions of guilt,” I said.

“Yes, I mean them. Their opposition to Modi adds credibility to the claim that Modi is seriously competent and good. It is what separates Modi from the crooked and the corrupt in India politics. When a confederacy of dunces consistently gets on someone’s case, it usually is a sign that the person is doing something good and the whole rotten applecart is in danger of being knocked over,” said CJ.

“They are not all dunces, though. Sometimes, not too frequently though,” I said, “Sometimes reasonable people write what appear to be balanced and insightful articles about Modi.”

I pointed him to Ashok Malik’s article in The Asian Age, “The Modi business.”

“Malik is a clever man. It’s an interesting piece,” agreed CJ. “It appears to be balanced but uses a very clever device to damn him while appearing to be balanced.”

“Go on. I am listening,” I said.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Someone asks you, ‘Spell yoke, as in to hitch two things.’ You reply, ‘y-o-k-e.’ Then he says, ‘Spell folk, as in people.’ You reply, ‘f-o-l-k.’ Then he says, ‘Spell the white of an egg.’ And you say, ‘y-o-l-k.’ He then points out, ‘You idiot, that’s the yellow of an egg, not the white.’ That’s cute, isn’t it?” said CJ.

“Yes. So?” I asked.

“It’s a neat little trick that uses a cognitive failing of the human mind. Our minds can be primed to go along a familiar route. We fill in details that are missing and assume things that are not necessarily true. It has survival value and usually serves us well. We don’t examine all the evidence carefully because it is cognitively costly. But sometimes that failing can be used deliberately to misdirect and mislead.

“Juxtapose two cases, however tenuously related they may be, and some of the features of one case can bleed into the other. Use the same brush for two different colors and you cannot avoid mixing them up on the canvass.

“Malik starts off with the case of an American politician who was rabidly segregationist. George Wallace (1919-1998) was well-known for his loathsome racist views, and his utterances and actions are in the public record. Later he had a change of heart and disavowed his earlier convictions. So the facts are that, one, the US south was segregated into two distinct social groups, the whites and the non-whites; two, Wallace was a controversial and charismatic politician; three, Wallace was a racist who had a change of heart; four, Wallace became a successful politician.

“George Wallace is naturally enough an unknown person to most Indian readers. So all this is new information to them. Novelty leads to cognitive load but also makes the person more suggestible. So the reader is sensitized and open to hearing more about evil minded racist people who have had changes of heart.

“Malik follows up the Wallace case with Narendra Modi’s case. The facts are, one, the conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims in India; two, Modi is a controversial and charismatic politician; three, Modi is a successful politician. No evidence is presented about Modi being a racist or harbouring any ill-will towards any group of people. No evidence is presented that Modi had a change of heart. Instead, the reader is relied upon to fill in the gaps. The post-Godhra riots in which both Hindus and Muslims were killed have become, through repeated assertion, associated in the popular mind with Modi.

“The technique is effective and therefore widely used. Truth though innuendos and assertions. Opinions expressed repeatedly morph into “facts” in the average mind. Assert something without proof, and repeat the assertion often enough that it spread through contagion and becomes general knowledge. Then rely on that general knowledge to provide the fillers needed for making one’s case.

“Malik correctly reports that Wallace had a change of heart. And then the attention shifts to Modi, the SIT, and Modi’s detractors. Modi may be undergoing a convenient change of heart. Or maybe he’s not. Or maybe Modi is just too clever. Maybe this or maybe that. All that is up for grabs. But by introducing Wallace, Malik essentially poisons the well and whatever you draw from it, you cannot get away from the suspicion that Modi harbors ill will towards Muslims, maybe perhaps something like Wallace did towards blacks,” CJ said.

“I was puzzled why Malik had to drag in Wallace at the start of the piece,” I said.

“Innuendos and unsupported assertion works wonders in the popular mind,” CJ said. “And it works all the time. It is used to dress up charlatans as paragons of virtue, and it is used to needlessly demonize perfectly ordinary people. Mother Teresa was arguably a terrible person but got painted as a saint. Modi gets the exact opposite treatment. The media has its own agenda and people are generally too busy or too lazy to think a bit about what’s being reported.”

“You know, CJ,” I said, “I came across an interesting example of a politician showing up the bias of a media person. It was a Barney Frank interview. Here’s how it goes:

Interviewer: You’ve long argued for the decriminalization of marijuana. Do you smoke weed?
Barney Frank: No.
Interviewer: Why not?
Barney Frank: Why do you ask a question, then act surprised when I give an answer? Do you think I lie to people?
Interviewer: I thought you might explain why you support decriminalizing it but don’t smoke it.
Barney Frank: Do you think I’ve ever had an abortion?

“That’s a nice example of how with just a few words, Frank exposed the interviewer’s illogic and bias,” I said.

“Reading about Narendra Modi in the popular English media brings to mind Thomas Jefferson’s words, although he was talking about Christian religion-inspired cruelty. He said it makes one half of the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. In India, it should be said that this distinction cannot be made since broadly the English media and its consumers are guilty of foolishness and hypocrisy simultaneously,” CJ said.

“Alright, CJ. Good talking to you. Now I should let you go since I have stuff to write. I am writing a long series on why stealing lies at the foundation of India’s failure to develop. You should read it.”

“OK, will do. Bye,” said CJ and thus ended our conversation.

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.

Narendranath Dutta was born in 1863 on this day Jan 12th. As a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna Pramahansa, he became the sanyasi known as Swami Vivekananda.

Here’s a bit from the Wiki entry on Swamiji at the Parliament of World’s Religions held in Chicago in September 1893.

The Parliament of Religions opened on 11 September 1893 at the Art Institute of Chicago. On this day Vivekananda gave his first brief address. He represented India and Hinduism. Though initially nervous, he bowed to Saraswati, the goddess of learning and began his speech with, “Sisters and brothers of America!”. To these words he got a standing ovation from a crowd of seven thousand, which lasted for two minutes. When silence was restored he began his address. He greeted the youngest of the nations in the name of “the most ancient order of monks in the world, the Vedic order of sannyasins, a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance.” And he quoted two illustrative passages in this relation, from the Bhagavad Gita—”As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take, through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee!” and “Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths that in the end lead to Me.” Despite being a short speech, it voiced the spirit of the Parliament and its sense of universality.

Dr. Barrows, the president of the Parliament said, “India, the Mother of religions was represented by Swami Vivekananda, the Orange-monk who exercised the most wonderful influence over his auditors.” He attracted widespread attention in the press, which dubbed him as the “Cyclonic monk from India”. The New York Critique wrote, “He is an orator by divine right, and his strong, intelligent face in its picturesque setting of yellow and orange was hardly less interesting than those earnest words, and the rich, rhythmical utterance he gave them.” The New York Herald wrote, “Vivekananda is undoubtedly the greatest figure in the Parliament of Religions. After hearing him we feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned nation.” The American newspapers reported Swami Vivekananda as “the greatest figure in the parliament of religions” and “the most popular and influential man in the parliament”.

He spoke several more times at the Parliament on topics related to Hinduism and Buddhism. The parliament ended on 27 September 1893. All his speeches at the Parliament had one common theme—Universality—and stressed religious tolerance.

I think Swami Vivekananda is one of the greatest sons of Mother India, which is saying something considering that Mother India has had billions of children. (My estimate is that around 15 billion people have been born in the landmass of present day India.)

I am grateful to the universe that Vivekananda lived. I am sad that Indians generally don’t know about him. It is impossibly hard to accept that half of India have never read him — because of basic illiteracy and poverty. They will never be touched by his enlightenment. Another major segment of Indians are forbidden by their religion to even consider Swami Vivekananda as a good person. Self imposed intellectual and moral poverty is doubly lamentable.

The New York Herald wrote, “Vivekananda is undoubtedly the greatest figure in the Parliament of Religions. After hearing him we feel how foolish it is to send missionaries to this learned nation.” I have a nit to pick with the Herald.

Yes, Swami was brilliant, and he was an Indian. From that fact concluding that India is a “learned nation” is called the fallacy of hasty generalization, “an inductive generalization based on insufficient evidence.” Truth is that India is a nation of hundreds of millions of illiterate, ignorant, poor, uneducated, and bigoted people.

It is hard for me to admit that and I am sure that most Indians will disagree with me on that instinctively. But the truth of that assertion can be somewhat validated by the fact that missionaries have been in India for hundreds of years and even today ply their trade successfully with the aid of billions of dollars. If India was truly a learned nation, it would not be so materially and non-materially poor, and neither would it be the target of Islamic and Christian aggression.

In any case, happy birthday Swami Vivekananda. It will be a long time before Indians can even begin to understand your message.

I close with a quote from you:

Do not believe in a thing because you have read about it in a book. Do not believe in a thing because another man has said it was true. Do not believe in words because they are hallowed by tradition. Find out the truth for yourself. Reason it out. That is realization

Related Posts:

Jan 2011’s post on Swamiji’s birthday.

Vivekananda on Dispassionate Work. June 2006.

Swami Vivekananda and Jamsetji Tata. March 2011.

Sept 11, 1893: Swami Vivekananda in Chicago.

A prominent Saudi businessman said yesterday that he is donating $20 million each to Georgetown and Harvard universities for the study of Islam and the Muslim world as part of his philanthropic efforts to promote interfaith understanding.

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a member of the Saudi royal family, . . . said his $20 million donation to Harvard will fund its Islamic studies program, which crosses many disciplines.

Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers expressed gratitude to Alwaleed, saying in a statement yesterday that his gift “will enable us to recruit additional faculty of the highest caliber, adding to our strong team of professors . . . [in] this important area of scholarship.”

As a comment to the Harvard Crimson article of Dec 7th puts it,

Harvard is a glamorous whore which is up for sale to the highest bidder. Swamy was naive to believe that all the Arab money puring into Harvard would not taint its soul.

Talking of tainted souls, I think that the most tainted of all souls belongs collectively to the Hindus: they are mute spectators to the harm that Hindus suffer. Dr Swamy points it out in his DNA op-ed, the article for which he is being censored:

In one sense, I do not blame the Muslim fanatics for targeting Hindus. I blame us Hindus who have taken their individuality permitted in Sanatana Dharma to the extreme. Millions of Hindus can assemble without state patronage for Kumbh Mela completely self-organised, but they all leave for home oblivious of the targeting of Hindus in Kashmir, Mau, Melvisharam and Malappuram and do not lift their little finger to help organise Hindus. For example, if half the Hindus vote together rising above their caste and language, a genuine Hindu party will have a two-thirds majority in Parliament and Assemblies.

(Dr Swamy’s op-ed, “How to Wipe out Islamic Terror“, is not longer available on the DNA site. A copy of the article can be read at Atlas Shrugs.)

There is a move among some Hindus to petition Harvard University president to reverse the decision of the vote that removed Dr Swamy’s courses. This is wrong-headed. Harvard has the right to do what it did and you have the right to go to Harvard or not. Vote with your feet. But curbing Harvard’s freedom to choose its faculty is not a good way to support freedom of expression.

Here are some interesting articles related to the affair. Harvard Cosmopolitans Gone Wild by Carl L. Bankston III:

Summer courses are assigned at the pleasure of the university and the university does have the right to cancel courses it does not want to offer. Nevertheless, Harvard’s faculty body clearly made a very bad decision here. At the most basic level, an employer is making a decision about the continuation of an employee on the basis of political activities completely unrelated to the job, there being no support whatsoever for the claim that Swamy “might” be unfair to some students. Beyond that, FIRE is correct that the university is a special kind of employer, one that has a moral obligation to protect and promote intellectual pluralism. In a university, ideas that someone finds objectionable should be rebutted, not silenced or excluded. But this case actually goes beyond the open expression of views on campus. Harvard’s Arts & Sciences faculty, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, is taking action to officially repudiate an article published in a newspaper in India about politics in India by an Indian citizen.

Anyone aware of my own paper trail should expect me to uphold the right of individuals in Massachusetts or anywhere else to hold informed, semi-informed, and utterly uninformed opinions and judgments about everything under and beyond the stars. While we cannot extend the protections of the U.S. Constitution to people outside the U.S., as human beings we can certainly be certainly be concerned about how our fellow human beings treat other humans everywhere and at all times. But I cannot see why the organization of the faculty at Harvard, as an institutional entity, should have any business taking positions on what are acceptable or unacceptable opinions for Indians on political and social questions in India.

Scott Jaschik writing in Inside Higher Ed, Over the Line

Under Harvard’s governance system, the faculty vote is final, and does not require administrative approval. A spokesman for the university released only a brief statement: “Members of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences each year vote to approve or amend the course list for the Harvard Summer School. Yesterday, the faculty voted to approve the curriculum for the Summer School for the coming summer session with the exception of two courses, about which there was considerable discussion.”

On his Twitter feed, Swamy said that the vote at Harvard was “nothing serious,” explaining that “non-economists at Harvard don’t like my views on how to protect India.”

Citing Eck and a colleague who also wanted his courses dropped, Swamy also tweeted: “I have been held accountable at Harvard for what I write in India. This means India studies’ [Michael] Witzel and Eck are accountable in India. Healthy?”

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has spoken out against Harvard’s taking any action against Swamy on the basis of his op-ed. The organization’s blog noted that Swamy’s op-ed calls for radical social change in India, but FIRE noted that American principles of free expression extend to calls for radical social change. As an example, it cited the legal right for people to call for the United States to become a communist country.

“We tolerate the widest possible range of political, social, cultural, and religious views because, for one thing, we trust in the marketplace of ideas to eventually sort it all out,” the blog post said.

Pamela Geller, in Harvard Sells Out Free Speech to Islamic Supremacism, writes:

Some of Swamy’s recommendations reflect the deep crisis that he sees in India. He urged that “whatever and however small the terrorist incident, the nation must retaliate—not by measured and ‘sober’ responses, but by massive retaliation. Otherwise what is the alternative? Walk meekly to death expecting that our ‘sober’ responses will be rewarded by our neighbors and their patrons? We will be back to 1100 A.D., fooled into suicidal credulity. We should not be ghouls for punishment from terrorists and their patrons. We should retaliate.”

Accordingly, he recommended that when Islamic jihadists “blast our temples and kill Hindu devotees,” that mosques should also be “removed” as a “tit-for-tat.” In light of Islamic efforts to “make India into Darul Islam” (that is, the House of Islam, land ruled by Islamic law), Swamy said that India should “implement Uniform Civil Code, make Sanskrit learning compulsory and singing of “Vande Mataram” mandatory, and declare India as Hindu Rashtra in which only those non-Hindus can vote if they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors are Hindus.”

People who sincerely believe in human rights and want to defend free societies against the Islamic jihad may disagree that some of Swamy’s recommendations are necessary or appropriate. But is it not central to this Ivy League university and every institution in these United States to “protect free speech, including that of Dr Swamy and of those who disagree with him”?

Where does Harvard address the truth of Swamy’s remarks, or the 80 million Hindus slaughtered in jihadi wars, land appropriations, cultural annihilations and enslavements?

India, along with Israel, southern Sudan and so many other places, have been the battlefields in endless bloody wars to install a universal caliphate, the objective of the global jihad.

Freedom of speech protects all speech, not just the ideas that we like. That’s the point. Who decides what’s good and what’s forbidden? Harvard? The Islamic supremacists who are seeking to impose the Sharia restriction on free speech?

Harvard has been bought and sold to the highest Sharia bidder. In December 2005, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal donated $20 million each to Harvard University and Georgetown University to fund Islamic studies.

It is dire. I cannot believe this is America.

Yes, this is America. This is what used to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.

In any event, this is not about the United States but about India. India is doomed unless Indian’s respond collectively to the threats that India faces. One of the most urgent things we have to do is to get rid of the Congress and stop their agenda of destroying India. We have to vote them out or we will surely perish.

. . . Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal’s strange decision to wade into a needless battle with the chattering classes, a battle that will leave him with a bleeding nose. His claimed intention behind summoning representatives of Google, Yahoo! and other service providers and demanding that all content should be pre-screened to weed out that that which is ‘offensive’ is to preserve law and order.

That’s bunkum. Delhi is abuzz with whispers that certain exalted individuals, whom Mr Sibal describes as “popular politicians”, are not pleased with being rudely caricatured and lampooned. Since most of the lampooning is facilitated by Photoshop, a logical extension of Mr Sibal’s move should be to ban the program from Indian shores. This would be of a piece with what many Arab regimes once tried: Restricting the import and sale of printers as they feared these would be used for printing anti-establishment pamphlets. That could be followed with a ban on smart phones. Technology, after all, is a wrecker of the status quo.

Mrs Indira Gandhi tried to tame the Press during the 1975-77 Emergency. Lowly babus who could barely spell their names were appointed official censors and decided what was fit to print. Some 14 years later, Rajiv Gandhi tried to muzzle the media with his Press Bill but had to scrap it in the face of fierce protests.

We now have this brazen attempt to censor content on the Net, and it’s definitely not propelled by the noble desire to preserve communal amity. Of the 358 ‘requests’ for removal of pages and content received by Google from the Government between January and June this year, only eight pertained to ‘hate speech’, three to ‘pornography’ and one to ‘national security’.

Among the rest, 39 pertained to ‘defamation’, 20 to ‘privacy’ and 14 to ‘impersonation’. A whopping 255 ‘requests’ cited ‘criticism of Government’ as reason for removing content or pages. Google was asked to remove 236 items from Orkut and 19 from YouTube for the same reason.

It’s clear that what the Government is aiming for is political censorship of the Net. By doing so, it is treading the path adopted by China and other tin pot dictatorships. Understandably, the chattering classes are up in arms. And, as I said, a bloody nose awaits Mr Sibal.

Nehru introduced the first amendment to the Indian Constitution — which restricts freedom of expression. His spawn continued to walk along that path. India will never be truly free until the Congress party is given a decent burial.

Mr.A.P.Singh
Director, CBI, CGO Complex
New Delhi 110013.

Dec 7, 2011

Dear Mr. Singh:

Please refer to the Written Complaint that I had submitted on November 28, 2011 to CBI through you, and on behalf the Action Committee Against Corruption in India (ACACI).

This letter is by way of additional information relating to the disclosure of offences committed under the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA).

First, is the information from an article published in Schweitzer Illustrate in its November 1991 issue, which magazine is a highly respected and widely circulated magazine in German language, and published in Switzerland. This information discloses that the former Prime Minister, Mr.Rajiv Gandhi (now deceased), had about $2 billion in secret bank accounts in Switzerland, which is clearly disproportionate to his known sources of income as per his affidavit filed with his nomination papers upon becoming a candidate for Lok Sabha elections in 1991. This attracts section 13(1)(d) of the PCA. Although the information is two decades old, but you are aware that there is no time limitation for corruption cases under the PCA. Also even if Rajiv Gandhi is now deceased, his likely beneficiaries are his wife, Sonia, and two children, two of whom are public servants.

The second information is from Dr.Yevgenia Albats, a Russian scholar, holding a Harvard Ph.D and who was a member of the Inquiry Commission into KGB Activities which Commission was appointed by President Yeltsin of Russia. She subsequently authored a book titled: “A State Within a State: KGB in Soviet Union.” In that book, she disclosed the File Numbers contain evidence of the KGB payments to the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his family members. This disclosure was confirmed by the spokesperson of the FIS, the KGB’s successor spy agency (equivalent of our IB and RAW combined) in a Press Conference in 1992, and reported by The Hindu, Times of India, and UNI. In 2002, the then External Affairs Minister Mr.Jaswant Singh had taken this matter up with the Russians and was informed by the Russian authorities that the GOI may send a senior representative of the RAW to Moscow to obtain authenticated records of KGB payments to Rajiv Gandhi and family.

Third, I have information that Mr.Rahul Gandhi was detained in Boston’s Logan Airport by US law enforcement authorities sometime in the later half of September 2001. He was in possession of $160,000 in cash which he did not declare upon arrival. US Customs require all amounts above $10,000 in cash to be declared, and if not every $10,000 instalment carries a 8 year imprisonment, if convicted. This means Rahul Gandhi was indictable for a prison term of 144 years. However, the then Principal Secretary to the PM, Mr.Brijesh Mishra, to my knowledge, had intervened with US Secretary of State, and arrangements were made get to Mr.Gandhi released.

In his deposition to the US authorities before returning to London Mr.Gandhi had declared that the money was his, and he had drawn it out of his secret account in Pictet Bank, head quartered in Zurich, Switzerland. I may mention here later that while studying in Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, USA, Mr.Gandhi paid his Tuition and other fees to the College from his secret accounts.

Hence, if you record these informations as part of the FIR, then after doing the preliminary inquiries that the CBI is entitled to Letters Rogatory may be obtained. The ACACI then would be pleased to assist the CBI in its investigation abroad armed with these LRs.

Yours sincerely,

(SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY)

by Keith Hudson

The likelihood is that the economies of Western Europe and America, now facing disaster, will be ultimately saved in a similar way to how the English economy was saved in 1694. Well . . . to be correct, it wasn’t so much that England’s economy was saved in 1694, but England’s very existence as an independent nation. At that time, the French government, fancying the wealth of England that was just beginning to industrialize, was massing troops on its side of the Channel and was imminently threatening to invade. Taxation being too slow to collect, King William’s government suddenly found itself needing money to raise an army and build more ships as quickly as possible.

However, there was a problem. Although there were two or three hundred extremely rich international merchant traders and goldsmiths in London with more than enough money to equip several armies they were unsure of the stability and probity of King William’s Government. In living memory (1672) they’d been bitten once before when King Charles II had reneged on his debts to some of them. However, they themselves faced being ruined if the dreaded French invaded so they had to devise a plan.

It was already the case that, for mutual everyday help, the London merchants were already grouped together in what can be called proto-banks (also known as bill brokers or discount houses). So long as they could trust one another, individuals within and between these groups could create and exchange credit by means of writing promissory notes to one another, balancing up with actual cash on clearing days. On this occasion, some of the groups coalesced (over 40 individuals altogether) and decided to form a ’super-group’ which they called the Bank of England. They offered to lend £1,200,000 at 8% interest (quite a modest rate at that time) to William.

But they couldn’t necessarily trust King William’s Government (beyond being able to fight the French), and their offer depended on a few quid pro quos. The most important of these was that the new Bank wanted to monopolize all of the Government’s financial business. Because government taxation tended to come in as pulses on four ‘quarter days’ during the year, ownership of the accounts would mean that the directors of the Bank could get first-cut from the taxation moneys received in order to repay themselves with interest and also the opportunity to make short-term loans to others and receive additional interest. It was a wonderful way of saving the nation and making themselves even richer.

The second big concession they demanded, and received, was that their own promissory notes should become the official banknotes of England. Although there were many other varieties of promissory notes in use by private groups both then and in the following decades, this privilege ensured that the Bank of England’s banknotes could start to be used to pay taxation as alternatives to gold and silver. Thus everybody was encouraged to use the Bank’s banknotes.

Of course, the initial Bank loan to William’s Government was in gold and silver, the universal currency that was common throughout the world, from Ireland through to Japan, but after then the Bank of England’s banknotes could thus be used widely for domestic use (not for international trade, of course). In theory, the Bank’s proprietors could, at trivial cost, print as many of these as they liked and become as rich as Croesus. In fact, they didn’t. Being sensible people with a thorough knowledge of industry, trading and finance they only issued new banknotes by selling them for gold and silver. They knew that, like some sensible economists today (that is, those who consider ‘Quantitative Easing’ to be foolhardy), there is no such thing as a free lunch and they had make sure that they didn’t cheapen the value of their banknotes. If money is inflated by excessive printing then, sooner or later, the country that issues it is either defrauding its people (particularly those who save money) or ultimately faces disaster. Besides, the Bank’s proprietors wanted to make sure that they, and their descendants, besides being able to remain rich would also retain their high social status as being trustworthy.

In due course, the idea of a central bank with unique powers was copied by other countries which needed to raise large amounts of money to equip armies which, due to artillery innovations, had become very expensive. In modern times, however, governments have snatched back most of the powers that they were obliged to give to the central banks. All central banks, whether as powerful as the US Federal Reserve or the People’s Bank of China, are today not independent, as they are often claimed to be. That’s merely propaganda. In truth they are little more than departments of governments with most of their senior personnel appointed by their governments. They may seem to be independent sometimes when the cliques that run them are at variance with the cliques that run government treasury departments — as they often are — but, essentially, central banks print money and set interest rates for the political convenience of their governments.

Which now brings us to where we are today. The US Federal Reserve and almost all the central banks of Western Europe are now themselves effectively bankrupt. Strictly speaking, they and their governments are illiquid rather than classically bankrupt. In principle, they’ve no need to be bankrupt because the countries in which they reside are still wealthy with more than enough assets and human skills to keep their economies going. The problem is that those who have money — rich investors and, more importantly, pensions and investment funds — are becoming increasingly reluctant to lend it. Government bonds are not as secure as they used to be. The reason for this is that the methods that governments use — tinkering with interest rates or printing banknotes — are no longer having any effect at all on their economies.

Where, oh where, are the rich London merchants of yesteryear? Superficially they appear to be their modern equivalents — the high-street banks and the investment banks. But most of those are bankrupt or illiquid also. The reserves they have are either property collateral which they can’t sell at the price it used to be or government bonds which are now becoming increasingly difficult to sell with every passing day. Of the two principal government bonds in the world, the Eurobonds are fast becoming impossible to buy or sell, and the credibility of US Bonds now depend on what the US Congressional ‘Super-committee’ can conjure up in the next two weeks by way of rescuing the dollar from oblivion. The signs are — heavily — that it will fail and only come up with trivialities.

But we still have thousands of rich entities in the world. Not only are they rich, with swollen bank accounts at the present time, but they also know, unlike governments and central banks, exactly how to create wealth in detail — just as the London merchants used to (they had to know the details of industry as well as finance). I write, of course, of transnational corporations and hundreds of thousands of smaller businesses which depend on them. When the equivalent of the 1694 French troops are massed in sufficiently high numbers on the other side of the Bankruptcy Channel, then I think we can be reasonably sure that the transnationals (of the West and of China) will come forward with their plan. Of course, they will want their quid pro quos also. They’ll need to establish their own new brand of world currency and effectively monopolize, at least for a while, its supply in order to keep the world economic system going. Suitably re-sized governments and politicians who’ve learned some basic economics can emerge later.

China.org.cn reports:

Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, India, is leading a high level India delegation visiting China this week. Modi and other delegates hope to attract Chinese investment in sectors like chemicals, pharmaceuticals, electrical equipment and transformer manufacturing.

Located on the west coast of India, Gujarat is one of the fastest growing economies in India. Despite sluggish export recovery and a slowdown in financial inflows into the Indian economy led by the continued global recession, Gujarat successfully managed to keep its double-digit economic growth rate. It now contributes 22 percent of Indian exports.

Hindustan Times reports:

In quest of more investment in Gujarat, chief minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday left for China, where he is expected to showcase his state as a destination hub. A 20-member delegation comprising industry representatives and officials is accompanying him. The Gujarat government has arranged a chartered plane from Dubai to fly the delegation to China and return on November 13.

Each member of the delegation will shell out close to Rs 20 lakh for his or her expenses during the trip. All arrangements have been made by the state.

During the five-day business-cum-political visit, the chief minister, who had earlier declined “state hospitality” from the Indian embassy in Beijing, will meet senior officials in the Chinese government and functionaries of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC).

“He has scheduled a series of meetings with government officials, private firms and functionaries of the CPC to discuss mutual business opportunities,” a top official in the Gujarat government said, adding, “with CPC functionaries he will make a presentation on how rich the state is with Buddhist monuments, relics and places of culture”.

• First Basic Law: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
• Second Basic Law: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
• Third (and Golden) Basic Law: A stupid person is a person who caused losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
• Fourth Basic Law: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be costly mistake.
• Fifth Basic Law: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
• Corollary to the Fifth Basic Law: A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

I am sure you have questions. Who are the stupid? How can we identify them? Are they a heterogeneous or a homogeneous bunch? What can be done to help them? All excellent questions and we should address them.

Most certainly someone must have come up with the taxonomy of the stupid but I am too lazy to look it up on them internets. So as a public service, I will do the hard work of figuring out a taxonomic scheme of my own.

• First Order Stupid: Plain old garden variety stupid. The cause of the stupidity is basic ignorance. This can be cured with knowledge. Pre-requisite: must be at least of average intelligence and have an open mind.

• Second Order Stupid: Not just ignorant of the facts but what is worse that the head is filled with patent nonsense and falsehoods. As with First Order Stupidity, this can be cured but it requires the additional step of erasing before writing. Pre-requisite: as in the previous category and the ability to change one’s mind.

• Third Order Stupid: Not only having wrong information but even when presented with the correct information, the inability to recognize the need to re-evaluate the situation and change one’s mind. Therefore it is nearly impossible to fix this kind of stupid.

For expositional purposes only, here’s an example. (The persons mentioned below are entirely fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is quite likely coincidental. Or perhaps not so coincidental. You decide.)

• Meet Ashok. Ashok does not know anything about a man (loosely speaking, of course) named Dr Manmohan Singh. He assumes that Dr Singh is about average when it comes to integrity. He is essentially ignorant of the fact that Dr Singh is a despicably dishonest person, but when presented with the facts, readily admits that Dr Singh is a spineless toady and astonishingly dishonest. Ashok is 1st Order Stupid.

• Meet Basanti. Basanti is the gullible sort. She reads newspapers which claim that Dr Singh has personal “integrity.” If you ask her why, she will tell you because “everyone says so.” She’s not incorrigible, though. You first explain to her that she’s totally mistaken. Given the evidence, she updates her beliefs and correctly believes that Dr Singh is a despicably dishonest person. Basanti is 2nd Order Stupid.

• Meet Chandan. Chandan is convinced that Dr Singh is competent and honest. His mind is made up and no amount of evidence about Dr Singh’s dishonesty is going to make the least difference to him. You can present all the damning evidence till the cows come home but he will steadfastly refuse to alter his belief and insist that Dr Singh is honest. Chandan is incorrigible. He is 3rd Order Stupid.

Moving on to a related matter. In a comment reader Mallikarjuna writes,

Our current PM, comes with impressive integrity, but is not a man, who can “Get it Done”.

Either I have totally misunderstood the meaning of the word “integrity,” or the current appointed PM is as far as one can get from integrity while still being in the same galaxy. I wish I could talk to someone who believes in the PM’s integrity. I want to know what their definition of the word is in the context of that man. Does integrity mean “the character trait that makes a person incapable of judging right from wrong; the total lack of moral conviction; the absence of all and any ethical considerations in one’s actions; devoid of all sense of fairness and justice” to them?

I would seriously like to know.

NOTE:

1.

Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.

—— “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order.”. Samuel Huntington. 1998.

GMF wanted to set up several manufacturing operations in Karnataka. They faced several hurdles but after a great deal of hard work, were able to acquire land. It took them seven months. But they continued to face troubles from the government machinery. Finally they realized that since they did not wish to compromise on their business practices, they would have to abandon their plans to set up shop in Karnataka.

They decided to check out Gujarat. The CEO came down from the US to meet with Shri Narendra Modi. Within four days – not months – they had acquired the clearances; within a couple of months, they had acquired the land; and even before their facilities were completed, rail and road connectivity was ready. The Gujarat government was serious about doing business in Gujarat and Shri Modi was the main driver of the state’s success.

Economic policies matter and are a function of the objectives of the policymakers. If the objective is to industrialize the state, the policies would be friendly to business; but if the objective is to maximize personal gain, naturally then corporations would have to choose whether or not to give in to the demands of the government officials to be able to do business.

The objective of the Narendra Modi government clearly flows from his objective. He is squeaky clean and does not tolerate nonsense. He is not in it for the money and does not tolerate corruption. Good corporations like that and Gujarat is the undisputed leader when it comes to industrial growth and economic development. Which brings me to a question: Why do some people hate Modi so much? Note that I write, “some people” and not just “people.”

Some people have it good in a corrupt system. They don’t want this personally profitable game to end. They understand that if Modi were to be nationally successful as he is regionally today, their game would be up. It’s their self-interest which makes them hate Modi. If Modi had threatened my interests, I am certain that I would have hated Modi as well. But as it happens, my interests and Modi’s interests are exactly the same – namely, to see that India becomes a prosperous country.

If you want to make a list of people who are more interested in their own welfare than the welfare of India, simply make a list of those people who hate Modi. The list would be long and illuminating. Topping the list would be the Congress and the Nehru-Gandhi clan. It would have leftist “intellectuals” and foreigners in positions of power in India. It would have the usual bunch of pseudo-seculars, columnists and TV talking-heads.

Some people in high positions hate Modi because of what would happen to them if Modi ever becomes India’s leader. But there’s another constituency which loves Modi. These are the average guy on the street who is sincerely interested in India’s prosperity – and naturally so since his own destiny is tied to India’s. I meet these people and am gratified by their support of Shri Modi.

The person sitting next to me in the Mumbai-Kolkata flight was categorical in his support for Modi. He was a deputy general manager for a government of India enterprise and was on his way to Assam on work. Without revealing my opinion of Modi, as usual I asked him who among the present leaders would he like as the PM of India. Modi, he answered. Why? His answer, “Because of his integrity, dedication and intelligence.” I agreed.

But Modi is more than that. He is a true nationalist and would defend the nation against all threats, domestic and foreign. His relationship to India is that of a son for his beloved Mother. Vande Mataram.

Janata Party president Subramanian Swamy has said that it would not be possible to stop terrorism till P Chidambaram is home minister.

“He is a traitor and the most corrupt minister in the UPA government. There are proofs of his anti-national activities, which I have placed before court. He has Rs 50,000 crore in foreign banks,” Swamy said in response to a query at a ‘Meet the press’ programme held at Indore Press Club on Sunday.

Elaborating, Swamy said Chidambaram as finance minister manipulated the stock market, doctored its rise and fall for vested interest. As finance minister, he insisted on buying paper used for printing Indian currency notes from a London (UK) firm, which also supplied it to Pakistan.

This posed the risk of Pakistan intelligence agency ISI circulating fake currency notes in India. “Similarly, he introduced participatory note cash that was another threat to Indian economy. There are seven to eight large scams, if unearthed, would confine him to jail for rest of life,” he said.

The article concludes with the Dr Swamy’s insinuation that Dr Singh’s boss is next on the list of people who will be hosted in the Tihar jail. “Cooks at Tihar jail are learning to make idli-sambar for south Indians A Raja and others. I told them they would [sic] soon have to make pizza and spaghetti,” says Swamy.

Related Posts:

Here are a few posts on the appointed unelected prime minister, for the record:

May 2010: Manmohan Singh is a Despicably Dishonest Man.

Only the Bad and the Ugly.

June 2010: Manmohan Singh is really and truly a despicably dishonest man.

October 2010: An Open Letter to Manmohan Singh.

December 2010: We need a Paradigm Shift regarding Dr Manmohan Singh.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta Hauls MMS & SG Over the Coals for a Well-deserved Roasting.

Jan 2011: Dr. Manmohan Singh is Pitiable.

Feb 2011: Dr Manmohan Singh is a Despicably Dishonest Man.

The Ventriloquist’s Dummy Will Address a Press Conference.

March 2011: Manmohan Singh Will be Remembered for His Venality.

July 2011: Manmohan Singh is a Seriously Despicably Dishonest Spineless Toady Who Will Pay for his Crimes Against India.

On this day, Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) spoke at the Parliament of the World’s Religions at Chicago in 1893. He addressed his audience as “Sisters and Brothers of America” and proceeded to introduce them to the dharma — the Sanatana Dharma which is also known as Hinduism. Here’s bit from that speech:

I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: “As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.”

The present convention, which is one of the most august assemblies ever held, is in itself a vindication, a declaration to the world of the wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita: “Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.” Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilisation and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honour of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.

I bow in deep respect to an illustrious son of India. I hope that someday Indians will actually understand his message.

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.]

[Hat tip: Santosh.]

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.

Previous Related Posts: 200 Years that Changed the World, and 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes

When will Indians wake up and boot the stupid thieving lying corrupt retard out? When will the media understand that we need a paradigm shift regarding the most dishonest politician in India? He is a pitiable man. He’s responsible for the “governance deficit“. He prefers to betray the country and not his boss. He has presided over corruption and enabled others to loot from the public.

The man epitomizes the dirtiest, sleaziest, most repulsive and repellent characteristics of money-grubbing politicians that India is becoming infamous for around the world. He will be remembered for two things: for being an appointed prime minister and for his venality.

The Ventriloquist's Dummy and the Puppet Master

So if you had any doubts whether Dr MM Singh was a dummy, doubt no more. He is. He has been kept quiet for so long. Now his handlers have decided to put him on show. The sheer excitement of him appearing before a live press conference only speaks to the astonishing spectacle of a ventriloquist performance.

Just think about it. The prime minister of a country should not have to have a rehearsed, scripted, press conference to deal with a matter that has attracted world-wide attention and opprobrium. Indians should hang their heads in shame that he continues to be the prime minister. If they had any shame, they would have dragged the guy out of his office and demanded that he answer questions — questions which are out there in the open and which he should have answered years ago.

Dr Manmohan Singh is arguably the most despicably dishonest person in India, which is saying something considering that there are some in India who have stolen tens of billions of dollars from India.

{Thanks to Sudipta for the link where the photo above is borrowed from.}

Just the other day a friend was telling me how one major business house (starts with a B) used to give freebies to one of India’s prime ministers (starts with a N). N would be hosted and feted by B, and in exchange, N made sure that B got licenses for steel or some such commodity, and was protected from market competition.

That’s crony capitalism. The cronies are usually leftist politicians and big businesses. N got the game started and with time, the rot has spread.

India has suffered immeasurably from it. There’s of course the direct loss which arises from mis-allocation of resources, and under-utilization of capacity. Given protection from domestic and foreign competition, firms end up producing high-cost shoddy goods. The consumers lose in terms of quality and quantity.

India has been DUPed. DUP is an acronym for “directly unproductive profit-seeking” activities, authored by the venerable Jagadish Bhagwati (in a 1982 paper). Here’s a bit from his book “Political Economy and International Economics.” (MIT Press, 1991.)

Directly unproductive profit-seeking (DUP) activities are defined as ways of making a profit (i.e., income) by undertaking activities that are directly (i.e., immediately, in their primary impact) uproductive in the sense that they produce pecuniary returns but do not produce goods or services that enter a conventional utility function or inputs into such goods and services.

Typical examples of such DUP (pronounced appropriately as “dupe”) activities are (1) tarrif-seeking lobbying that is aimed at earning pecuniary income by charging the tariff and therefore factor incomes, (2) revenue-seeking lobbying that seeks to divert government revenues towards oneself as recipient, (3) monopoly-seeking lobbying whose objective is to create an artificial monopoly that generates retns, and (4) tariff-evasion or smuggling that that de facto reduces or eliminates the the tariff (or quota) and generates returns by exploiting thereby the price differential between the tariff-inclusive legal and the tariff-free illegal imports.

While these are evidently profitable activities, their output is zero. Hence, they are wasteful in their primary impact, recalling Pareto’s distinction between production and predation: they use real resources to produce profits but no output.

The above quote is (laboriously) copied from the google book cited above.

We have to keep in mind that perhaps it all starts innocently enough. Well-meaning people who are seriously ignorant of the basic nature of the world make policies that they believe will benefit society as a whole. Businesses soon enough realize that more profits can be made by gaming the system than by actually producing value and generating wealth. With time, the waters get sufficiently muddy that DUP activities become hidden from public view and finally entirely disappear from public consciousness.[1] The economy slides into poverty.

The world used to be divided into largely independent domestic markets. Now, however, with increasing globalization, DUP activities are international in character. One of the most profitable is the global arms market. The US arms businesses prowl around the world selling multi-billion dollar deals to Third World countries.

Rediff.com reports that the US government

has launched a concerted and aggressive campaign on behalf of United States’s fighter aircraft manufacturers to push for the ‘mother of all deals’– the $11 billion medium multi-role combat aircraft deal for 126 fighter aircraft for the Indian Air Force. The deal could give the ailing US economy a major boost in terms of both exports and thousands of jobs.

[Thanks to Yoga Saripalli for the link.]

These are truly weapons of mass destruction, as I have been saying for a while. The true weapons of mass destruction are the guns and fighter planes and subs and ships that are routinely sold. A few squadrons of fighter planes send millions to an early grave — not as dramatic as a mushroom cloud but more painfully through chronic starvation and disease.

Here’s a bit from a post from April 2009, “The War and the Circus.”

Perhaps most humans are congenitally belligerent and can be reasonably expected to get into fights. But it takes institutionalized big businesses to create a war machine that raises ordinary human belligerence to levels of superhuman insanity. The war machine — and one can argue that indeed there is only one such thing but with a global reach, even though its components are multinational in the sense that people from various nations participate in their creation and maintenance — is so pervasive that it seems to be as natural, unchangeable, and logical as the seasons. Like the seasons, the war machine dictates how people carry on with their lives unquestioningly. People generally accept the war machine as naturally they do the seasons.

But if one stops to think about it, unlike the seasons, the war machine is entirely man-made. The men (and they are overwhelmingly men, regardless of the color of their skins or their eyes) in charge of the military-industrial complex create the war machine for their own amusement and aggrandizement. They have the power to create ever more lethal, ever more expensive components of the war machine, and that power extracts ever more resources from the global economy to ratchet up the destructive power of the machine monotonically. The machine almost literally sucks up life out of the people who have no power over it but who eventually pay for it with their blood, sweat and tears. The men controlling the machine, however, get more of what motivates them — raw, naked, unimaginable power.

Every nation on earth is involved in this insanity, directly or indirectly. The desperately poor third-world nations starve their own people to buy ever more expensive weapons from the advanced industrialized countries. By keeping these nations fighting amongst themselves, the advanced industrialized countries achieve two goals. First, income.

The desperately poor third-world nations pay the advanced industrialized countries for weapons they cannot afford. If one side of a particular conflict involving two desperately poor third-world countries is unable to afford the weapons, the advanced industrialized countries give out “aid” to prop it up so that it does not lose and thereby end the conflict. The other side, to maintain balance, then has to become a paying customer and buy an equivalent set. This is a source of income for the advanced industrialized countries, and more damagingly, a transfer of wealth from the desperately poor to the amazingly prosperous.

Go read that post when you have time. It is depressing as all hell, even if I say so myself. And if you want more, go check out this old post, “Wars, Opium, Powerful Governments and Weak Nations” which is from December 2005.

Before I let you go, here’s another one on the same topic from long ago which I recommend. “Benefits of Weapons Trade” July 2005.

The US had passed its age of being a subsistence economy for a long time before it started on its path to developing weapons of mass destruction. Its agriculture was booming, it had a huge manufacturing base, its people were literate and educated, it had a massive stock of housing, its institutions were mature, and so on. Given that foundation, it could afford the luxury of going into the research and development of weapons, and built the most advanced and expensive military hardware in world. The unfortunate part is that there are countries like India which have hundreds of millions of people stuck in the subsistence phase of development. And the leaders of these under-developed countries eye the expensive military hardware and salivate. They are forced to attempt to keep up with their neighbors in their competition to get as many shiny nuclear-tipped missiles as possible.

If I was made the global dictator temporarily, and was given the power to make only one absolutely binding and enforceable global law, it would be to ban weapons trade altogether. If neither India nor Pakistan could buy nuclear subs and missiles, fighter jets and bombers, the ordinary people of these countries might have a better shot at a human existence.

From this point of view, the tragedy of the world is not so much that there are so many poor countries, but that there are those rich countries that have surplus resources to devote to developing weapons that ultimately starve the poor. And the leaders of these poor countries fall all over themselves in praising the foresight and the wisdom of the leaders of the rich countries for giving them the opportunity to buy these weapons.

Mark Twain had unusually praiseworthy words for India. He would have been pleased by the increased tries between India and the US. But I am sure that he would have been saddened by the irony in the celebration of some in India at the chance to buy American weapons.

NOTES:

[1] Go read “You can’t trust the Tatas, they are worse than others,” a post by Girish Nikam at “Indias Report.” (Thanks to Dinesh Dharme for the link.) Murky business. Who knows what’s going on in one of India’s most respected business houses. But we should not be surprised.

“Just wait and see. Halfway through 2-G spectrum case I will bring in Sonia Gandhi into it. Nothing is going to go wrong in this case. This case is going to make a modern, new and clean India,” claims Janata Party president Dr Subramanian Swamy, one of the petitioners in the 2G spectrum scam, which is being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation under the Supreme Court’s supervision.
. . .
After former telecom minister A Raja’s arrest, Swamy is now targeting Raja’s mentor and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Karunanidhi.
. . .
Swami and now even the CBI’s case is that Raja favoured Swan Telecom to get the 2-G spectrum at a low price. Businessman Shahid Balwa, who was arrested on Wednesday, was a promoter of Swan. Etisalat Dynamix Balwa, which purchased shares of Swan, is also the front company of Balwa. He also launched another company which reportedly gave a loan to a television company ran by Karunanidhi’s family. This nexus and sequence of money passing hands is being established by the CBI.

The sceptic may find this complex transaction difficult to prove but Swamy is oozing with confidence. He says, “I will not leave the case half-way. I will ensure that Raja goes to jail for 21 years.”
. . .
In November, 2008, Dr Swamy wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and followed it up with four more letters seeking sanction to prosecute Raja.

When the prime minister didn’t take any decision, Swamy went to Supreme Court and the rest is history. Even advocate Prashant Bhushan filed another petition to create a monitoring mechanism to supervise CBI’s investigation of the 2G case.

Swami’s worry is that Swan’s shares have been sold to people with connections to Pakistan and Chinese investors, raising security concerns.
. . .
He has 12 years of experience teaching economics at Harvard University in the US. Even experts stop and take notice when he writes on the economy of China. He is familiar with Mandarin. He has studied the Gita and many other Hindu granthas and has written many books including Hindus Under Siege. He has been always supporter of the market economy and since last few years has been a supporter of Hindutva.

He abhors today’s politicians and is a rare political animal who is not afraid of the media. His political adversaries have every reason to be afraid of him.

When he fell-out with former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalitha, she ordered his arrest in Chennai. But Swamy boarded a flight and once inside argued that aircraft comes under the central government’s domain.

His greatest strength is his grasp of the law and its bold interpretations.

A very few in New Delhi can match his tenacity in taking on his enemies in a court of law. He is a rare public figure taking on Sonia Gandhi relentlessly. He is not a regular politician with a retinue of chamchas around him round the clock.
. . .

Swamy is 72 but looks much younger and has been very bullish on India and its future. He says he left a job at Harvard to become part of the ‘India story’.
. . .
With a 40-year career behind him, Swamy knows what he is doing and talking. His talking, in fact, distinguishes him from other politicians. He is never restrained in expressing his views. Since he speaks only in extreme terms it affects his credibility in the long run but he will bombard you with the very same extreme arguments if you try to tell him so.

He never tampers ideas before he speaks and he is just not afraid of his enemies or their might. His drive to carry on his mission has helped him.

He can’t be ignored because if you look closely he does not actually lose many legal battles. From the Islamic bank case to one concerning gold-plating of the Tirupati temple to the issue of Ram Sethu his activism brings the results he strives for.

There are scores of such issues where Dr Swamy has been ahead of all in raising it and taking it to its logical conclusion.

Dr Swamy, in fact, is a complex politician carrying too many secrets in his long, chequered career. Once he was close to government in Libya and Iraq, at another time he was influential enough to get one-on-one meet with Premier Deng Xiopang in Beijing and even got Chinese government to open up Mansarovar for Hindu pilgrims.

In 40 years he has been twice minister at the Centre and five times he has been elected to Parliament.

Since the last ten years his target is Sonia Gandhi against whom he has filed a case of smuggling of Indian antiques. He also took up the issue of his foreign origin and the issue of a foreign-born person’s eligibility to become prime minister.

Swamy has umpteen times made allegations that Sonia’s real name is Antonia and her family background is not what she claims to be. He has spoken so many things against her but he has never been challenged.

His favourite line is: “You journalists are ignorant.”
. . .
He adds, “The law protects me. This is in the public domain out of ignorance people keep giving opinions and discourage you. I speak bluntly. I get irritated to see people’s ignorance. I don’t speak diplomatically.”

When asked, “Do you know people sometime say you are crazy?’ Dr Swamy says, ‘That’s a fact! Only crazy people bring change. I don’t want among the sane who are stooges of people in authority today. If that is sanity, I don’t want that kind of sanity.”

When rediff.com asked him, “Was there any pressure on you to not move forward in the 2G spectrum case?” Swamy’s reply was astounding.

“See, there is a general impression amongst all crooks that if you offer Swamy money, he will take the money and still continue, so no use giving him money!”

Then, giving a playful look, he says, “Since, I am Brahmin getting dakshina is my birthright. If anyone gives me money I will take it. But I will not do their work. I do exactly what I think is right. I play a role of an ancient Brahmin. Today Brahmins are connected to birth. It’s nonsense. It has nothing to do with birth. You have to have vidya (knowledge) and you have to have courage. You should not have any personal wealth. I don’t have any personal wealth.”
. . .
In 2004, Swamy went to court and even to then President A P J Abdul Kalam to prevent Sonia Gandhi from becoming prime minister.

He is of the view that, “She herself can’t become prime minister because of legal bar but she will make her son or someone else who will be worse than Dr Singh.”

He says, “I am playing for removal of UPA and in the process Dr Singh will also be removed but I won’t be party to anything under which only Dr Singh gets removed.”

When asked why he has a soft corner for Dr Singh, he says, “He is a man of integrity. He has personal integrity. He is not the man fit for this job. He has no political backing so he is totally dependent on Sonia Gandhi. You can’t have throne of India occupied by a boneless wonder. No matter how good you are its not enough. You must be a person who is able to take risks and make decisions. A man should not look over someone’s shoulder. From day one we know he is not an independent person. His background is bureaucratic. It’s not political. I know him for so many years. In the present UPA system, I know of no gutsy, no decent or no political person who can be prime minister. They have to be a rubber stamp of Sonia Gandhi.”

When asked what nailed Raja, Dr Swami says, “That press conference of January 10, 2008 when Raja allotted spectrum on first come, first serve basis. That was his unbecoming. If he had done it with little bit finesse he would have got away with it. It was so crude. He gave one hour for the companies to get demand drafts for Rs 1,650 crore. He gave advance information to those whom he wanted to give spectrum. So those people came with pre-dated cheques. I had a press release of that press conference. Some officers gave it to me.”

Swamy claims that his case saw legal success because the Supreme Court could not ignore two things.

“One, why the prime minister did not reply my letter. And, two, he could not say yes or no about my plea to charge Raja for corruption. Obviously, he could not say yes so he kept quiet because he can’t even say no.”

While ending the interview, he said, “Raja was assured by the Congress and the DMK that he will be protected. Their alliance won’t break because both are partners in crime. But Raja was let down by Karunanidhi and Sonia Gandhi because Dr Singh showed individuality in arresting Raja.”

Then, giving a mischievous look, he said, “You can’t ask Sonia Gandhi any question on Raja because she would never give that interview.”

Incredible as it may seem, this sorry bunch of sycophants actually gets to rule the nation. Here’s what the Telegraph of Calcutta reports:

Jaipur, Feb. 9: Pratibha Patil became President because she cooked and washed for Indira Gandhi when the Prime Minister was thrown out of power in 1977, a Congress minister in Rajasthan has suggested.

Panchayati raj minister Amin Khan, who was addressing party workers in Pali district near Jodhpur yesterday, said Patil had sought nothing in return for her service to the first family.

Her patience and dedication paid off when Sonia Gandhi suddenly named her the party’s choice for President in 2007, Khan said. At the time, Patil was serving as the governor of Rajasthan.

Pratibha Patil has been around the block a few times. Or as the saying goes in Hindi, bahut papad bay-lay hain.

Reading the Pratibha Patil story was like deja vu all over again (as Yogi Berra put it.) Three years ago, in Nov 2007, I had a post on “Loyalty Pays.”

A man who has been a cook to the Nehru-Gandhi family for decades has been rewarded for his loyalty by the Nehru-Gandhi family — his son has been given a Congress ticket.

But wait, there’s another story that appeared nearly seven years ago. Here’s a bit from a post from April 2004, “Democracy in India.”

Just as the market is a great organizing principle in the economic sphere, so also democracy is a great and noble organizing principle in the political sphere. Democracy works, provided its pre-conditions are met. The necessary conditions include at a minimum: full information, accountability, economic freedom, institutional memory, and so on. Democracy cannot work when the electorate is nearly totally uninformed, where there are strong vested interests, where the notion of accountability is non-existent, where voters can be intimidated and bribed, where the culture is steeped in feudalism, and where illiteracy, superstition and corruption is the norm.

India’s democracy is at best a cargo cult democracy. Here is a brief news item from today’s The Times of India page 3. The Maharashtra Congress Committee vice-president Anant Gadgil plans to switch to the Shiv Sena because he did not get a ticket for contesting the elections. He wrote to the chief Sonia Gandhi and said:

Our family is known for its loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family, and to the Congress since independence. We always remember the recognition given by Indira and Rajiv Gandhi to my father for his utmost loyalty. Please let me know whether loyalty has no meaning left in the Congress party.

If those words don’t epitomize what Indian democracy is all about, I don’t know what does. Here is a person who wants to represent the will of the people, his constituency. And all he has to show for his qualifications for that task is his loyalty to a particular family. He does not plead that he has served the people of his constituency competently, he does not point out that he is capable of helping his society do better, he does not say that he understands the problems that his people face and that he has solutions, etc. Most likely he has not done any service nor is he capable of doing anything for the people. In keeping with the prevailing customs of the political parties in India — especially that of the Congress Party — all that he has to show is that he and his father have always been loyal lap-dogs of the of the ruling family.

Mr. Anant Gadgil may be an ignorant wanna-be. But he is not alone. His sentiments are shared by practically all “leaders” of the Congress party, from Messers Manmohan Singh and Narasimha Rao to the lowliest party worker. All they have to demonstrate is unquestioned loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family and they will get the nod. As self-interested rational individuals their stance cannot be faulted. The tens of millions of ignorant illiterate voters will vote for the Congress party simply because they recognize the Gandhi name. Therefore all Gadgils and the Singhs and Raos have to do is to plead their loyalty and they will get a ticket and therefore get elected.

To Anant Gadgil: Yes, loyalty still trumps everything else for the Congress party. Sorry that your nose doesn’t appear brown enough, though.

India has a cargo-cult democracy because it appears to be a democracy on the surface. Like a movie set, the facade presents a reasonable facsimilie of the real thing, but behind it, there is little substance. The hundreds of millions go through the motion of expressing their preference. But uninformed preference expressed haphazardly in a system that is corrupt to the core is not a receipe for a system of governance. It is no wonder that India ends up with “leaders” such as Rabri Devi and Laloo Yadav and Sonia Gandhi.

Democracy does not work in India. That is not to say that the fault lies with the idea of democracy. As a system of governance, there are few alternatives, just as markets are the best way to organize economic activities. But markets are prone to failures if its pre-conditions are not met. So also, democracy does not work in India because its necessary conditions are not met.

Back to the Pratibha Patil story. The minister is being asked to resign. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. In India, telling the truth is not without its penalties. The man reported that Pratibha Patil worked as a kitchen maid for Indira Gandhi — but he was saying it approvingly and as an ideal to be emulated by all those who wish to climb up the power ladder by sucking up to the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Now the poor sod is being asked to resign. And — wait for this — the idiot BJP is asking that he be sacked.

Earlier in the day, the BJP had seized the opportunity to mock the Congress’s “culture of subservience” and demanded the minister’s resignation.

BJP state president Arun Chaturvedi said the comment about the President was “unacceptable” and the chief minister should immediately ask for Khan’s resignation.

If you have ever wondered why the BJP is not in power, wonder no more. It is packed to the brim with idiots.

Between the party of brown-nosers and the party of idiots, India is royally screwed.

It’s all karma, neh?

{This post has been brought to you by the generous support of my friend Sanjiv and his family in New Delhi — and by readers like you. Thank you.}

Dr Manmohan Singh betrays the country because he cannot afford to betray Antonia Maino. Betraying his boss will cause him to lose his job; betraying the country causes immense harm to millions but he will not lose any sleep on that. Not having a conscience or any moral compunctions affords that advantage to him.

Veer wrote:

The book and its foreword clearly point to Nehru being a Communist in disguise. It explains the ideological origin of large, dominating, controlling, big-brother government and its overall structure in India.

And I think Indira proved to be a worthy successor of Nehru’s totalitarian / communist-state legacy, which she nurtured and grew.

You have to keep in mind that this Spratt review is dated October 1963. Nehru was then the prime minister. The bitter fruits of his misguided policies were yet to ripen. The fruit of his loins was not the powerful dictator she was to become. His grandson, Rajiv Gandhi, was 19. Antonia Maino, an Italian whom Rajiv later married, was 17 at that time. Currently she is the puppet-master of the appointed prime minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh.

Who is this Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi? According to reports, her father, Stefano Maino, was a volunteer to the Nazi army and was taken as a prisoner of war by the Russians. I did a google search on “stefano maino fascist”. Read this page.

1. During Nehru’s time Indira Gandhi might have been on the payroll of KGB. Later as per U.S. Congressional hearing records Indira Gandhi’s family most likely Rajiv and Sonia, were on the payroll of the Pakistani Banker the late Agha Hassan Abedi, who founded the Bank known as Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). BCCI was a drug money laundering outfit finally owned by the ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zyed.

Mr. Manmohan Singh when he was the governor of Reserve Bank of India was advised by RAW not to issue license for opening the ISI bank BCCI in Bombay as BCCI was funding spying in India and was also funding the Pakistani nuclear programme. Yet Manmohan simply approved it. BCCI was used even by Reliance for its hawala transactions. (BCCI had grown as a result of it running a supply centre for ‘Pakistani minor girls’ to Sheikh Zyed and other leading Sheikhs in the Gulf. Naturally Sheikh became the leading share holder of BCCI. These details are available in the US senate reports.) The BCCI also known as the cocaine bank collapsed with a loss of $ 16 billion.

All that Manmohan got was a scholarship for his daughter, but his main benefit turned out to be that the congress party immediately inducted him to the party. Many details are available in our parliamentary proceedings when the collapse of the BCCI was discussed.

Sonia had connections to the Vatican Bank which was active in Europe and America drug market where as BCCI specialized in the Asian drug market. Abedi’s reach extended to the U.S. also. He even had the former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford as his lobbyist for a fee of nearly $100 million. All this was exposed in U.S. Congressional hearings.

2. KGB might have murdered Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Sastri, in Tashkent, by poisoning so that Nehru family can come back to power. Following the India-Pakistan War of 1965, Shastri met in Tashkent with President Ayub Khan of Pakistan and signed a “no-war” declaration. He died the next day Jan 11, 1966. The story put out by KGB that a Muslim cook with Lal Bahadur Sastri’s entourage had poisoned him in Tashkent and escaped to Pakistan may be a cover-up for what KGB had done.

3. Sonia Gandhi was groomed and presented in front of Rajiv Gandhi by KGB, to hook Rajiv which was successful. Subsequently Rajiv marries Sonia.

4. KGB may be involved in the plane accident of Sanjiv Gandhi and might be pure murder to eliminate Sanjiv and to bring in Rajiv as the successor to Indira Gandhi. This paved the way for Rajiv Gandhi to become PM, who is married to KGB agent Sonia.

5. Rajiv Gandhi was killed by the Sri Lankan terrorist group LTTE which is totally supported and financed by christian organizations abroad. Rajiv Gandhi was blown up in Tamil Nadu on May 21, 1991 by a Roman Catholic female suicide bomber Dhanu, 24, whose real name was Kalaivathi. Once Rajiv was killed the external spy agencies might have worked behind the scenes to promote Sonia Gandhi.

Potential threats to Sonia’s leadership were one by one eliminated in excellently planned natural accidents which are a KGB specialty. All the deaths of potential future contenders of congress presidency were killed in accidents on Sundays. Sunday murders are a specialty of Christians and this is well proven in India’s North Eastern states where the Christian terrorists murder Hindus mostly on Sundays. Muslims generally carryout terrorist killing of Hindus on Fridays.

Rajesh Pilot died in a road accident on Sunday, Jitendra Prasada died of brain hemorrhage on Sunday and Madhava Scindia was killed in a place crash on Sunday. Kamal Nath, another prominent young Congress leader narrowly escaped when a small plane he was traveling in crashed, killing some others on board.

On Sunday 30th September. 2001 Madhavrao Scindia who was deputy leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha and one of its senior-most members, and who was also one of the boyfriend of Sonia in London, was killed along with seven others. They were charred beyond recognition in a plane crash. Seventeen minutes before the plane was due to land in Kanpur, the Air Traffic Control in the city lost contact with it. The plane caught fire in mid-air and became a ball of fire by the time it hit the ground. Mystery shrouds the circumstances under which the aircraft crashed near Motta village in Mainpuri district. The Beechcraft C-90 aircraft used by Mr. Scindia belonged to Jindal Strips and was maintained by India International Aviation Ltd. In June 2000 the senior Congress leader Rajesh Pilot met with the fatal accident in the highway on a stretch between Jaipur and Dausa.

On the KGB connection, Dhar writes: “My painstaking research and intelligence penetration had succeeded in identifying four Union ministers (of Indira Gandhi’s Cabinet) and over two dozen MPs who were on the payrolls of KGB operatives. Some of them are still around… But the most surprising area of penetration of the KGB was the ministry of defense and those layers of the Armed Forces which were responsible for procurement of military hardware. My list of these galactic stars did not amuse my bosses and I was advised to `secure that information’ (sic) in my archive. No one at the top had the gumption of illuminating the government with the identity of the Soviet targets… The most interesting case was that of a member of Parliament who regularly received a pay packet from the Soviet embassy for covering certain segments of the kitchen cabinet of Indira Gandhi.”

Go read it all. Now at last we may be slowly getting an understanding of what evil schemes have brought India to this state. Now we are starting to get glimpses of who is behind India’s descent into a state ruled by the morally corrupt and intellectually bankrupt. The pieces are falling into place and soon enough we will know the names of those who have looted India for their personal gain.

All is not lost but we have to wake up. People like Goel saw this coming 50 years ago. Go read the entire foreword by Spratt to Goel’s book. Here’s the concluding bit from Spratt.

Nehru’s Communism is revealed in the extraordinary favour he shows to the Communist Party, as contrasted with his marked coolness towards the socialists who put democracy first, like the PSP. He allows the Russian Government, and apparently the Chinese too, to subsidise them. It has been admitted in Parliament that the Home Department knows about some of these foreign funds. No other ruler in the world tolerates this kind of thing. Why does Nehru?

His Communism has been clearly revealed in his foreign policy. He cannot go wholly over to the Communist bloc, but he will not take the protection of the free countries, so India remains defenceless. China’s big attack came a year after Goel’s articles, and fully bore out his warning. It even moved Nehru for the moment, but he quickly went back to the policy which made the attack possible.

His Communism is also shown in his economic policy. Its deficiencies in Russia and China have become generally known in recent years, but he still persists with it. He is not even disabused of collective farming, despite its spectacular failure everywhere. This over-centralised, one-sided, state-controlled economy is building up a great vested interest, political and bureaucratic and indeed capitalistic, which he doubtless relies upon to keep it going when he has stepped down.

Ten years ago the Congress Party was by no means socialistic. When the resolution on the socialistic pattern was passed at Avadi, an important Congressman compared it to the Emperor Akbar’s Din Ilahi. Socialism, he said, is Nehru’s personal fad, which will quickly be forgotten when he passes from the scene. It seemed a shrewd judgement at the time, but it overlooked the attraction of socialism for a ruling party of hungry careerists. The experience of socialism in the nine years since than has won many Congressmen over. But there are still many who oppose it, and its continuance in the future is not yet assured. That, I take it, is the real inwardness of the Kamaraj Plan. The purpose of the current goings-on is to arrange the succession to Nehru in such a way that the pro-communists retain control.

The dispute over this question is of the greatest importance for India’s future. But the partisans on both sides are still afraid of speaking plainly, and many of the public are still unaware of what it is all about. Goel’s book helps greatly in making clear what the groups in the Congress are fighting over. It is really whether India shall continue to be ruled by a Government of usurpers, who will go on pushing the country against its will towards Communism, or the Government shall follow a policy which genuinely commends itself to the majority of the public.

Bangalore
October 25, 1963

How can a land so full of promise and potential become so pathetically poor? How did it come to be ruled by the most venal, self-serving, myopic, criminal leaders? There has to be a reason and most likely the answer lies in the personal histories of those who have become its leaders.

“He was bold, upright and could take on anybody. He could question even Mahatma Gandhi and dared to disagree with him, which he did on the dominion status issue. Netaji knew that areas like population control, industries, agriculture and health were key to the country’s growth and had expressed his views on these. His views were strikingly modern and practical which makes me conclude that India would have done better than China with him in the front seat of the government,” Murthy said.

Criticizing the Centre for not paying “due respect to this great son of India”, Murthy felt it was time to correct the mistake. “I have heard that Delhi doesn’t have a single prominent avenue named after him. This is a shame and I hope our wonderful Prime Minister will soon correct this lacunae,” he added.

Wonderful prime minister, eh? That wonderful prime minister would correct something right after hell freezes over.

That PM belongs to the slave dynasty.

Consider this. New Delhi has major roads named after a ruler who slaughtered Indians wholesale. Aurangzeb. New Delhi will never have a road named after a nationalist.

The unpalatable truth may be that Indians have been in slavery too long and cannot imagine freedom from the tyrants that have ruled the land — and still continue to rule it.

An Italian, Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi, heads the UPA, the ruling coalition in New Delhi. This fact does not seem to bother too many people, does it? This would not have ever happened to a people who had any sense of pride and honor.

Fact is that India has been ruled by foreigners for centuries. If Indians in fact indeed had had pride and honor, centuries of foreign rule would not have happened.

That Antonia Maino has hanger-ons like Dr Singh and the rest of the unmentionable gang of crooks is not surprising at all. The tradition is long and enduring. Foreigners ruled India because of people like them.

India is a long way from freedom. While India’s enemies rule India, the names of India’s enemies will be seen in its capital. The time has not yet come for Netaji Bose’s name to adorn anything in India.

[Hat tip Raja for the TOI link who commented --

]

Isn’t there some sort of international law which makes criticizing Muslims a punishable crime?

Anyway, the title of that article is provocatively misleading. Here’s a bit from it that I find very revealing about the man and his style.

Lee also revealed that he had donated to charity all his earnings of S$13 million ($10 million) since stepping down as prime minister in 1990 after 31 years in power.

Singapore’s cabinet ministers are the highest paid in the world as part of a strategy to prevent corruption and attract talent from the private sector.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew, I wish India had someone like you to lead it. But when it comes to the kind of leaders a country gets, it is a random draw — just like one has no choice in what kind of parents one gets.

It’s all karma, neh?

[Hat tip: Rajeev Mantri for the link to the AFP article.]

Ashok Mitra laments for a cog in the machinery of the GREAT RENOUNCER and asks, “Does the prime minister matter?” in The Telegraph, Calcutta India.

Is it not egregiously irrelevant in such a situation to wax eloquent over the prime minister’s integrity? For consider the goings-on during the 2G spectrum episode. Were nothing known of the prime minister’s correspondence with his minister as well as of the Radia tapes, two alternative assumptions are still possible: either that the prime minister was aware of the irregularities that were being plotted but was unable to do anything about it, or that he was totally ignorant of what was happening.

In case the prime minister knew that large scale larceny was taking place within the portals of government, the natural question to ask is, why did he not put his foot down instead of accepting the developments philosophically — in other words, why did he agree to go along with corruption? Is he not, technically, an accessory after the fact? Cross over to the second hypothesis: while the prime minister was a man of first-class integrity, he was not aware of the shady things happening within his premises. If a prime minister does not know what is transpiring within the ambit of his authority, does it not reflect on his efficiency and, therefore, his suitability for occupying the position?

It was, after all, the personal decision of the individual who is prime minister to accept the position in full awareness of the overwhelmingly important conditionality attached, namely, that he must abide the preferences, prejudices and inclinations of the Great Renouncer. If the prime minister is feeling humiliated by the snide comments swirling at this moment around his person, he can only lay the blame at the door of the decision he took in 2004 to be a cog in the dynasty’s wheel. It is for him to ruminate whether tending his private garden would not have been a superior choice.

While there’s life, there’s hope. A man always has a chance. A man can resign and beg for forgiveness for the mistakes he made. But Dr Singh can’t. Only a man can, not a cog in some stupid wheel. So rather than contempt, I lean towards pity for him.

            Swami Vivekananda
            12 Jan 1863 -- 4 July 1902

Swami Vivekananda was born on this day, January 12th, in 1863 in Kolkata. Here is a quote from the wiki entry on him.

Swami Vivekananda was born in an aristocratic Bengali family of Calcutta in 1863. Swami’s parents influenced his thinking—the father by his rational mind and the mother by her religious temperament. From his childhood, he showed inclination towards spirituality and God realization. While searching for a man who could directly demonstrate the reality of God, he came to Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa and became his disciple. As a guru, Ramakrishna taught him Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism) and that all religions are true, and service to man was the most effective worship of God. After the death of his Guru, Vivekananda became a wandering monk, touring the Indian subcontinent and getting first-hand knowledge of India’s condition. He later sailed to Chicago and represented India as a delegate in the 1893 Parliament of World Religions. An eloquent speaker, Vivekananda was invited to several forums in the United States and spoke at universities and clubs. He conducted hundreds of public and private lectures and classes, disseminating Vedanta and Yoga in America, England and a few other countries in Europe. He also established the Vedanta societies in America and England. Later he sailed back to India and in 1897 founded the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, a philanthropic and spiritual organization.

A deep bow of reverence to this great son of India.

Here’s his Sept 11, 1893 speech he delivered in Chicago. He was only 30 years old. His speech starts with “Sisters and brothers of America, …”

Here are a couple of quotes from him.

The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.

~ ~ ~ ~

The will is not free – it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect – but there is something behind the will which is free.

It’s their written language that’s the main part of their problem. It’s non-phonetic. It means that in order to acquire a basic vocabulary—of, say, 2,000 or 3,000 words (the content of their average newspapers)—- children have to learn uniquely-shaped characters (whole words) which have no, or very little, relationship with their utterance. A Chinese or Japanese child can learn to speak his language quite as readily as children do the world over, but learning how to read or write each individual word takes many years. And there’s only one way, unfortunately for children, and that’s by rote learning. And thousands of hours of rote learning over many years under the strict discipline of slave-masters in the schoolroom doesn’t do anything for the creativity of young minds—or for older minds for that matter because the basic mental skills are aptitudes are thoroughly laid down before puberty.

The Chinese and Japanese governments are well aware of the damage that rote learning is doing to them—and say so quite frequently. Although both countries can churn out ten of thousands of science and engineering graduates every year, there’s scarcely an independent mind among them. Independent ‘garage inventors’, as we have in the West, are as rare as hen’s teeth in China and Japan. For example, Japan has been industrialized for over a century—only a decade or two less than other Western countries—yet it has only won 15 Nobel prizes in the science subjects. Compare this figure with those of America (261), the UK (91) and Germany (88). China has only won 10! However, this comparison is unfair because China’s have only been won since it woke up in the 1970s. America’s number also needs to be modified because about a third of its prizes have been won by foreign-born scientists who became American citizens after migrating there.

It’s all Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s fault (yes, the same as is famed for his terracotta army). Once Qin had conquered several countries and unified China in 221BC, he standardized as many things as possible—from weights and measures and currency through to the written language. All the various scholars throughout his empire, speaking scores of different languages (some with and some without a written form) were forced—on pain of death—to produce a composite, but common, written language. And this could only be non-phonetic, of course. Even the mighty power of Emperor Qin couldn’t force millions of his subjects to learn a new common spoken language but he could certainly force his relatively few scholars to produce a new common written one. One popular penalty in those days was to cut someone through his midriff, mount him on a platter of hot tar and take him around the town, gesticulating and shouting before he expired.

And herein lies a paradox, because the industrial revolution in Europe would never have happened without starting from a basic stock of scores of innovations—such as canal locks, differential gears, sowing grain in rows and so forth—that had drifted in from China along the Great Silk Road over a period of centuries. However, this doesn’t signify that the Chinese had been more inventive than Europeans. But its common written language had meant that when one innovation—say a wheelbarrow (very important indeed for both China and Europe)—had been invented by a genius in one tucked-away corner of China, then the local mandarin could write and tell hundreds more all about this wonderful new device.

But what once had been an accelerator for both Chinese and European civilizations actually became a retardant for China when the Western Enlightenment and scientific revolution stirred into life in the 1600s and 1700s. The Chinese had no way of encapsulating these new ideas. A Chinese mandarin visiting Europe in, say, the 1700s or 1800s, and learning about the new exciting scientific ideas (if he’d learned Latin or another European language of course) had no way of disseminating them widely in China because there he had no method of writing them down in Chinese words that would have been instantly recognizable by fellow Chinese scholars or engineers. He could only convey the new ideas vaguely by speaking of them face-to-face when he returned home.

Thus Japan (which had inherited thousands of Chinese words) and China were left behind by the industrial revolution in England, Germany and America. They didn’t begin to catch up in earnest until the the 1870s (the Meiji Revolution) and the 1970s (the Deng Xiaoping Revolution) respectively. And this is still—largely—where they are today. Both the Chinese and Japanese governments are trying to phoneticize their written languages but only very slowly, such is the cultural conservatism of two thousands years to contend with.

What might be significant in China (though not yet happening in Japan), is that all their college and university entrants have to learn spoken and written English these days. All their top government officials speak English and most business and science faculties in their universities use English widely in their seminars. Also, thousands of their brightest young post-grad scientists go to America or England for research experience and qualifications. Indeed, once they are here for a few years they become quite as inventive as Western scientists (if not more so when you look at the authorship of many papers in heavyweight subject, say genetics or particle physics). Unfortunately for the Chinese and Japanese governments many, if not most, of the most innovative scientific minds elect to stay in their adoptive countries rather than to return.

But the problem is even more serious for China and Japan. Almost as important as are the original ideas of innovative individuals is the necessity of other individuals who will give a welcome to new ideas and help to develop them. And it’s this open-minded hinterland which is still limited because of their deep, conservative, authoritative cultures. Goodness knows, new ideas often have a hard time being accepted in the West. Even here, the crazy ideas of yesteryear sometimes have to wait until its die-hard opponents are dead and buried and a brand new generation appears. Only then are the ideas seen to be not so crazy after all.

There we are then. Japan came close to hollowing out America and Western Europe 30 years ago with its superbly made (Western-invented) products. China is threatening to do the same in the coming years. But the innovative momentum is still with the West and this sort of cultural momentum takes a century or two to die down—if it ever does—or a century to acquire—if it ever does in China and Japan.

Just BTW, many Indians would read the title of the post “Why China won’t win . . .” and subconsciously insert India in the context. India’s chances of going anywhere has been put paid to by the Congress-led UPA governments. That’s a shame but then it is hard to avoid the realization that Indians elect criminals to government.

It’s all karma, neh?

So off we went. The lecture hall was packed to the brim. Prof Dixit’s lecture went over my head. He was talking about agency theory. I did not have the vocabulary to fully understand what he was talking about but still I got quite a bit of it because he is a great teacher. It has to do with principals and agents, etc. What I found delightful was his heavy Marathi accent. Later I went up to him and introduced myself saying that I too was from Maharashtra.

I have been recommending “Thinking Strategically” which Dixit co-authored for all who care to understand game theory and its applications for years now.

Recently, the Finance&Development site of the International Monetary Fund carried a profile of Avinash Dixit. (Thanks to Rajan Parrikar for the link.) I loved reading it.

It’s interesting that the article records that Dixit was drawn to game theory after reading Thomas Schellings The Strategy of Conflict. I was drawn to economics after reading that book. Later I read Micromotives and Macrobehavior by Schelling. You must read it.

Anyway, Prof Dixit has a great mind. Check out the profile. Here are a few excerpt, for the record.

Teaching game theory, he insists, must be fun—he has won awards for his teaching prowess—and he tries to illustrate key concepts with tales from films, books, and real life.

Dani Rodrik, professor of international political economy at Harvard, says Dixit was the best classroom teacher he ever had—he never treated anything as silly or obvious. “No matter how stupid a question seemed, he would stop, raise his hand to his chin, narrow his eyes, and think a long time about it, while the rest of us in the classroom would roll our eyes at the stupidity of the questioner,” said Rodrik. “Then he would say, “Ah, I see what you have in mind . . . ,” and he would roll out an answer to a deep and interesting question the student had no idea he had asked.”
“What makes him special,” says former student Kala Krishna, now an economics professor at Penn State, “is that more than anyone else I know, he sees economics as an inescapable part of life: from books, movies, negotiating with a taxi driver—everything has economic content. He truly loves economics, and you can see how much he is enjoying himself doing it.”

Others praise his wit. “Avinash Dixit is one of my favorite economists, in part because he has a trait that is extremely rare among economists: a good sense of humor,” said Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of the best-selling book Freakonomics.

. . .

He is also famous for his textbook on trade with Norwegian economist Victor Norman, The Theory of International Trade, which was enormously influential, and his work on oligopoly and industrial organization.

Path-breaking model

What became known as the “Dixit-Stiglitz” model underpins a huge body of economic theory on international trade, economic growth, and economic geography—a model tapped by Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel Prize in 2008.

The model, first published in 1977, became a building block for others in the new fields of endogenous growth theory and regional and urban economics—what journalist David Warsh described as “one of those economical and easy-to-use ‘Volkswagen’ models that were the hallmark of MIT” (Warsh, 2006).

Monopolistic competition was pioneered by Joan Robinson and Edward Chamberlin in the 1930s and was the stuff of basic economics for years. But Stiglitz—who went on to win a Nobel Prize in 2001 for his work with Michael Spence and George Akerlof on the analysis of markets with asymmetric information—and Dixit took it to a new level.

“The success of the Dixit-Stiglitz model of monopolistic competition might have come as a surprise to students of the history of economic thought, as it was by no means the first attempt to deal with imperfect markets or monopolistic competition,” said Steven Brakman and Ben Heijdra in a book analyzing what they termed a revolution in the analysis of imperfect competition.

“However, where the earlier attempts failed, the Dixit-Stiglitz approach turned out to be very successful and has the potential for ‘classic status.’”
Huge impact

The theory of monopolistic competition shook up modern trade theory, which Oxford economist Peter Neary attributed to “one factor above all others”: the development of the “elegant and parsimonious” model by Dixit and Stiglitz.

. . .

What drives development?

Dixit has spent the past decade watching what drives economic development, including governance and institutions, and has studied fragile states—poor countries recovering from conflict or disasters. “Governance was neglected by economists for a long time, perhaps because they expected the government to provide it efficiently. However, experience with less developed and reforming economies, and observations from economic history, have led economists to study non-governmental institutions of governance,” he says (Dixit, 2008).

To this he brings his habitual skepticism.

While Dixit acknowledges the importance of democracy, property rights, contract enforcement, and the provision of public infrastructure and services that support private economic activity, he is scathing about attempts to draw up a menu of items that underpin development in low-income countries.

“There’s a long, long tradition of people offering recipes which don’t work out,” he says. He stirred things up with a lecture at the World Bank in 2005 that he said he hoped would be provocative and critical, but “evenhandedly so.”

In many cases, he argued in that lecture, the accumulated research on the role of institutions in development stopped short of giving useful or reliable policy prescriptions. “I hope to give everyone some incentives to think further and harder.”

In a subsequent talk at the Reserve Bank of India (Dixit, 2007), he said that in general “bottom-up and organically generated reforms will work better than imposed top-down ones.”

The World Bank’s Philip Keefer, who was Dixit’s respondent at the 2005 lecture, said the Princeton professor was right to be skeptical, but “big ideas” could help guide a country’s reform agenda.

To work effectively, Dixit said, change must be coordinated and take place across several fronts. “The one recipe that works is what I call ‘strategic complementarities.’ That is, if 15 things need to be done, doing 3 of them is not going to get you 20 percent of the way there. It’s going to get you much less. You’ll need to get all 15, or at least 13 or 12, right before you start to see any big effect. So that’s one thing, strategic complementarities, and the second is luck.

“Napoleon supposedly said that the quality he most admired in his generals was luck, and the same goes for governments and countries.”

Go read it all.

Post script: When Rajan sent me that link to the IMF article, he wrote

“You won’t find the name in an India Abroad “Indians of the Year” list, or in the bozo chain emails Indians slosh around. He is ‘unknown’ except to those in the know. And unlike that imposter Amartya Sen, this is the real deal. Ladies & Gentlemen, Professor Dixit -”

Hear, hear.

Actually, Dr Singh’s main qualification for being the appointed prime minister appears to be his ability to listen to orders to shield his boss and the boss’s family from public scrutiny. It’s his questionable moral character that made him suitable for that post. The story is the same as with the president Ms Pratibha Patil. She too has sufficient skeletons in the cupboard that she can be easily manipulated by those who appointed her.

Anyhow, getting back to brilliant writers who tell it like it is. Read Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of the Centre for Policy Research, Delhi in today’s Indian Express. His column is titled, “He Said, She Said.” Don’t mind the disastrous formatting of the column. I read it very slowly to savor every well-crafted sentence.

I would have quoted the whole column but for copyright limitations. So here are some excerpts, for the record.

The responses of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi to the extraordinary crisis generated by the 2G scam are exhibiting a brazen indifference to our predicament. . .

In their responses, they have not missed a trick. But they have missed the point. . .

It has to be said at this point that, with all due respect, “Prime Minister, you are central to governance: you constitute the governance deficit.” . . .

Can there be any greater denigration of the office when the prime minister does not appear to be in charge of government? . . .

But the leader of the ruling party does not have the luxury of an academic discourse on corruption. The shrinking moral universe is not a fact of nature; it is a consequence of decisions taken by leaders. . .

Did the prime minister and the cabinet endorse Raja’s actions? If they did, what was the rationale? If they did not, what did they do for two years to curb actions that they knew to be wrong? Answering these questions does not require an inquiry. It will take the prime minister no more than 10 minutes to set the record straight on these questions. The Congress is asking us to look into the depths because it does not want to look us in the eye. . .

. . . the simple fact is that the prime minister’s demeanour has consistently undermined the authority of Parliament. . .

The Congress president also made reference to the fact that her government does not want to “undermine established institutions, such as the PAC and the CBI”. There is something deeply disconcerting about this for two reasons. Why does a JPC undermine existing institutions? At the very least it does not do it any more than new institutions like the National Advisory Council undermine line ministries. . .

The references to the CBI are also disconcerting. It is time to ask the government what steps it has taken to restore the credibility of the CBI in the eyes of the public. There is not even a glimmer of acknowledgement that citizens are deeply worried about the CBI. There is not even the slightest concession to the fact that almost every single institution in government now carries an odour of conspiracy. Our law enforcement institutions are beginning to resemble an indiscriminate melange of arbitrary powers, randomly exercised. . .

The appeal to the CBI would be more credible if the government had spent the last few years restoring probity to the functioning of these institutions. It is often said that a measure of corruption is not just the exchange of money. It is the distance and dissimulation rulers exhibit in relation to their own governments. On that measure we have indeed reached a low point. The fourth element in this rhetorical strategy is to hide behind the poor — or worse still, allow other Congress leaders to flirt with the communal card. The Congress leadership has to get over the idea that just because it has promulgated a few schemes for the poor, it can be absolved of the larger structural crisis they have produced in the economy. . . What pro-poor policy can explain that it has become nearly impossible to be an honest businessman in this country? The Congress president is insulting the country by implicitly suggesting that the sense of moral crisis and betrayal large numbers of citizens feel is entirely a product of opposition politics. . .

As for the prime minister: his worst failing may not be corruption, it may not even be standing idly by. His worst failing will be that by not coming clean he has undermined any reason to trust so-called good men.

Go read it all.

It is worth asking where this excessive and mind-numbing focus on Modi is headed. Whether one likes his politics or doesn’t, believes he is India’s best chief minister or isn’t, considers him a future prime minister or too much of a hot potato for BJP allies, the fact remains that he needs to be viewed through a conventional political prism and not one of a fevered imagination.

Consider examples. One, it has been clear for a long time that there is no legal case against Modi for the 2002 violence and he is not guilty of acts of deliberate commission. With even the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigative Team (SIT) said to have to come to the same conclusion, Modi haters — who range from Mumbai-based celebrities to a retired police officer still settling bureaucratic scores — have begun to denounce the SIT and are approaching the UN Human Rights Commission.

Two, the WikiLeaks cables reveal that western intelligence agencies believe the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba threat to Modi is clear and present and did not die out with the elimination of Ishrat Jehan and her accomplices. Jehan, a Mumbai student who fell into Lashkar’s grip, was killed in an encounter with the Gujarat police in 2004. Modi’s opponents insist she was innocent and the Laskhar plot a concoction. Perhaps now they will argue Modi wrote the WikiLeaks cables.

How long can this continue? If any other Indian politician was found to be mentioned as a Lashkar target in the cables, it would have had the media engrossed. Not with Modi; it’s almost as if he’s fair game. As for the Union government, it wants to fight terrorists — but not terrorists whom the Gujarat police have found. It’s so cynical; those 60 Indian Mujahideen men in Ahmedabad must be laughing.

In the Western tradition, the idea that the sun revolves around the earth — geocentrism — is known as the Ptolemaic model. It was a notion that led people to explain astronomical observations such as the movements of planets with convoluted arguments and constructs. In 1543 Copernicus provided an alternative hypothesis — heliocentrism — which placed the sun at the center of the solar system, and was later confirmed in 1610 by Galileo Galilei. From geocentrism to heliocentrism was a “paradigm shift” (a term much abused in the modern day.) That shift in perspective allowed people to think correctly about the Solar system.

Some people in India need a paradigm shift when thinking about Dr Manmohan Singh, the unelected (and unelectable) but appointed prime minister of India.

Currently we have what I call the “integritism” model — the conjecture and assumption that Dr MM Singh is a man of honesty and integrity. I coined that term based on what the Wiki describes as “integrity“:

Integrity is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations and outcomes. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the quality of having an intuitive sense of honesty and truthfulness in regard to the motivations for one’s actions.

Integritism and Hypocritism

Working under the integritism model, people come up with astonishingly stupid statements. It leads them into convoluted arguments to explain why Dr Singh appears to behave paradoxically. The equivalent of epicycles and complex mechanisms are pulled out of the bin to show that while he appears to be dishonest, he is actually not. Take for instance this article, “Why did the 2G scam occur right under Manmohan Singh’s nose,” which starts off with

Amid the growing bewilderment among all sections of the people about the succession of corruption cases tumbling out of the cupboards of the Government, one question remains an enigma, about the 2G spectrum scam. How did the admittedly and inarguably the most honest and humble Prime Minister India has seen, preside over such brazen actions of then Telecom Minister A.Raja? {Emphasis added.}

Admittedly? By whom? And inarguably? That argument has not been made ever in the Indian media. Argument by assertion is no a valid form of argument.

It is an assertion that MMS is honest, an assertion not borne out by facts. Widely known and accepted facts? Yes, the author of that article goes on at length to state facts that enormous sums have been stolen by people whom MMS directly controls. And yet the author, in contradiction to the facts that he or she presents, continues to write absolute nonsense by asserting a proposition that is contradicted by evidence. This is what is called “cognitive dissonance” in polite company, and in honest company simply called stupidity.

But all is not bleak, I think. Some people are beginning to bring about the revolution that India needs in thinking about Dr Singh. I call it the paradigm shift to “hypocritism” — from Wiki,

Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie.

Let’s take an example of someone who has recognized the problem with integritism. Madhu Purnima Kishwar writing in Outlook in an article titled “Honestly Speaking” starts off with

I fail to understand why almost every commentator, every TV anchor, every editorial writer feels compelled to pay ritual obeisance to the “personal honesty and integrity” of Dr Manmohan Singh while dealing with the scandals emanating from his cabinet colleagues. They do so even when there is clear evidence that the Prime Minister was well aware of various shady deals, as in the case of Telecom scam, and that he did nothing to stop the brazen economic crimes indulged in by his ministerial colleagues over the last 6 years.

Corruption is not only about personally accepting monetary bribes and stacking them away in hidden bank accounts overseas, buying benami properties or accepting diamond sets for your wife. Corruption can come in insidious avatars, such as knowingly turning a blind eye to the misuse the entire machinery of governance to serve private ends of a few individuals, even to the point of endangering national security. For example, not a single person has been punished thus far for supplying sub standard bullet proof jackets to the police handling the 26/11 terrorist attack in Mumbai. Not surprisingly, we are right now witnessing yet another scam involving sub- standard bullet proof vests.

You must read Kishwar’s article to remind yourself of the laundry list of absolutely despicable corrupt acts that Dr Singh has enabled. Enabling corruption, condoning corruption, helping shield the corrupt from the consequences — that too is corruption.

The paradigm shift — pardon me for using that term — India needs is from integritism to hypocritism. The moment you posit that “Dr Manmohan Singh is a despicably dishonest man,” you can explain why scams amounting to billions of dollars are routine under his watch. It no longer is a mystery. In another country where the people are vigilant and care about truth, honesty and integrity, he would have been impeached and locked up. Well, if not locked up, he would have been tarred and feathered.

Taking Credit under False Pretexts

I was asked the other day when did I reached the conclusion that perhaps Dr Singh was indeed a truly despicably dishonest man. It was years ago that I had heard from absolutely reliable sources that when he was the finance minister in P.V. Narasimha Rao’s government, he had brought to PVNR a budget that was just a re-hash of the socialist nonsense that previous governments had been following. PVNR took a look at it and told Dr Singh that it was garbage and he should frame one which will liberalize the Indian economy.

Dr Singh, the unimaginative bureaucrat that he was (and is), did as he was told. So essentially the liberalization of the Indian economy was PVNR’s idea, not Dr MM Singh’s. I did not care either way: liberalization was good and I was happy that at least India became a somewhat liberalized economy. But as time went on, I noticed that Dr Singh started taking credit for something that he probably did not even support, leave alone being the author of. I realized that he lacked integrity. The Copernican Revolution had happened in my mind. What was missing was Galileo’s telescope to see the evidence.

That started coming out. Scam after scam and Dr MM Singh was there to oversee them all. Yes, it was clear that he was truly a despicably dishonest man. Proof that he had fancy little to do with liberalization aside from taking dictation is also there if only we care to see. He has not done one bit of liberalization. In fact quite the contrary. Look around and see.

Dr Brown Nose

I cannot imagine a less honest person. He follows orders. And he is the master of brown-nosery. I recall reading what he said about the “National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme” — that was “Sonia Gandhi’s gift to the country.”

WTF-ery does not get more acute.

NREGA is a income-distribution scheme. Our incomes are taxed and then the government spends it on giving money to people for getting their votes. Where does Antonia Maino aka Sonia Gandhi come in? Does all the tax money go into her personal bank account and become her personal property? And then she takes a few billion from her personal account in a Swiss bank and pay for NREGA? WHISKEY. TANGO. FOXTROT.

Did the Indian media ever ask Dr Singh what he meant by saying that Sonia Gandhi gave it as a gift to India? No. The main stream Indian media has great people like Vir Sanghvi and Barkha Dutt (ach Poo!).

Dr Divide and Rule

Dr MM Singh is a despicably dishonest person. His is the politics of divisiveness. He is dividing the country along religious lines just to keep his Muslim vote bank intact. He addresses the nation not as “My dear fellow Indians” but as “My dear Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians” etc. What a fucking (pardon my French) douchebag.

Now if you will excuse me, I will have to end this as I feel nauseated just talking about MMS. I have to go and throw up — which is a pity since I had a good breakfast and now it will all go down the tube. It is a pity that India had a lot of promise but MMS has flushed it down the tube.

Related Posts:

1. Manmohan Singh is a Despicably Dishonest Man. May 2010.

2. Manmohan Singh is really and truly a Despicably Dishonest Man. June 2010.

“The JPC probe (into alleged irregularities in the 2G spectrum) will serve to humiliate the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and he may resign which is what Sonia Gandhi wants,” Swamy said.

“The Opposition should take care that they don’t play Sonia Gandhi’s game,” he said after meeting Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray at the latter’s residence in suburban Bandra in Mumbai.
. . .
On whether the Opposition was playing into her hands, Swamy said “I think if the PM were forced to resign at this juncture, you are empowering Sonia Gandhi…so that she is free to bring in Rahul Gandhi as the Prime Minister.”

“I have urged Balasaheb (Thackeray) to organise a rally against corruption and he has agreed for it. It will be held at the Shivaji Park,” Swamy said.

Sonia Gandhi was “Gangotri” (fountainhead) of corruption in the country, Swamy said. “I requested Balasaheb to lead the country and get rid of the rampant corruption,” he said.

So how do I feel about Bal Thackeray being asked by Dr Swamy to join in the fight against corruption? Absolutely positively. I think the problem of corruption is deep and extensive. It has taken decades to grow its tentacles and now it threatens the choke the life out of India. In my imagination, it appears like a hydra-headed monster. The more people take up arms against the monster the better. Bal Thackeray is welcome to add his voice and lead his followers to battle against corruption. We all have to do our bit.

Let’s cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war amongst those who are bent on destroying the country.

The release of 251,287 US State Department documents starting yesterday and ranging from the secret to the embarrassing was the coup de grace of the modern nation-state. Well . . . not exactly . . . not yet . . . it’s only a way-station . . . but Julian Assange’s peccadillo will make its way into the history books as one of the notable events when the fate of the nation-state is finally described.

Newspapers have been prying into state secrets ever since they were invented. And then, for those old enough to remember, we had the release of secret documents about the Vietnam War in 1971 (the “Pentagon Papers”) by Daniel Ellsberg. On that occasion the US government tried to prosecute him and jail him for many years but public opinion, and the newspapers and court judges, were on his side. Finally the US government — rather laughably — “lost” the wire-tap evidence against Ellsberg and he lived happily ever after. Indeed, he’s still with us, aged 79 — hopefully hale and hearty. No doubt similar attempts will be made to incarcerate Julian Assange in the present case.

But why the death of the nation-state? The answer is very simple. The world has become too complex for any nation-state to understand. Real-world information can’t get to the top of the political pyramid quickly enough and accurately enough for a modern government to respond in the way that they ought to. Built like an army — indeed, its origin owing much to the structure of armies during the 19th century — the top-down pyramidal control by the nation-state, passing down through many ranks, is failing. The sort of secret diplomacy which came to the fore with the nascent nation-state during the Middle Ages has now largely gone for good. Nation-states are leaking like colanders. There is only one remaining nation-state — North Korea — which is still largely impenetrable to prying eyes.

We’ll always need governance, of course. Basic justice and basic protection against violence (whether local or from afar) still needs to be maintained, but many other control functions that nation-states (particularly their civil services) have assumed in the course of the industrial revolution are now melting away. Nation-states, like all power institutions before them (organized religions), will take a long time to die because substantial proportions of their populations have a direct financial interest (jobs or perks) that they should continue as long as possible.

Nevertheless, although nation-states may have been ‘fit for purpose’ in the days of large and affordable armies, as they were for the first half of the 20th century, they are now being overtaken by all sorts of laterally organized, trans-national specializations such as innovations, businesses, science research, interest groups, personal activities, cultural fashions and even, so help us, criminal gangs. Increasingly, these are taking their own decisions (including, importantly, economic ones) and have their own methods of influencing public opinion — which, of course, the Internet is now accelerating.

Paradoxically, even though nation-states had almost completely extinguished Common Law and Mercantile Law in the last century with untold volumes of Statutory Law (including attempts at International Law), even their civil services are increasingly unable to understand or fairly apply the laws that they themselves have formulated (given half a nod and wink by the politicians whom they largely manipulate). Or, as often happens, their laws have counter-intuitive effects. Thankfully, however, just enough of the former laws, tested and honed over millennia, survive. When, for example, two large businesses are in dispute they are still turning to New York Common Law or London Equity courts to resolve matters. The recently formulated World Trade Organization (although making heavy weather of it at present!) is actually a revival of Medieval Mercantile Law (the important principle here being that there is no top-down authority involved but lateral arrangements between parties).

I could go on, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that this morning’s thoughts were prompted by the financial fiasco that’s been going on in Brussels over the week-end and the interim solution — the printing of yet more money, albeit heavily disguised with verbal garbage in order to mystify the punters. And then there’s the fiasco that’s still going on in America where, unless unemployment magically diminishes in the near future, Ben Bernanke threatens to release yet more money by all sorts of clever methods. The day of the wheelbarrow being taken to the supermarket is not all that far off.

****

The above is by Keith Hudson. I am happy to report that his book “A Species in the Making” will hit the stores soon.

Smacks of a soft Hindutva hardliner or a BJP spokesperson, desperately trying to hide under the guise of a cool, ‘pro-progress’ image.

You are sharp, aren’t you? Can’t get anything past you, can I? OK, you got me fair and square. I try very hard not to show that I am a “soft Hindutva hardliner” (as opposed to, say, a hard hindutva hardliner — H3 in short). And to conceal that fact, I consistently write against the Congress party and how it has under the control of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, brought India to its present dire straits (malnourished children, grinding poverty, illiteracy, a soft target for Islamic terrorists, unable to stand up to the failed Islamic states flanking it), and now under their misgovernance is teetering on the verge of a massive collapse.

But you have seen behind the facade and noted my true colors. Congratulations. (OK, end of sarcastic reply.)

Sudhir posits a hypothetical situation:

I meet some youngsters and then bombard then with anti-India ideology. Say that they have been oppressed by India and they have to kill Indians in return (just using my freedom of speech). Finally these youngsters pick up the gun and go on a rampage. So am I culpable in the crime or I can hide behind freedom of speech .

I am a free speech fundamentalist. You are allowed to say whatever your heart desires. Say what you will — and be prepared to defend the truth of your assertions if challenged. That’s the first bit. The other bit is that I hold people responsible for their actions. That means, if A does the shooting and killing, A is responsible. Not B who may have convinced A to do the shooting.

How about holding both A and B responsible? I don’t think so. Only A. Because regardless of what B had said, it’s A’s action that caused the harm. If A had not acted, B’s words would give rise to no harm.

Arundhati Roy can say whatever her tiny little brain wants her to say. But if you kill someone (whether because of what Roy said, or because of what Allah said), you are guilty of the crime. As for Roy, the response to her speech should be speech. If she is wrong, contradict her through words, not by gagging her.

Moving on, I am a bit surprised to see the comments regarding my calling Arundhati Roy a “house-nigger.” For example, Sumitra writes

Did you really have to use the word ‘house-N’? You’ve lived in the US for two decades, and didn’t get what that derogatory word stands for?

He is a little puzzled. Jay’s displeasure surfaces as sarcasm:

house n****r? thanks for keeping it classy bro!

Can’t say for sure but the refusal to even type out a word in full could be indicative of some neurosis. ” . . . …anxiety, irritability, mental confusion, behavioral symptoms such as phobic avoidance, cognitive problems such as unpleasant or disturbing thoughts, . . .”

A bit sad really. The inability or the phobic avoidance to name aspects of reality is sad. Slavery was a reality in the US (and unfortunately still is in many other places including India.) The slaves were Negroes (from “negro” meaning black.) Some of the slaves worked in the house, as opposed to the fields. They were called house-negroes, or house-niggers.

The notion of house-niggers is very useful to understand the dynamics of a heterogeneous world of rich and poor people, of power and powerless, and those who mediate between them.

Here, let Malcom X, self-proclaimed field-negro explain it. Listen to him and ask yourself if he is not describing Arundhati Roy when he is talking about house-negroes.

Arundhati Roy (and others like her such as Pankaj Mishra, Aakar Patel) are house-niggers. Calling them that is not an insult to Negroes as a group. The phrase “house-nigger” describes them precisely because they do what the house-negroes did. The field-niggers held the house-niggers in contempt. They were powerless but still had their dignity, but the house-niggers had sold theirs.

Speaking truth to power — that a field-nigger can do. So you could describe me as a field-nigger. I live my life without kowtowing to those who have unearned power over me. Dr Manmohan Singh is a house-nigger. He takes his orders, and whether he likes to do what he is told to do or not, he has to do it because otherwise he will be kicked out of the basement of his master’s house and will have to toil in the fields. He’s sold his dignity for the kitchen scraps from His Master’s House.

Pulkit, when he grows up, is not likely to be a field-nigger. He will try to be a master, and failing which, as far as I can tell from his comment, be content to be a house-nigger.

Last weekend, I learnt about an incident in 2007 involving an anonymous IAS officer from the Karnataka cadre, prime minister Manmohan SIngh, home minister Chidambaram and The Dear Eternal Neta ™ Jawaharlal Nehru. I don’t remember it being covered on your blog, but here is what happened.

This anonymous IAS officer wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister that got published in The Mint. It was a succinct and accurate charge sheet of Manmohan’s utter ineffectiveness betraying a lack of both spine and leadership. (A link to the letter in its entirety is available here.) The BJP raked up the issue and ultimately Chidambaram exhorted in parliament: “… I have read the article. I do not know whether the name of that author given in that article is a true name or a pseudo name. I do not know whether he is an IAS officer. All I know is either he is a disloyal officer or a coward or both. If he had the courage, he should write the letter, sign in his own name and send it to the Prime Minister….”

The editor of The Mint did not let Chidambaram get away with it. He had a brilliant response, which included a reminder to the Home Minister: “In November 1937, the Modern Review, then India’s most well-regarded journal of opinion, published an article on Jawaharlal Nehru written by Chanakya, an obvious pseudonym. The author hit out at Nehru’s latent dictatorial tendencies and his “intolerance for others and a certain contempt for the weak and inefficient”. Its author warned: “Jawaharlal might fancy himself as a Caesar.” There were howls of protest from loyalists until it was revealed much later that Nehru himself was the author of this piece.” That caused Chidambaram and his cronies to shut-up on the matter.

Thanks to you, Chanakya Deux, now I am even more convinced that Manmohan Singh is the most pathetic prime minister of India ever — and that is saying something considering the horrors that we have had before such as Weepy Singh. But even the worst of the lot had some popular support as evidenced by their contesting and winning at the Lok Sabha polls (regardless of how the elections may have been fixed.)

MM Singh does not dare to stand in an election. But then he does not stand for anything much anyway, if you were to go by his record. Let me quote bits from the open letter Chanakya Deux refers to above.

The letter is written by “Athreya” who is an IAS officer. (Note: The letter is dated Dec 10, 2008.)

Mr Prime Minister, you were selected, not elected by the people, for just one reason, that you posed no threat to anyone in the Congress party. . . You were considered the least of all evils. . .

I think that all references to Manmohan Singh should be “appointed Prime Minister.” It is common practice to point out, say, in corporations that someone is “Acting CEO” or “Interim Chairman of the Board” to indicate that it is a make-shift and temporary appointment till someone else is found to take on the job.

News reports could then say, “The appointed Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh said that he is powerless to do this that or the other . . . ”

Back to the open letter to the appointed prime minister:

Today, after four years in office and after India has witnessed an act of war on its own soil, your government has lost all credibility with the people, and the buck stops with you.

Here I disagree with the IAS officer. If there’s one thing that most Indians are united about, it’s the apathy and disinterested they exhibit towards matters of governance. If the Indian public had any interest in the matter, they would have lynched the politicians the first time they misgoverned — and that would have been the last time the politicians would have misgoverned.

Let’s move on:

You are scared to even name Pakistan in your speeches in spite of the so-called irrefutable evidence you claim to have; nay, in fact, each time you say something publicly about this now, it sounds like a condolence message, not something that inspires confidence.

What strikes me the most is how pathetically the appointed prime minister whines. He does not even pretend to have any power at all. For example, he whines about corruption — as if he were a stay-at-home invalid writing letters to the editor of a newspaper complaining about how the government does not do anything about the corrupt politicians.

Economic reforms stopped long ago, for your allies didn’t want them; there are many ministers in your cabinet who have perfected Wal-Mart’s cash-and-carry model and you can’t do a damn about it.

The list of stupid, wacky, unhinged from reality beliefs that Indians generally hold is fairly long. At the top of this list is the belief that Manmohan Singh was the prime agent behind the economic reforms. The fact is that it was PV Narasimha Rao as the prime minister who forced the reforms on a reluctant Manmohan Singh who was Rao’s finance minister.

Manmohan Singh had come up with the usual socialistic bs budget. PVNR rejected the nonsense and told Manmohan Singh that the economy has to change tack. Manmohan Singh followed Rao’s orders.

The appointed prime minister Manmohan Singh’s appointers are happy to erase PVNR’s name and want their prime minion to take the credit — which he does as he is ordered to do.

You have failed on all counts as a leader. So, at least now, when India is under attack on its own soil, please act. And if you can’t act, please get out of the way and allow someone more effective to run the country.

In any district, where there is any act of violence, normally the district magistrate and the superintendent of police get shifted out. As PM, can you not sack or transfer your national security adviser, the Intelligence Bureau chief, the Coast Guard director general, the navy chief—can you or can you not get rid of your entire top brass and send a signal down the line? The signal you are now sending with your inaction is: don’t bother doing your job, for even if the country gets attacked, we won’t touch you.

You have personally demonstrated integrity, but what use is that alone, when almost every key minister in your cabinet is treating every file as an opportunity for cash flows? Are you telling us you don’t know that your telecom, environment and shipping ministries are the home of organized mafias looting the exchequer? What use is it telling us, “Look, I am personally honest, but I’m presiding over a band of dacoits, murderers and thugs. I am only the prime minister and can’t do anything about it”?

What use is it to head a government, Mr PM, when you can’t even protect your citizens from terror, which is the first function of any government? When you can’t act against incompetence or organized corruption in your own cabinet? Is the PM’s job so important beyond the call of your conscience that you want to hang on to it at any cost? Sir, may I remind you that you are holding a trust, not just an office.

Go read the entire piece. And keep a copy on file for future reference:

. . . Your home minister kept combing his hair and did nothing more as India reeled under attacks and you tolerated him because loyalty to a family was more important than the blood of innocent people.
. . .
. . . Can you not ensure simple reforms in the criminal justice system (which scores of committees such as Malimath have outlined) to ensure certainty of punishment for any offence from pickpocketery to terror? Can you not lead legislation to keep criminals out of politics and try to stem the flow of illegal money into campaign funding?

If not, then what use is it being a prime minister if, even after reaching the very top, you can’t do a damn in an hour of national crisis? Soon, all this will be forgotten and it will be back to business as usual. But then, history will judge you. If you have some conscience left, please do something. Don’t forget, “mind without heart, intelligence without conduct, cleverness without goodness are all tools, but only for mischief”.

In my opinion, as I have written before, Manmohan Singh is really a despicably dishonest man. (Previously I had written, “Manmohan Singh is Despicably Dishonest Man” May 2010, and “Manmohan Singh is really and truly a despicably dishonest man“, June 2010.)

He is dishonest to a degree greater than average. The average dishonest man does not conduct his thievery behind a facade of totally perfect personal integrity. People are lulled into trusting someone who is widely proclaimed as an honest man. The reputation is not earned through action but instead achieved through repeated assertion of honesty and integrity — against all contrary evidence — by self-serving media.

The appointed prime minister Manmohan Singh gets a free pass, for now. Truth eventually will out since reality persists while delusions pass.

It’s all karma, neh?

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.

From Nehru and the Indian Economy (. . . Why is India Poor?)

The last posting, Why is India Poor?, has drawn sufficient attention that there needs to be a follow-up addressing some of the points raised in the comments.

It is interesting to note that the arguments against my view of Nehru and his failed economic policies are generic. I will repeat them and my counter-arguments here.

My argument. Economic policies matter. If you have sound economic policies, you get commensurate economic performance. India’s economic performance sucks. It performs dismally in any sort of ranking of human development and economic performance tests. Half the illiterates of the world call India their home. A third of all global poverty is in India. All things considered, India has been a colossal failure so far.

Why has India been a failure? Are Indians collectively stupid? Unlikely.

Did GOD decree it? I asked him and he categorically denied it.

Did nations around the world gang up and rape India for the last 60 years? Not that I know of.

I am left with the hypothesis that perhaps India’s economic policies sucked chrome off a bumper of a pickup truck parked at 400 yards.

Who makes economic policies? You? I? No, economic policy is made by the so-called leaders and visionaries of this sainted land. Who were the most powerful leaders of this land since its independence from Britain? Nehru and his descendants. He dictated policy—economic, foreign, domestic, you name it. The most charitable way of putting the matter is to say that Nehru was clueless.

He wasn’t just clueless about this or that. His cluelessness was all encompassing. He was clueless about foreign policy, military strategy, domestic development — you name it and he is the greatest screw-up that India has ever produced.

Then come the rebuttals which often start with the admission that Nehru was clueless but . . .

. . . but during his time, many others–including a few people one cannot dismiss as being clueless thought that Central planning was beneficial for countries like India. These included Nobel winner Gunnar Myrdal (Asian Drama, an Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations) and Mahalanobis.

The argument above says that it wasn’t the man, it was the circumstances. By that logic, everything is justifiable. Every crime can be explained away as the result of compelling circumstances and hence there can be no accountability.

Take, for instance, the WorldCom and Enron cases where executives committed theft on unprecedented and unimaginable scale. One could point to the fact that other companies were also doing shady accounting, that the internet boom was going strong, that the economy was very strong, that the GAAP was being followed. All those explanations would also paper over the fact that the crime arose out of the greed of the perpetrator. Given all the circumstances but absent the greed of the executives, the grand theft would not have taken place.

Now back to Nehru: even if one were to grant all the circumstances that you cite above (but only for the sake of argument), the fact remains that central planning was personally very convenient for the Cha-cha.

The children of Imperialism are not weaned on the milk of humility; they are brought up on heady diet of hubris. Nehru was an imperialist who believed that his destiny was to rule the brown masses and he continually rejected sane advice. Look deeply into any problem that India faces and you will see Nehru’s finger-prints all over it.

Take Kashmir. Who was it who let the matter get out of hand? Nehru with his idiotic insistence that the UN be called to mediate the dispute. Talking of the UN, who was it who rejected the proposal that India take a seat in the permanent security council? Nehru. There is not enough space here to go into all the horrendous mistakes.

Then there is the argument that says, “Don’t blame Nehru for the screw-up that India is. We, Indians, are to blame.” That line is similar to the one Niket made in the comments in the last post.

Yes, in fact, we are to blame. Indians are basically collectively a bunch of clueless retards. They collectively elect leaders who are clueless retards and these clueless retards choose policies that keep the country of hundreds of millions of people in abject poverty. No argument there. A country deserves the leaders it gets, especially so in a so-called democracy. I agree that Bihar deserves and gets Rabri Devi and Laloo Prasad Yadav.

So if the collective is to blame, why is Nehru elevated to the position of a demi-god? Not just that, anyone associated with his family is elevated as well. With very rare exceptions, everything in India which has a personal name associated with it is named after the Nehru-Gandhi family. The Borivali National Park close to my abode is named “Sanjay Gandhi National Park”. All sorts of educational institutions are named after the members of a family that collectively have fewer educational achievements than yours truly.

Allow me to repeat that: The entire Nehru-Gandhi family — Cha-chaji, Indira, Rajiv, Sonia, Sanjay, Rahul, Prianka – collectively haver fewer educational qualifications than I (an average person) do. If I am not mistaken, they don’t have one solitary single college degree among the whole lot of them.

I later learned that I was wrong about the educational qualifications of the Nehru-Gandhi clan. It appears that Nehru did graduate. So they do have one educational certificate from a genuine institution.

In conclusion, the time is ripe when people started getting to know about Nehru the Nabob of Cluelessness. In the age of the internets, it will not be long before it all comes out. Sometimes it appears as if the truth will never come out — but eventually it does.

The wheel of dharma turns very slowly but it turns very surely. Or as has been noted before, karma is a bitch.

Pick up the newspaper any day of the week and you will see some revelation or the other related to the Nehru-Gandhi clan’s mis-governance.

Today the papers are reporting how Rajiv Gandhi allowed the Union Carbide chief to escape from India 25 years ago. Those who aid and abet criminals must be called criminals as well.

I approve of @barbarindian ’s tweet:

I hereby propose renaming the Bhopal disaster as Rajiv Gandhi Gas Leak Yojna

Shri Narendrabhai Modi

Here’s a story in India Today on water in Gujarat. The prospects of ground water are particularly grim in India. Gujarat is, however, another story. There the trend is hopeful. Narendrabhai knows what’s important.

When Chief Minister Narendra Modi took over in 2001, he laid emphasis on creating farm ponds in areas like north and central Gujarat where building check dams was not very feasible. As a result 1,81,00,000 farm ponds have been built till date at a cost of Rs 181 crore. Farm ponds are built in that part of a farm where rain water collection happens in natural course.

In 2003, the Gujarat Government launched the Gujarat Green Revolution Company to propagate sprinkler and drip irrigation technology among farmers by giving them hefty incentives. Rated as the best in the country by the Union Agriculture Ministry for last three years, this initiative is one of the reasons why the groundwater level is getting recharged in the state.

. . .

Then there are other big irrigation schemes which have helped in enhancing the water table in Gujarat. For example, in north and central Gujarat, the mud canal of the Sujalam Sufalam Yojana played a key role in bringing up the water level. . .

Besides these long-term projects, certain short-term initiatives have also worked wonders. Last year, Gujarat had a bad monsoon but when the Government realised that rains could hit the state in the last leg of monsoon, it launched a quick water conservation drive by building boribunds (very small dams made by blocking small rivulets with the help of sand bags). In 20 days, over 2,50,000 boribunds came up as a result of a joint effort by the departments of rural development and forest management, NGOs and village committees.
. . .

In 2009, Gujarat registered 9.06 per cent agricultural growth rate while the nation’s growth rate was less than three per cent. The total cultivable area in Gujarat has increased by a phenomenal 15 per cent in the past 10 years. During that period, Gujarat’s agro production has jumped from Rs 18,000 crore to Rs 49,000 crore. The state increased its cotton yield six-fold from 175 kg per hectare to 798 kg, more than the world average of 787 kg.

“Gujarat has set the finest example of groundwater management through indigenous and modern methods and through people’s participation,” says Tushaar Shah, senior fellow at the International Water Management Institute. When Jhamka and Khopala did it, the rest of Gujarat wondered why not they. It’s time the rest of the country asked the same question.

Go read the whole article.

I am hoping that India gets the kind of leadership that Gujarat has had.

Another piece of good news before I conclude this. I am off to the US in a couple of days. I will be in the San Francisco Bay area Monday onwards. For starters, I will be on a road trip. Blogging will be light, as it has unfortunately been in the last couple of months. But there’s a rather large archive and if you find nothing new to here, please do visit some old stuff.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

Winston Churchill.

Oh sorry, not him.

“There being no vacancies at Eton, in 1905 he (Motilal Nehru) packed 15-year-old Jawaharlal off to Harrow, determined that the boy grow up a proper English gentleman. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams; and years later, at Cambridge, Jawaharlal wrote his father asking permission to transfer to Oxford: ‘Cambridge is becoming too full of Indians.’”

[Source: Koenraad Elst writing about Nehru as a student in England.]

Mohan Murti’s article is an exception to the fashion that holds that Dr Singh is a nice man. I have been saying for a while that Manmohan Singh is a despicably dishonest person. Wake up, India, and see the rot that infests the nation. The greatest enemies of the nation are those who rule the country and they are stealing your and your children’s future.

Here are a few excerpts from Murti’s article, which is a must-read:

One German business daily which wrote an editorial on India said: “India is becoming a Banana Republic instead of being an economic superpower. To get the cut motion designated out, assurances are made to political allays. Special treatment is promised at the expense of the people. So, Ms Mayawati who is Chief Minister of the most densely inhabited state, is calmed when an intelligence agency probe is scrapped. The multi-million dollars fodder scam by another former chief minister wielding enormous power is put in cold storage. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chairs over this kind of unparalleled loot.”

An article in a French newspaper titled “Playing the Game, Indian Style” wrote: “Investigations into the shadowy financial deals of the Indian cricket league have revealed a web of transactions across tax havens like Switzerland, the Virgin Islands, Mauritius and Cyprus.” In the same article, the name of one Hassan Ali of Pune is mentioned as operating with his wife a one-billion-dollar illegal Swiss account with “sanction of the Indian regime”. [The Indian regime presided over by Manmohan Singh -- AD]

A third story narrated in the damaging article is that of the former chief minister of Jharkhand, Madhu Koda, who was reported to have funds in various tax havens that were partly used to buy mines in Liberia. “Unfortunately, the Indian public do not know the status of that enquiry,” the article concluded.

“In the nastiest business scam in Indian records (Satyam) the government adroitly covered up the political aspects of the swindle — predominantly involving real estate,” wrote an Austrian newspaper. “If the Indian Prime Minister knows nothing about these scandals, he is ignorant of ground realities and does not deserve to be Prime Minister. If he does, is he a collaborator in crime?”

The Telegraph of the UK reported the 2G scam saying: “Naturally, India’s elephantine legal system will ensure culpability, is delayed.” [Emphasis added.]

It is worth recalling why Manmohan Singh is the prime minister. He is pliable, as he lacks a backbone. He follows orders without questioning, since he lacks any sense of decency, ethics, and morality. His master gives him orders and he meekly goes about doing what he is ordered to do. He’s a rubber stamp. Anyone else with even an iota of shame and humanity would long have quit that dishonorable position. But not he. He is blissfully unaware of the low status he holds.

Not one but scores of mega scams pass unnoticed by him. Corruption is so rampant in India under his “leadership” that people have become inured to it and the next multi-billion dollar scam does not even evoke the mildest surprise. Practically all the news channels and agencies in India drink deep from the well of corrupt money that the politicians have. They are complicit in the rape of India that Manmohan Singh and his cohorts are engaged in.

But this cannot last. As Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but not all people all the time. The Italian and her Indian lackeys will pay a price for the rape of the land. It is up to us to see that the day of reckoning is not too far.

Arun Jaitley, the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, in an interview he gave to rediff.com said that “it was evident that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has the capacity to damage institutions to remain in power.” Not a very nice thing to say. But then, when talking of not nice people, one cannot say very nice things. Actually, Jaitley understates — perhaps deliberately — how despicably Mr Singh has behaved. Mr Singh has clearly overused his capacity to do damage.

I am repeating myself here but it bears repetition: Mr Manmohan Singh is a Despicably Dishonest man. I wrote that before the King of Telecom Scams were revealed.

The picture above shows the heavy weights of the UPA. Note that of the trio of “Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, only the Bad and the Ugly are shown. Good never had a chance.

Dr Manmohan Singh -- Pitiable

Chandan Mitra writes in today’s The Pioneer, “All the Lines on this Route are Blocked” —

Given Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s unimpeachable record of probity even his own party leaders are dumbfounded by his palpable helplessness in acting against a Minister who is lampooned day in and day out by the Opposition and media with hard evidence of brazen corruption. It is widely known that Mr Manmohan Singh made an attempt to rid himself of this man when constituting the UPA 2 Cabinet around this time one year ago. Mr A Raja’s shenanigans had been exposed much earlier and it seemed the Prime Minister had decided to use the opportunity of restructuring his team in the wake of the Congress’s enhanced strength after the 2009 poll. Cabinet formation was delayed by at least three days apparently because Mr Singh insisted on giving the telecom portfolio back to Mr Dayanidhi Maran who held it till he fell from Mr M Karunanidhi’s grace mid-way through UPA 1, although he made a comeback after the pre-election patch-up in the Kalaingar’s family. [emphasis added]

“Singh’s unimpeachable record of probity”? Where the hell does that come from? Like the emperors new clothes?

I think that Manmohan Singh is dishonest. Last year in May I wrote:

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.

I wonder how long it will take before the average Indian voter understands this critically important fact that Mr Singh is as thoroughly corrupt as it is humanly possible to be? Would a person with even the least bit of honesty continue to hang on to his position — where he was placed by his masters — despite repeatedly being called out by the media month after month, year after year?

This May we have reports of the telecom scam. Rewind one year and here’s last May’s story (May 6th in ExpressBuzz titled “It’s the Bofor’s ghost again.”):

. . . 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 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.

The Indian leaders are not known for their vision, intelligence, humanity, or wisdom. What they are known for is their infinite venality and abysmal corruption. That some Indians persist in their insistence that Manmohan Singh is not corrupt in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary reveals one of two things: they are morally blind and they are remarkably stupid.

It is time to own up to one undeniable fact: Indians are so morally bankrupt that they are absolutely comfortable with corrupt leaders. If it were otherwise, they would not only not vote for them, they would actually lynch them for destroying the country. Or perhaps they are not morally bankrupt but only spineless cretins afraid that they will “lose their jobs” if they stand up and tell Manmohan Singh that he is a despicably dishonest man.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go throw up — I do every time I read that Blue Turban is an honest man.

[The little picture of the little man was lifted from here.]

Mr Lee Kuan Yew

I have written quite a bit in admiration of Mr Lee Kuan Yew on this blog. Now here’s a bit more from a speech of his that he gave at the US-ASEAN Business Council’s 25th Anniversary event in Washington DC on October 27 2009.

He began by saying, “Small countries have little influence on international trends. Singapore has always taken the world as it is. We analyse the world clinically, take advantage of opportunities that come our way or get out of harm’s way. This evening, I hope to share with you some of my views on some major international trends.”

He is a genius of realism. “Taking the world as it is.” But doing what is most rational in the given context. Take advantage of opportunities and don’t get into trouble. It reminds me of the Buddhist injunction: “First do no harm. Then try to do good.” He’s a realist. He knows that being a small country, Singapore cannot change the world. All it can do is to be the change that it wants to see in the world. Many people parrot that advice reportedly given by MK Gandhi, the Indian political leader of the mid-20th century, but Lee Kuan Yew is one of the few who followed that strategy. I don’t know for sure but it sounds very much like what Confucius may have said.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew is a Confucian genius.

Here’s part of what he said about China in his speech:

It faces enormous domestic problems. No one knows their seriousness better than China’s own leaders. But in a pragmatic way, they have coped with their problems. This leadership is not in denial of the weaknesses and flaws in their system: among them, widespread corruption and increasing numbers of mass protests in rural areas where Communist Party officials collude with property developers to evict farmers from their land without adequate compensation. Beijing’s response has been flexible, using the carrot or stick, or both. It has survived traumas that would have cracked a rigid system. While there are imponderables in its development, the course it has set out on will result in high growth rates for the next two decades. High growth will bring major social and political changes. China’s present political structures will come under acute stress. Governing a people with over 70% living in urban areas with access to worldwide information through “Blackberries”, cell-phones and the Internet will require a restructuring of their political structures and governance of this huge nation.

He sees China’s rise as part of the continuation a reformation that began with Japan’s Meiji Revolution in 1868.

China’s rise is one facet of East Asia’s modernization growth story. It began with Japan and the Meiji Revolution in 1868. In China, it began in December 1978 with the open-door policy of Deng Xiaoping. India opened up to the world in 1991. China and India can and will catch up with the West in science and technology. They will restore Asia to its leading position before European colonialism enveloped them. The world order will be re-balanced.

It was a short speech but as always, full of insight and practical advice. Go read the transcript.

[This was previously published on another site on Nov 5th 2009.]

Related Post: Lee Kuan Yew on India — Dec 2005. This post is worth reading, even if I say so myself.

“Should the pope resign?” No. As the College of Cardinals must have recognized when they elected him, he is perfectly – ideally – qualified to lead the Roman Catholic Church. A leering old villain in a frock, who spent decades conspiring behind closed doors for the position he now holds; a man who believes he is infallible and acts the part; a man whose preaching of scientific falsehood is responsible for the deaths of countless AIDS victims in Africa; a man whose first instinct when his priests are caught with their pants down is to cover up the scandal and damn the young victims to silence: in short, exactly the right man for the job. He should not resign, moreover, because he is perfectly positioned to accelerate the downfall of the evil, corrupt organization whose character he fits like a glove, and of which he is the absolute and historically appropriate monarch.

No, Pope Ratzinger should not resign. He should remain in charge of the whole rotten edifice – the whole profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution – while it tumbles, amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins, about his ears.

A leering old villain. An evil corrupt organization. A profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution.

Wow! And wow again!!

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.

. . . Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics? No, I’m not. I am just looking to find out more about the universe. And if it turns out that there is a simple ultimate law, so be it. That would be very nice to discover. . . I don’t believe the special stories that have been made out about our relationship to the universe at large because they seem to be too local, too provincial.

He is channeling Descartes later when he says that doubting is a very fundamental part of his soul. Mine too.

. . . I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs with different degrees of certainty about different things but I am not absolutely sure of anything. And there are many things that I don’t know anything about. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It does not frighten me.

Let’s start with the extreme religious nuts, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. In 2001, they put the blame for the 9/11 Islamic terrorism on “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians.” Jerry Falwell, alas, died in 2007. (The very naughty Mr Christopher Hitchens casually commented that if Falwell had been given an enema, they could have buried him in a match box.) But Robertson was at hand after the recent Haiti earthquake, and put the blame for the devastation and the awful loss of lives on some pact that Haitian slaves had made with the devil around two centuries before.

Then comes the Feb 27, 2010 quake in Chile which left half a million homeless and around 800 dead. Not as bad as the Haiti quake that killed an estimated 230,000 people, 300,000 injured, and 1,000,000 homeless.

Priyanka Chopra concluded that the cause was anthropogenic. Well, not in those words as I doubt she can spell that word. She put it across as a rhetorical question and tweeted, “400,000 people left homeless by quake in Chile..R we putting too much pressure on our planet..My prayers for the victims and their families.” I suppose the Chileans had to pay for the sins of humanity in pressuring the earth (whatever that means.) Perhaps people are overeating and the resulting obesity caused the pressure.

But who the hell knows who Priyanka Chopra is. I certainly didn’t until my friend Rajan pointed her tweet (not to be confused with twat) out to me. Her opinion and analysis of natural disasters does not amount to a hill of beans. That’s not the case with Mr Gandhi, aka Mahatma.

You recall the Bihar 8.4 magnitude earthquake of January 15, 1934? You don’t! Well, neither do I. The wiki informs me that it was one of the worst in India, and 30,000 died. Mahatma Gandhi visited Bihar and after due deliberation declared that it was divine retribution for the sins of Indians. That strikes me as one of the most perverted statements made by the man — and that’s saying something considering that he sort of specialized in that category of statements.

If A were to commit a crime, and the police were to give an entirely innocent uninvolved person B a thrashing of his life saying, “I am doing this to you because A committed a crime and I think it is right and appropriate that you be thrashed,” would you say that the police were good, holy, enlightened and bow down in front of them in deep devotion? You would not do any such thing.

Gandhi did. The god that he was devoted to by his (Gandhi’s) admission was killing Biharis for crimes committed by others.

I have always been intrigued by the idea of scapegoating — “the practice of singling out one child, employee or member of a group of peers for unmerited negative treatment or blame”, as the wiki puts it. Gandhi searched for one and found a scapegoat. Why? Because it suited his personal agenda.

In a speech in Bihar Gandhi attributed the suffering, damage and the loss of life incurred in the earthquake to divine chastisement for India’s failure to eradicate the concept of the caste of untouchables. [Source.]

As I am not a huge fan of Gandhi (which is clearly an understatement), that did not come as a huge surprise to me. Normal people would be horrified at conceiving a vengeful mean irrational stupid god but for Gandhi, it was a no-brainer. The great thinker Rabindranath Tagore, however, gave it to Gandhi good and proper.

Here’s a bit from Bidyut Chakrabarty’s “Social and political thought of Mahatma Gandhi” (2006)

. . . an interesting debate took place following Gandhi’s characterization of the Bihar earthquake in February (sic), 1934 as ‘divine chastisement’ for the great sin committed against those known as harijans. Tagore took a serious view of this by saying that ‘it has cause me painful surprise to find Mahatma Gandhi accusing those who blindly follow their own social custom of untouchability of having brought down gods’ vengeance upon certain parts of Bihar’. Coming from the most revered political leader of the country, the statement, he felt, was most devastating for its obvious impact on the interpersonal relationships between harijans and others. So it should not go ‘unchallenged’. Tagore prefaced his critique of this superstitious view of Gandhi’s by saying that ‘it is all the more unfortunate, because this kind of unscientific view of things is too readily accepted by large section of our countrymen.’ Emphasizing that ‘physical catastrophes [like earthquakes etc] have their inevitable and exclusive origin in certain combinations of physical facts’, he further argued that:

if we associate ethical principles with cosmic phenomena, we shall have to admit that human nature is morally superior to Providence that preaches its lessons in good behaviour in orgies of the worst behaviour possible . . . What is truly tragic about it is the fact that the kind of argument that Mahatmaji uses by exploiting an even of cosmic disturbance for better suits the psychollogy of his opponents . . . [He thus felt] profoundly hurt when any words from [Gandhi's] mouth may emphasise the elements of unreason . . . which is a fundamental source of all the blind powers that drive us against freedom and self-respect.

Gandhi responded to Tagore saying, “to me, the earthquake was no caprice of God nor a result of blind forces . . . Visitations like droughts, flood, earthquake and the like, though they seem to have only physical origins, are, for me, somehow connected with man’s morals. Therefore, I instinctively felt that the earthquake was visitations for the sin of untouchability. . . [I believe] that our sins have more force to ruin the structure than any mere physical phenomenon.”

Now read that in the context of the burning of witches — which happens even today in many parts of the world. Ignorant superstitious people believe that someone is responsible for the crop failure or the drought and that they have to kill the person responsible and their problems will be solved.

Those people who burn witches are not driven by reason. They say, like Gandhi, “that to us, somehow, it seems . . .” and “we instinctively feel” and get on with setting things right by torturing confessions and burning witches.

The evidence is overwhelming that Gandhi was a superstitious person ignorant of basic scientific understanding of the world available even at the time when he did his schooling. Gandhi had a instinctive understanding of how to manipulate the superstitious illiterate ignorant masses, however, and they revered him with the devotion that they had for their other gods. Gandhi was cunning if he was anything at all. I have argued before that he blackmailed his followers, and that it was violence cloaked in the pious garb of non-violence.

I am repelled by Gandhi’s arrogant insistence that his instinctive feelings that somehow arise within him gives him the right to attribute causes to natural phenomena and dictate that to his followers.

Gandhi is revered by the masses in India. That is the most damning evidence I see of my conjecture that India is largely a nation of retards. That and the clearly related fact that these retards vote for the Gandhi-family led Congress party.

Krugman explained that he’d become an economist because of science fiction. When he was a boy, he’d read Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy and become obsessed with the central character, Hari Seldon. Seldon was a “psychohistorian”—a scientist with such a precise understanding of the mechanics of society that he could predict the course of events thousands of years into the future and save mankind from centuries of barbarism. He couldn’t predict individual behavior—that was too hard—but it didn’t matter, because history was determined not by individuals but by laws and hidden forces. “If you read other genres of fiction, you can learn about the way people are and the way society is,” Krugman said to the audience, “but you don’t get very much thinking about why are things the way they are, or what might make them different. What would happen if ?”

. . .
“What does it mean to do economics?” Krugman asked on the stage in Montreal. “Economics is really about two stories. One is the story of the old economist and younger economist walking down the street, and the younger economist says, ‘Look, there’s a hundred-dollar bill,’ and the older one says, ‘Nonsense, if it was there somebody would have picked it up already.’ So sometimes you do find hundred-dollar bills lying on the street, but not often—generally people respond to opportunities. The other is the Yogi Berra line ‘Nobody goes to Coney Island anymore; it’s too crowded.’ That’s the idea that things tend to settle into some kind of equilibrium where what people expect is in line with what they actually encounter.”

. . .
Krugman wrote his thesis on exchange rates, but another class, on international trade, inspired him. “There was this kind of platonic beauty to the whole thing,” he says. “I remember going through the two-by-two-by-two model—two goods, two countries, two factors of production. The way all these pieces fitted together into a Swiss-watch-like mechanism was beautiful. I loved it.” The traditional theory of international trade, first formulated by the British economist David Ricardo, two hundred years ago, explained trade by comparative advantage: a country exported the goods that it could produce most cheaply, owing to whatever advantages it possessed—cheap labor, climate, technological expertise, and so on. It followed from this theory that countries that were the most dissimilar should do the most trade—countries in the Third World dispatching labor-intensive goods to the First World, the First World selling technology- or capital-intensive goods in return. In the years following the Second World War, however, economists had noticed that much international trade didn’t follow this pattern at all. There was a large amount of trade between countries whose economies were extremely similar, and these countries traded goods that were virtually identical: Germany sold BMWs to Sweden and Sweden sold Volvos to Germany. People had speculated about why this should be so, but nobody had come up with a model that explained it in a rigorous manner.

Krugman realized that trade took place not only because countries were different but also because there were advantages to specialization. If one country was the first to begin manufacturing airplanes, say, it might accumulate an advantage in economies of scale so large that it would be difficult for another country to break into the industry later on, even though there might not be anything about the first country that made it particularly well suited to airplane-making. But why would countries trade goods that were almost the same? Because consumers like to have a choice, and, as Avinash Dixit and Joseph Stiglitz had pointed out a few years earlier, the same logic of increasing returns to scale that Krugman had identified as an essential dynamic in trade could apply to a single brand as well as to a whole industry. Krugman presented his theory to the world in the form of a paper at the National Bureau of Economic Research in July, 1979. “The hour and a half in which I presented that paper was the best ninety minutes of my life,” he wrote later. “There’s a corny scene in the movie ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter,’ in which the young Loretta Lynn performs for the first time in a noisy bar, and little by little everyone gets quiet and starts to listen to her singing. Well, that’s what it felt like: I had, all at once, made it.”

One implication of Krugman’s theory was that, contrary to economic orthodoxy, industrial policy might have its benefits. If the location of a new industry was essentially arbitrary, then a government, by subsidizing and protecting its emergence, could enable it to gain such a lasting advantage that other countries would find it difficult to catch up. But Krugman tried to discourage industrial strategists who cited him. For, while in principle industrial policy could be helpful, in practice, he believed, it was so difficult to determine which industry should receive government help, at the expense of all the others—so difficult to predict an industry’s future, and so difficult to determine merit when powerful interests would be trying to influence that determination—that in the end industrial policy would be likely to benefit mostly the owners of a few businesses and hurt everybody else. (Industrial strategists were not convinced. “You have the cases of Japan, Korea, Brazil, China, and, to some extent, France, and the counterfactual—let’s imagine that they didn’t have an industrial policy, would they have produced the same amount of growth?—is unimaginable,” Robert Kuttner, the co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect, says. “But to be a conventional academic economist you almost have to swear an oath that governments can’t outguess markets in the allocation of capital.”)

Later on, Krugman became interested in economic geography, in the related question of why there were regional specialties—why, in the United States, for instance, were cars produced in Detroit, carpets in Dalton, Georgia, jewelry in Providence, and chips in Silicon Valley? Again, the answer turned out to be history and accident. Once an industry started up in one place, for whatever reason (the carpet industry in Dalton appears to have its origin in a local teen-ager who in 1895 made a tufted bedspread as a wedding present), local workers became trained in its methods, skilled workers from elsewhere moved there, and related businesses sprang up close by. Then, as more skilled labor became available, the industry could grow and benefit from economies of scale. Soon, as long as it didn’t cost too much to transport the industry’s products, the advantages of the place would be such that it would be impractical for someone to open up a similar business anywhere else. Many economists found the idea that economic geography could be so arbitrary “deeply disturbing and troubling,” Krugman wrote, but he found it exciting.

Again, as in his trade theory, it was not so much his idea that was significant as the translation of the idea into mathematical language. “I explained this basic idea”—of economic geography—“to a non-economist friend,” Krugman wrote, “who replied in some dismay, ‘Isn’t that pretty obvious?’ And of course it is.” Yet, because it had not been well modelled, the idea had been disregarded by economists for years. Krugman began to realize that in the previous few decades economic knowledge that had not been translated into models had been effectively lost, because economists didn’t know what to do with it. His friend Craig Murphy, a political scientist at Wellesley, had a collection of antique maps of Africa, and he told Krugman that a similar thing had happened in cartography. Sixteenth-century maps of Africa were misleading in all kinds of ways, but they contained quite a bit of information about the continent’s interior—the River Niger, Timbuktu. Two centuries later, mapmaking had become much more accurate, but the interior of Africa had become a blank. As standards for what counted as a mappable fact rose, knowledge that didn’t meet those standards—secondhand travellers’ reports, guesses hazarded without compasses or sextants—was discarded and lost. Eventually, the higher standards paid off—by the nineteenth century the maps were filled in again—but for a while the sharpening of technique caused loss as well as gain.

Go read it all. (Hat tip: Rajan Parrikar.)

Charlie Munger USC Law Commencement 2007

Accounts and Attitudes that have worked for me

Core Ideas

1. Safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want

2. No love that is so right that is admiration based love and that love should include the instructive dead

3. Wisdom Acquisition is a moral duty
a. Warren Buffett is a continuous learning machine
b. The skill that got Berkshire through one decade would not have sufficed to get it through the next decade

4. Rapid advance of civilization came only when men invented the method of invention

a. You can progress only when you learn the methods of learning
b. Learning should be continuous
c. Half of Warren’s time is sitting on his ass and reading the other half is spent talking on the phone or in person to highly gifted person that he trusts and trust him

5. Learning all the big ideas in the big disciplines
a. Not good if you don’t practice it
b. Multi disciplinary approach can be dangerous – it works so well – that you can be in front of an expert and you will see a correct answer that he has missed and must be tactful to avoid causing offense
c. Cicero famous for saying (my paraphrase): a man who doesn’t know what happens before he is born is doomed to go through life like a child
d. Learn them in such a way that they form a mental latticework in your head that you can use in everyday life situations

6. Work Problems in Reverse
a. Inversion will help you solve problems that otherwise couldn’t be solved

7. Avoid sloth and unreliability

8. Avoid really dead ideology
a. I tell myself I’m not entitled to have an opinion on a subject unless I can state the arguments against the position better than the people who are supporting

9. Avoid self serving bias
a. You should not believe that you are entitled to do whatever you want to do
b. Live below your means – Mozart was mostly miserable because of this

10. Avoid Self Pity
a. Disastrous behavior
b. Avoid it in yourself but allow for it in others
c. When encounter it try to reflect it by appealing to the interests of that person, do it of lofty motives
d. Never improves any situation

11. Avoid Perverse Incentives system
a. Can cause you to behave foolishly

12. Avoid Perverse Associations
a. Don’t work for people you don’t admire
b. We are all subject to control of authority figures so try and figure out how to work under people you really admire

13. Objectivity Maintenance Routines Required
a. Pay attention to disconfirming evidence (i.e. Darwin)
b. Have checklist routines to avoid a lot of errors (i.e. mental checklists)

14. Non Egality
a. Get power and practice to the right people who have the best aptitude and are learning machines
b. Two types of knowledge – people who really understand the subject and people who can just repeat what they have heard (just described every politician)

15. Intense interest in the subject is key is indispensable
a. Only way to be really good in something

16. Have a lot of Assiduity
a. Sit down on your ass until you accomplish what you’re set out to do
b. Choose partners who follow this rule

17. Life can be unfair so use every mischance as an opportunity to behave and well and learn something
a. Spoke about how his grandfather saved his uncle’s bank by providing capital when the bank experienced difficulties
b. Make sure your heroes would be pleased with your actions
c. Go through life anticipating trouble and be ready to perform adequately if trouble comes

18. Highest form of civilization – seamless web of deserved trust
a. Not much procedure just totally reliable people trusting each other

“My sword I give for him that can wear it” – CM ending quote.

[Source: FocusInvestor.com.]

That hypocrisy. Loathsome as Robertson’s views undoubtedly are, he is the Christian who stands squarely in the Christian tradition. The agonised theodiceans who see suffering as an intractable “mystery”, or who see God in the help, money and goodwill that is now flooding into Haiti, or (most nauseating of all) who claim to see God “suffering on the cross” in the ruins of Port-au-Prince, those faux-anguished hypocrites are denying the centrepiece of their own theology. It is the obnoxious Pat Robertson who is the true Christian here.

Where was God in Noah’s flood? He was systematically drowning the entire world, animal as well as human, as punishment for “sin”. Where was God when Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed with fire and brimstone? He was deliberately barbecuing the citizenry, lock, stock and barrel, as punishment for “sin”.

“Oh but that’s the Old Testament. No one believes those stories literally any more. The New Testament is all about love.” Dear modern, enlightened, theologically sophisticated, gentle Christian, you cannot be serious. Your entire religion is founded on an obsession with “sin”, with punishment and with atonement. Where do you find the effrontery to condemn Pat Robertson, you who have signed up to the odious doctrine that the central purpose of Jesus’s incarnation was to have himself tortured as a scapegoat for the “sins” of all mankind, past, present and future, beginning with the “sin” of Adam, who (as any modern theologian well knows) never even existed?

Yes, I know you hate the word “scapegoat” (with good reason, because it is a barbaric idea) but what other word would you use? The only respect in which “scapegoat” falls short as a perfect epitome of Christian theology is that the Christian atonement is even more unpleasant. The goat of Jewish tradition was merely driven into the wilderness with its cargo of symbolic sin. Jesus was supposedly tortured and executed to atone for sins that, any rational person might protest, he had it in his power simply to forgive, without the agony. Among all the ideas ever to occur to a nasty human mind (Paul’s of course), the Christian “atonement” would win a prize for pointless futility as well as moral depravity.

Hats off to you, Mr Dawkins. May your tribe increase.

Prime Minister Nehru categorically ruled out any proposal for appointing a high power tribunal to enquire into and investigate charges of corruption against Ministers or persons in high authority, for the main reason that, in India, or for that matter any other country where there was a democratic set-up, he could not see how such a tribunal could function. The appointment of such a tribunal, Mr. Nehru felt, would “produce an atmosphere of mutual recrimination, suspicion, condemnation, charges and counter-charges and pulling each other down, in a way that it would become impossible for normal administration to function.” More than half the time of the Press conference was devoted by Mr. Nehru to deal with this question of appointing a tribunal to enquire into cases of corruption as recently urged by India’s former Finance Minister, Mr. C.D. Deshmukh.

The original item was published exactly 50 years earlier in the Hindu: January 9, 1960: Enquiry into charges

Remember that Nehru’s Congress party and his progeny have been at the helm of affairs which has led to India to become one stinking filthy heap of corruption. Corruption cannot be eradicated from Indian politics as long as that fact does not change. (Hat tip: Sri.)

You caught that, didn’t you – that there are three sri’s where there used to be only two sri’s? That’s not a typo.

So before we get to the column, let’s deal with the proliferation of “sri’s”. It used to be that the great and the accomplished were honoured by others with a “sri” to their name – as in Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Sri Aurobindo, Sri Krishna, etc. It’s not something that one plasters on to one’s name. Sticking a “sri” to one’s own name is as like an ugly person putting on too much makeup and pretending to be good looking. Ravishankar sticks not one but two sri’s in front of his name. It is a repulsive sight.

On my way to Ahmedabad on Saturday, at Mumbai airport, I saw a poster which upped the ante of this revolting spectacle and increased the number of sri’s. Sri Sri Ravishankar is now Sri Sri Sri Ravishankar. Now I will have to change the “SSRS” to “SSSRSFKASSRS”: “Sri Sri Sri Ravishankar formerly known as SSRS”. But let’s use the short form SSSRS from now on.

Anyway, back to our column, “In love, losing is winning.”

That line is hard to beat. In just five words, in just 22 characters, it packs so much inanity and illogic that merely reading that line kills a million brain cells. Making such a statement is plain unadulterated nonsense of course but then if SSSRC were to avoid the nonsensical, he might as well take maun vrat (a vow of silence.)

Logic and sense has never been the strong suit of god-men (and god-women) and their sainted followers. If logic was even remotely involved in the deal, that whole business and the attendant followers would not happen.

“In love, losing is winning.” There go another million brain cells. Pardon me for that.

If losing is winning, then the loser is the winner, and the winner is the loser. So by losing, you win – which makes you a winner, and as you are a winner you are a loser, but that only means that you are actually a winner, which means you are really a loser . . . it is an infinite chain of insanity.

See what I mean? Insanity does not come in more potent form than that. What I can’t stop marvelling about is that not only did SSSRS make that absolutely contentless insane statement, but others involved in the chain that terminated in the column being printed in the newspaper – the reporter, the editor – did not find anything the least bit wrong with the statement. Compared to these people, sheep have been known to be more logical.

The headline should keep the wary from reading the piece. But anyway, for a change of pace, I decided that I will actually read the column to see what depths of inanity and illogic the man had plumbed.

For the record, here are a few select quotes.

When in trouble, don’t think “what can I do?” or that you are insignificant. Instead, understand that you, too, have a role to play. Like a tiny homeopathic pill, which has a 1/100th, or 1/1000th potency, makes an impact on a 60-70 kg body, in the same way, every individual has an influence on the cosmos, on this planet.

True true, SSSRS looks average enough but his inanity influences millions of people (or sheeple, if you like). I like the homeopathy bit thrown in: that’s the bright red cheery on top of a heap of idiocy calling attention to itself.

When you point a finger at others, three fingers are pointing back at you. For instance, if I say, “you are ugly!” I am three times uglier; but when I include you into me, then there is no me. Then there is only one – that is ultimate victory.

Did someone say victory? Well, if you have the ultimate victory, don’t you have the ultimate loss? Oh what an idiot! Three fingers pointing back multiplying the effect of a statement is the sort of logic that would fail to impress even retarded people. What does the man smoke that he can make such asinine statements with a straight face? And what do his followers smoke?

Life is so short. We’ll all live for another 30-40 years and then one day, everybody will be dead and gone. But we cry about what we have and we’re upset about what we don’t have. Is it worth living life like that? We ourselves get depressed and then depress everybody around us. We need to shake ourselves up. Wake up! And when we wake up from this slumber, then we have peace in our hearts and we can radiate that peace and love around us.

No, really, I cannot bring myself to comment on this any more. My vocabulary is limited and I can only feebly describe SSSRS’s statements as inane, insane, asinine, silly, ludicrous, ridiculous, senseless, stupid, unreasonable, illogical and empty. Those adjectives are all inadequate.

Related Post: His Most Exalted Holiness Sri Maha Param Pujaniya Gurudevji Bhagwanji Sriman Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji Mahadevji, I presume.

A burning hot afternoon. Diogenes is sitting as usual beneath the tree, sweating, scooping pasty gruel from a weathered bowl. At a distance, the court philosopher is being carried home in a palanquin for his lunch and afternoon siesta. He lifts the curtain. “Who is that beneath the tree?” the richly robed philosopher asks his bearers. “No one of any consequence, Sir,” they answer. “A fellow called Diogenes. A waster. All he does all day is sit under that tree, and yap with whoever comes along.”

“Take me to him” the philosopher directs.

He is lowered. He addresses Diogenes: “What are you doing, Diogenes?”

“Why, I am eating this gruel” Diogenes answers.

“You fool. If only you would learn to get along with the King, you wouldn’t have to spend the rest of your life eating that miserable gruel.”

“My dear Sir,” answers Diogenes, “If only you would learn to eat this gruel, you wouldn’t have to spend the rest of your life trying to get along with the King.”

Shourie writes, “We must learn to eat that gruel. We must have no price. And everyone must know that we have no price.”

Perhaps eating gruel is something that cannot be learnt. Either you are born with the ability to do so or you are not. Most people don’t have the stomach.

But I am certain that the story is inaccurate. First, Diogenes would have been sitting in a tub in the town square, not under any old tree. Second, everyone and his brother knew who Diogenes was, the court philosopher included.

Here’s another story about Diogenes (from this blog in Oct 2004):

During a sea voyage in his old age, he was captured by pirates and brought to a market in Crete to be sold. When asked for what he was capable of, he answered, “I can govern men; so sell me to someone who wants a master.” Xeniades, a rich man of Corinth, heard this and bought Diogenes and gave him his freedom. Diogenes was in Corinth when Alexander the Great sent word through a messenger asking Diogenes to come see him in Macedonia.

Read the rest of the story. Renews one’s faith in humanity, however cynical one may tend to become.

[Thanks to The Acorn for the link to Shourie's article.]

Related Post: Whoring, Amir Khan Style. (Mar 2008)

No student of computer science can avoid learning that Turing was an intellectual giant in the field. I recall the excitement I felt when I first understood the power of Turing machines, those abstractions that define the limits of what is computable, and which are the idealized prototypes of all digital computers.

He was just 41 years old when he died. It is as hard to fathom the horrors the man must have endured as it is to estimate the loss humanity suffered from the premature extinguishing of his genius. According to the TIME magazine estimation in 1999, Alan Turing was one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. I think that Turing will also make the list of the top 100 people in the last 2000 years. Our lives are better for him having lived.

That he was forced to kill himself is a damning indictment (as if yet another reason was needed) of the unspeakable brutality that monotheism imposes on humanity. The Western world has to a large extent weaned itself from the ideology that condemns the innocent to torture and death. But the most virulent form of the ideology persists in other parts of the world and the discouraging signs are that it is spreading. They routinely torture, stone, and hang homosexuals in Islamic countries today, just as they did centuries ago.

Alan Turing was born in England but, as the wikipedia entry helpfully informs us, he was conceived in India. He would have been persecuted in India as well, since the bigoted laws of monotheistic Britain were imposed on India. Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code is exhibit A. It is a crying shame that a civilizational ethos that is so extremely accepting of individual differences should have such bigoted laws on its books. Indians should hang their head in shame that they accept the bigoted narrow-minded medieval attitude of the West and reject the ancient wisdom of their own land. Fortunately, things are changing. There’s been some move towards removing Section 377 from the IPC.

In the West, they are recognizing Turing’s greatness.

A 1.5-ton, life-size statue of Turing was unveiled on 19 June 2007 at Bletchley Park. Built from approximately half a million pieces of Welsh slate, it was sculpted by Stephen Kettle, having been commissioned by the late American billionaire Sidney Frank.

Brings to mind those lines of Samuel Johnson, “See Nations slowly wise, and meanly just, To buried Merit raise the tardy Bust.”

In closing, I quote a few lines from the beautiful song by Don McLean about Vincent Van Gogh but which could as well have been written for Alan Turing:

For they could not love you,
But still your love was true.
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.

Links:

This blog: The Catholic church back-peddles on Charles Darwin.

NPR: All Things Considered (audio).

BBC: PM apology after Turing petition.

The three — corruption, nepotism and the Congress party — form India’s most enduring triumvirate. It is hard to think of one without thinking of the others because they characterize India’s politics and political landscape like nothing else conceivably can. The Congress party is the fiefdom of one family — being part of that confers the inalienable right to be the boss. Nepotism gains a whole new meaning in the hands of the Congress. Chronic, acute and pervasive corruption at the highest levels of governance India could only have been engineered by the political party which has held the reins of power for practically all of India’s existence since 1947. So it was with incredulous wonder that I read two news items yesterday.

The Times of India reports that there “is a wave of resentment in the Congress against sons and daughters of leaders jockeying for party tickets to contest the October 13 assembly elections.”

Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) general secretary Hussein Dalwai confirmed that there was large-scale anger among the rank and file of the organisation. “The workers are asking if their job is to only stick posters. They are opposed to the growing trend of `gharanashahi’ (family rule) in the state. The central leadership has been apprised of the sentiments of party cadres, ” Dalwai added.

What is the world coming to when Congress workers are questioning the value of nepotism — the key defining characteristic of the Congress party! What next — question the right of the Nehru-Gandhi family to rule India into perpetuity?

The irony meter has overloaded and crashed. That’s a pity because how would we now measure the degree of irony embedded in this other news flash: “Corruption retarding India’s growth, says Indian PM” (Telegraph.co.uk).

Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, has said that corruption is the single greatest threat to the nation’s economic prospects.

In a speech given to an anti-corruption corruption (sic) in New Delhi, Mr Singh described the damaging effect that bribes, extortion and fraud have on all levels of life in India.

He said that graft meant infrastructure projects were late, over-budget, and often poor quality, while labeling India’s opaque business practices “a fertile breeding ground for the evil of corruption.

“The pervasive corruption in our country tarnishes our image [and it] discourages investors who expect fair treatment and transparent dealings with public authorities,” he said.

See what I mean — how on earth can you measure the irony. He’s a public official in charge of all the other public officials in the country, and he moans and bitches that the public officials under him are corrupt and that corruption is the biggest threat to the economy’s prospects. Is he blatantly admitting his absolute spinelessness and ineptitude or is he not?

This is par for the course for him. He has no idea that the position he holds is powerful enough to fix the problem which he speaks so pitiably about. It is true that he was appointed to that position for his loyalty to the ruling family (loyal lapdogs do get to sit around in the living room) but he could have at least pretended to be his own man once in a while. At the very least, he should stop drawing attention to his ineffectiveness and spinelessness. But no, the man does not have that basic sense.

Anyhow, Mr Manmohan Singh is apparently not smart enough to have figured out what the genesis of India’s corruption is: governmental control and mismanagement of the economy. Perhaps Gareth Price, head of the Asia programme at Chatham House, a foreign policy think tank, could clue him in. Here’s what Price is quoted to have said in the Telegraph piece:

“The fastest growing sector of their economy is IT and that is the only sector that is completely outside the government’s control.”

He said that the history of graft in India was the product mainly of three things. “Firstly, the British bureaucratic legacy to the subcontinent. The British created so many rules that anyone could be shut down if, say, a factory inspector found that a bucket of sand was missing, making the place a ‘fire hazard’. So the inspectors would be bribed simply not to shut the place down.

“Secondly, after Independence India had a Soviet-style system of quotas, in which the licences that you received permitting you to produce a quantity of something basically determined how profitable you would be. So the government would be bribed to hand out licences.

“And the third thing is that the tax system is extraordinarily complex and condusive to corruption. Recent attempt to simplify it met with resistance mainly from business who were afraid they’d end up paying more rather than less.”

The mind simply boggles that the prime minister of India displays publicly his complete and utter lack of comprehension of a matter that is so crucial. Granted that he cannot fathom the issue but could he not pay attention to what others who have pondered the matter at some length are telling him?

Here I list a few things that the government should do:

* Dismantle the legacy bureaucratic system that the British created. Their objective was to extract and exploit the economic system. They put those controls into place. The government of a politically independent India must not have the same objective as that of a colonial power.

* Punish the corrupt — starting at the top of the heap. There is no point in going after lowly milkmen or lecturing little kids about the evils of corruption.

Start at the top — because that is where the rot starts. Criminals are over-represented in India’s legislative bodies. They make laws. Criminals making laws is beyond mortal comprehension.

Heed T.S.R. Subramanian, who retired as India’s most senior civil servant in 1998. Beckett quotes from TSR’s book, “GovernMint in India”: ” “Since no part of the Establishment has an interest in punishing corruption, trying for a more sweeping solution quickly leads into the realm of blind hope.”

Suspend politicians facing criminal charges, as civil servants are suspended pending trial. Establish a fast-track court just for government officials so that cases are resolved expeditiously. Persuade judges to make an example of a few political wrongdoers as a public flogging for the rest.

[Link: Solution to India's Greatest Failure. ]

I too approve of public flogging of high public officials. (Near the end of a pretty long October 2005 piece, titled “The Ownership Society“, I argued why.) You have to hit them where it hurts — their dignity. I am happy to note that Kautilya had a similar view. According to this March 2006 article in the Economist:

Kautilya, writing 2,300 years ago, offers a helpful observation: as punishment for the theft of public property by government servants, he recommended smearing the offenders with cow dung and ashes.

Anyway, corruption in India is here to stay as long as the corrupt rule the roost. India is corrupt because the people choose to elect the criminally corrupt. That you can lay at the doorstep of democracy as practiced in India. The only hope of reforming India lies in reforming Indian democracy. But more about that later.

* There have been four acts of mass casualty terrorism since 1981. All the four were carried out when the Congress (I) was in power in New Delhi.

* There have been three instances of targeted attacks on foreigners since 1991—-two in J&K and one in Mumbai. All the three were carried out when the Congress (I) was in power.

* There have been seven acts of ISI-sponsored aircraft hijackings since 1971. Six of them were carried out when the Congress (I) and one when the BJP was in power.

* There has been one instance of an Air India plane being blown up in mid-air killing over 250 persons. This took place when the Congress (I) was in power.

* The LET was banned by the Musharraf Government as a terrorist organization through a Gazette notification on January 15, 2002. The Manmohan Singh Government has not been able to get the JUD banned by the Zardari Government through a Gazette notification even nine months after the Mumbai attack.

* Indira Gandhi was assassinated when the Congress (I) was in power in New Delhi. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated when an ally of the Congress (I) was in power in New Delhi and another ally in Chennai.

* The Indian Mujahideen came into existence when the Congress (I) was in power.

* The first commando-style complex terrorist attack in Indian territory by a group of terrorists, all hailing from Pakistan, has taken place when the Congress (I) is in power.

Now it is true that B Raman in his extremely detailed piece (54 bulleted paragraphs, no less) lists instances after instances of the absolutely incomprehensible incompetency of Dr Manmohan Singh in dealing with the terrorist state of Pakistan and the terrorism that it unleashes on Indians. But as I keep saying, Dr Singh cannot be held responsible for reasons of incompetency. I believe courts routinely refuse to punish murderers if it is determined that the murderer is mentally incompetent. Dr Singh does not deserve any less.

For the record, here are items 16 and 17 from Mr Raman’s paper:

16. The inexorable result of Dr. Manmohan Singh’s failure to act: The commando-style attack by 10 Pakistani terrorists of the LET, trained, armed and equipped in Pakistan on two hotels, a Jewish religious-cum-cultural centre and other public places in Mumbai, which started on November 26, 2008, and continued till November 28, 2008.It was an army-style operation involving the use of hand-held weapons, explosives, sophisticated communication equipment and modern internet telephony facilities, which shocked the world and created feelings of anger and outrage in India.

17. The enormity of the public anger against Pakistan forced Dr. Manmohan Singh to freeze the composite dialogue process without disrupting the normal diplomatic relations between the two countries. He did so not because he was convinced that his earlier policy of appeasement of Pakistan had failed, but because he and his Congress (I) party were worried that if they did not give the impression of taking strong action against Pakistan, it might affect the party adversely in the elections of April-May, 2009, to the Lok Sabha, the lower House of the Indian Parliament. The resumption of the composite dialogue was made conditional on Pakistan acting strongly against the LET, its operatives based in Pakistan who had planned and got executed the terrorist attack in Mumbai and its terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani territory.

If you continue to support a political party that consistently screws you over decade after decade, impoverishes you, and treats you like a retard, you might be a third world country.

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So you have to pick and choose even among the crème de la crème.

What am I going on about? I think that you should read Charlie Munger’s speech that he gave at the USC Business School way back in 1994. It’s long. It will take you a good hour — if you are a slow reader like me. But trust me, that hour will be save you years of trouble if you really understand what Charlie is saying. I have half a mind to sit down and annotate his talk. If I did that, I would end up writing a book — so rich and deep is his talk. But it is also very simple. It is about worldly wisdom.

Economists are called worldly philosophers, and with good reason. Economics is about systematically thinking about the world of people. What I find fascinating is the insights that a study of microeconomics provides into the workings of the world. Charlie, smart that he is, appreciates the value of micro. Charlie is a worldly philosopher.

While reading his talk, first I thought I would just highlight some bits. That was distracting. It deserves to be read and understood without distraction. I will not write a book-length exposition of Charlie’s talk. But I will refer to it in my posts from time to time. By the time I am done with my annotations, I am sure it would go a long way in improving my education.

Which reminds me. If you can understand what he is saying, you have a sound educational background. That is what we must aim for: every student who passes out of college (and the brighter among those of pass out of high school) should be able to comprehend and understand the value of Charlie’s wisdom.

For now, sit down comfortably with a cup of whatever that you like to have when you are engrossed in learning important stuff, switch off your mobile phone, put a do-not-disturb sign on your door, dim the lights, and read the following. (And if you want to read even more Munger, go read his 2007 Law School Commencement address at the University of Southern California in May 2007 — which starts off with “Safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want.”)

A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business

Charles Munger, USC Business School, 1994

I’m going to play a minor trick on you today because the subject of my talk is the art of stock picking as a subdivision of the art of worldly wisdom. That enables me to start talking about worldly wisdom—a much broader topic that interests me because I think all too little of it is delivered by modern educational systems, at least in an effective way.

And therefore, the talk is sort of along the lines that some behaviorist psychologists call Grandma’s rule after the wisdom of Grandma when she said that you have to eat the carrots before you get the dessert.

The carrot part of this talk is about the general subject of worldly wisdom which is a pretty good way to start. After all, the theory of modern education is that you need a general education before you specialize. And I think to some extent, before you’re going to be a great stock picker, you need some general education.

So, emphasizing what I sometimes waggishly call remedial worldly wisdom, I’m going to start by waltzing you through a few basic notions.

What is elementary, worldly wisdom? Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ‘em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form.

You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience—both vicarious and direct—on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.

What are the models? Well, the first rule is that you’ve got to have multiple models—because if you just have one or two that you’re using, the nature of human psychology is such that you’ll torture reality so that it fits your models, or at least you’ll think it does. You become the equivalent of a chiropractor who, of course, is the great boob in medicine.

It’s like the old saying, “To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” And of course, that’s the way the chiropractor goes about practicing medicine. But that’s a perfectly disastrous way to think and a perfectly disastrous way to operate in the world. So you’ve got to have multiple models.

And the models have to come from multiple disciplines—because all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little academic department. That’s why poetry professors, by and large, are so unwise in a worldly sense. They don’t have enough models in their heads. So you’ve got to have models across a fair array of disciplines.

You may say, “My God, this is already getting way too tough.” But, fortunately, it isn’t that tough—because 80 or 90 important models will carry about 90% of the freight in making you a worldly-wise person. And, of those, only a mere handful really carry very heavy freight.

So let’s briefly review what kind of models and techniques constitute this basic knowledge that everybody has to have before they proceed to being really good at a narrow art like stock picking.

First there’s mathematics. Obviously, you’ve got to be able to handle numbers and quantities—basic arithmetic. And the great useful model, after compound interest, is the elementary math of permutations and combinations. And that was taught in my day in the sophomore year in high school. I suppose by now in great private schools, it’s probably down to the eighth grade or so.

It’s very simple algebra. It was all worked out in the course of about one year between Pascal and Fermat. They worked it out casually in a series of letters.
It’s not that hard to learn. What is hard is to get so you use it routinely almost everyday of your life. The Fermat/Pascal system is dramatically consonant with the way that the world works. And it’s fundamental truth. So you simply have to have the technique.

Many educational institutions—although not nearly enough—have realized this. At Harvard Business School, the great quantitative thing that bonds the first-year class together is what they call decision tree theory. All they do is take high school algebra and apply it to real life problems. And the students love it. They’re amazed to find that high school algebra works in life….

By and large, as it works out, people can’t naturally and automatically do this. If you understand elementary psychology, the reason they can’t is really quite simple: The basic neural network of the brain is there through broad genetic and cultural evolution. And it’s not Fermat/Pascal. It uses a very crude, shortcut-type of approximation. It’s got elements of Fermat/Pascal in it. However, it’s not good.

So you have to learn in a very usable way this very elementary math and use it routinely in life—just the way if you want to become a golfer, you can’t use the natural swing that broad evolution gave you. You have to learn—to have a certain grip and swing in a different way to realize your full potential as a golfer.

If you don’t get this elementary, but mildly unnatural, mathematics of elementary probability into your repertoire, then you go through a long life like a onelegged man in an asskicking contest. You’re giving a huge advantage to everybody else.

One of the advantages of a fellow like Buffett, whom I’ve worked with all these years, is that he automatically thinks in terms of decision trees and the elementary math of permutations and combinations….

Obviously, you have to know accounting. It’s the language of practical business life. It was a very useful thing to deliver to civilization. I’ve heard it came to civilization through Venice which of course was once the great commercial power in the Mediterranean. However, double-entry bookkeeping was a hell of an invention.
And it’s not that hard to understand.

But you have to know enough about it to understand its limitations—because although accounting is the starting place, it’s only a crude approximation. And it’s not very hard to understand its limitations. For example, everyone can see that you have to more or less just guess at the useful life of a jet airplane or anything like that. Just because you express the depreciation rate in neat numbers doesn’t make it anything you really know.

In terms of the limitations of accounting, one of my favorite stories involves a very great businessman named Carl Braun who created the CF Braun Engineering Company. It designed and built oil refineries—which is very hard to do. And Braun would get them to come in on time and not blow up and have efficiencies and so forth.
This is a major art.

And Braun, being the thorough Teutonic type that he was, had a number of quirks. And one of them was that he took a look at standard accounting and the way it was applied to building oil refineries and he said, “This is asinine.”

So he threw all of his accountants out and he took his engineers and said, “Now, we’ll devise our own system of accounting to handle this process.” And in due time, accounting adopted a lot of Carl Braun’s notions. So he was a formidably willful and talented man who demonstrated both the importance of accounting and the importance of knowing its limitations.

He had another rule, from psychology, which, if you’re interested in wisdom, ought to be part of your repertoire—like the elementary mathematics of permutations and combinations.

His rule for all the Braun Company’s communications was called the five W’s—you had to tell who was going to do what, where, when and why. And if you wrote a letter or directive in the Braun Company telling somebody to do something, and you didn’t tell him why, you could get fired. In fact, you would get fired if you did it twice.

You might ask why that is so important? Well, again that’s a rule of psychology. Just as you think better if you array knowledge on a bunch of models that are basically answers to the question, why, why, why, if you always tell people why, they’ll understand it better, they’ll consider it more important, and they’ll be more likely to comply. Even if they don’t understand your reason, they’ll be more likely to comply.

So there’s an iron rule that just as you want to start getting worldly wisdom by asking why, why, why, in communicating with other people about everything, you want to include why, why, why. Even if it’s obvious, it’s wise to stick in the why.

Which models are the most reliable? Well, obviously, the models that come from hard science and engineering are the most reliable models on this Earth. And engineering quality control—at least the guts of it that matters to you and me and people who are not professional engineers—is very much based on the elementary mathematics of Fermat and Pascal:

It costs so much and you get so much less likelihood of it breaking if you spend this much. It’s all elementary high school mathematics. And an elaboration of that is what Deming brought to Japan for all of that quality control stuff.

I don’t think it’s necessary for most people to be terribly facile in statistics. For example, I’m not sure that I can even pronounce the Poisson distribution. But I know what a Gaussian or normal distribution looks like and I know that events and huge aspects of reality end up distributed that way. So I can do a rough calculation.

But if you ask me to work out something involving a Gaussian distribution to ten decimal points, I can’t sit down and do the math. I’m like a poker player who’s learned to play pretty well without mastering Pascal.

And by the way, that works well enough. But you have to understand that bellshaped curve at least roughly as well as I do.

And, of course, the engineering idea of a backup system is a very powerful idea. The engineering idea of breakpoints—that’s a very powerful model, too. The notion of a critical mass—that comes out of physics—is a very powerful model.

All of these things have great utility in looking at ordinary reality. And all of this cost-benefit analysis—hell, that’s all elementary high school algebra, too. It’s just been dolled up a little bit with fancy lingo.

I suppose the next most reliable models are from biology/ physiology because, after all, all of us are programmed by our genetic makeup to be much the same.

And then when you get into psychology, of course, it gets very much more complicated. But it’s an ungodly important subject if you’re going to have any worldly wisdom.

And you can demonstrate that point quite simply: There’s not a person in this room viewing the work of a very ordinary professional magician who doesn’t see a lot of things happening that aren’t happening and not see a lot of things happening that are happening.

And the reason why is that the perceptual apparatus of man has shortcuts in it. The brain cannot have unlimited circuitry. So someone who knows how to take advantage of those shortcuts and cause the brain to miscalculate in certain ways can cause you to see things that aren’t there.

Now you get into the cognitive function as distinguished from the perceptual function. And there, you are equally—more than equally in fact—likely to be misled. Again, your brain has a shortage of circuitry and so forth—and it’s taking all kinds of little automatic shortcuts.

So when circumstances combine in certain ways—or more commonly, your fellow man starts acting like the magician and manipulates you on purpose by causing your cognitive dysfunction—you’re a patsy.

And so just as a man working with a tool has to know its limitations, a man working with his cognitive apparatus has to know its limitations. And this knowledge, by the way, can be used to control and motivate other people….

So the most useful and practical part of psychology—which I personally think can be taught to any intelligent person in a week—is ungodly important. And nobody taught it to me by the way. I had to learn it later in life, one piece at a time. And it was fairly laborious. It’s so elementary though that, when it was all over, I felt like a fool.

And yeah, I’d been educated at Cal Tech and the Harvard Law School and so forth. So very eminent places miseducated people like you and me.

The elementary part of psychology—the psychology of misjudgment, as I call it—is a terribly important thing to learn. There are about 20 little principles. And they interact, so it gets slightly complicated. But the guts of it is unbelievably important.

Terribly smart people make totally bonkers mistakes by failing to pay heed to it. In fact, I’ve done it several times during the last two or three years in a very important way. You never get totally over making silly mistakes.

There’s another saying that comes from Pascal which I’ve always considered one of the really accurate observations in the history of thought. Pascal said in essence, “The mind of man at one and the same time is both the glory and the shame of the universe.”

And that’s exactly right. It has this enormous power. However, it also has these standard misfunctions that often cause it to reach wrong conclusions. It also makes man extraordinarily subject to manipulation by others. For example, roughly half of the army of Adolf Hitler was composed of believing Catholics. Given enough clever psychological manipulation, what human beings will do is quite interesting.

Personally, I’ve gotten so that I now use a kind of two-track analysis. First, what are the factors that really govern the interests involved, rationally considered? And second, what are the subconscious influences where the brain at a subconscious level is automatically doing these things—which by and large are useful, but which often misfunction.

One approach is rationality—the way you’d work out a bridge problem: by evaluating the real interests, the real probabilities and so forth. And the other is to evaluate the psychological factors that cause subconscious conclusions—many of which are wrong.

Now we come to another somewhat less reliable form of human wisdom—microeconomics. And here, I find it quite useful to think of a free market economy—or partly free market economy—as sort of the equivalent of an ecosystem….

This is a very unfashionable way of thinking because early in the days after Darwin came along, people like the robber barons assumed that the doctrine of the survival of the fittest authenticated them as deserving power—you know, “I’m the richest. Therefore, I’m the best. God’s in his heaven, etc.”

And that reaction of the robber barons was so irritating to people that it made it unfashionable to think of an economy as an ecosystem. But the truth is that it is a lot like an ecosystem. And you get many of the same results.

Just as in an ecosystem, people who narrowly specialize can get terribly good at occupying some little niche. Just as animals flourish in niches, similarly, people who specialize in the business world—and get very good because they specialize—frequently find good economics that they wouldn’t get any other way.

And once we get into microeconomics, we get into the concept of advantages of scale. Now we’re getting closer to investment analysis—because in terms of which businesses succeed and which businesses fail, advantages of scale are ungodly important.

For example, one great advantage of scale taught in all of the business schools of the world is cost reductions along the so-called experience curve. Just doing something complicated in more and more volume enables human beings, who are trying to improve and are motivated by the incentives of capitalism, to do it more and more efficiently.

The very nature of things is that if you get a whole lot of volume through your joint, you get better at processing that volume. That’s an enormous advantage. And it has a lot to do with which businesses succeed and fail….

Let’s go through a list—albeit an incomplete one—of possible advantages of scale. Some come from simple geometry. If you’re building a great spherical tank, obviously as you build it bigger, the amount of steel you use in the surface goes up with the square and the cubic volume goes up with the cube. So as you increase the dimensions, you can hold a lot more volume per unit area of steel.

And there are all kinds of things like that where the simple geometry—the simple reality—gives you an advantage of scale.

For example, you can get advantages of scale from TV advertising. When TV advertising first arrived—when talking color pictures first came into our living rooms—it was an unbelievably powerful thing. And in the early days, we had three networks that had whatever it was—say 90% of the audience.

Well, if you were Procter & Gamble, you could afford to use this new method of advertising. You could afford the very expensive cost of network television because you were selling so many cans and bottles. Some little guy couldn’t. And there was no way of buying it in part. Therefore, he couldn’t use it. In effect, if you didn’t have a big volume, you couldn’t use network TV advertising which was the most effective technique.

So when TV came in, the branded companies that were already big got a huge tail wind. Indeed, they prospered and prospered and prospered until some of them got fat and foolish, which happens with prosperity—at least to some people….

And your advantage of scale can be an informational advantage. If I go to some remote place, I may see Wrigley chewing gum alongside Glotz’s chewing gum. Well, I know that Wrigley is a satisfactory product, whereas I don’t know anything about Glotz’s. So if one is 40 cents and the other is 30 cents, am I going to take something
I don’t know and put it in my mouth—which is a pretty personal place, after all—for a lousy dime?

So, in effect, Wrigley , simply by being so well known, has advantages of scale—what you might call an informational advantage.

Another advantage of scale comes from psychology. The psychologists use the term social proof. We are all influenced—subconsciously and to some extent consciously—by what we see others do and approve. Therefore, if everybody’s buying something, we think it’s better. We don’t like to be the one guy who’s out of step.

Again, some of this is at a subconscious level and some of it isn’t. Sometimes, we consciously and rationally think, “Gee, I don’t know much about this. They know more than I do. Therefore, why shouldn’t I follow them?”

The social proof phenomenon which comes right out of psychology gives huge advantages to scale—for example, with very wide distribution, which of course is hard to get. One advantage of Coca-Cola is that it’s available almost everywhere in the world.

Well, suppose you have a little soft drink. Exactly how do you make it available all over the Earth? The worldwide distribution setup—which is slowly won by a big enterprise—gets to be a huge advantage…. And if you think about it, once you get enough advantages of that type, it can become very hard for anybody to dislodge you.

There’s another kind of advantage to scale. In some businesses, the very nature of things is to sort of cascade toward the overwhelming dominance of one firm.

The most obvious one is daily newspapers. There’s practically no city left in the U.S., aside from a few very big ones, where there’s more than one daily newspaper.
And again, that’s a scale thing. Once I get most of the circulation, I get most of the advertising. And once I get most of the advertising and circulation, why would anyone want the thinner paper with less information in it? So it tends to cascade to a winnertakeall situation. And that’s a separate form of the advantages of scale phenomenon.

Similarly, all these huge advantages of scale allow greater specialization within the firm. Therefore, each person can be better at what he does.

And these advantages of scale are so great, for example, that when Jack Welch came into General Electric, he just said, “To hell with it. We’re either going to be # 1 or #2 in every field we’re in or we’re going to be out. I don’t care how many people I have to fire and what I have to sell. We’re going to be #1 or #2 or out.”

That was a very toughminded thing to do, but I think it was a very correct decision if you’re thinking about maximizing shareholder wealth. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing to do for a civilization either, because I think that General Electric is stronger for having Jack Welch there.

And there are also disadvantages of scale. For example, we—by which I mean Berkshire Hathaway—are the largest shareholder in Capital Cities/ABC. And we had trade publications there that got murdered where our competitors beat us. And the way they beat us was by going to a narrower specialization.

We’d have a travel magazine for business travel. So somebody would create one which was addressed solely at corporate travel departments. Like an ecosystem, you’re getting a narrower and narrower specialization.

Well, they got much more efficient. They could tell more to the guys who ran corporate travel departments. Plus, they didn’t have to waste the ink and paper mailing out stuff that corporate travel departments weren’t interested in reading. It was a more efficient system. And they beat our brains out as we relied on our broader magazine.

That’s what happened to The Saturday Evening Post and all those things. They’re gone. What we have now isMotocross—which is read by a bunch of nuts who like to participate in tournaments where they turn somersaults on their motorcycles. But they care about it. For them, it’s the principal purpose of life. A magazine called Motocross is a total necessity to those people. And its profit margins would make you salivate.

Just think of how narrowcast that kind of publishing is. So occasionally, scaling down and intensifying gives you the big advantage. Bigger is not always better.

The great defect of scale, of course, which makes the game interesting—so that the big people don’t always win—is that as you get big, you get the bureaucracy. And with the bureaucracy comes the territoriality—which is again grounded in human nature.

And the incentives are perverse. For example, if you worked for AT&T in my day, it was a great bureaucracy. Who in the hell was really thinking about the shareholder or anything else? And in a bureaucracy, you think the work is done when it goes out of your in-basket into somebody else’s in-basket. But, of course, it isn’t. It’s not done until AT&T delivers what it’s supposed to deliver. So you get big, fat, dumb, unmotivated bureaucracies.

They also tend to become somewhat corrupt. In other words, if I’ve got a department and you’ve got a department and we kind of share power running this thing, there’s sort of an unwritten rule: “If you won’t bother me, I won’t bother you and we’re both happy.” So you get layers of management and associated costs that nobody needs. Then, while people are justifying all these layers, it takes forever to get anything done. They’re too slow to make decisions and nimbler people run circles around them.

The constant curse of scale is that it leads to big, dumb bureaucracy—which, of course, reaches its highest and worst form in government where the incentives are really awful. That doesn’t mean we don’t need governments—because we do. But it’s a terrible problem to get big bureaucracies to behave.

So people go to stratagems. They create little decentralized units and fancy motivation and training programs. For example, for a big company, General Electric has fought bureaucracy with amazing skill. But that’s because they have a combination of a genius and a fanatic running it. And they put him in young enough so he gets a long run. Of course, that’s Jack Welch.

But bureaucracy is terrible…. And as things get very powerful and very big, you can get some really dysfunctional behavior. Look at Westinghouse. They blew billions of dollars on a bunch of dumb loans to real estate developers. They put some guy who’d come up by some career path—I don’t know exactly what it was, but it could have been refrigerators or something—and all of a sudden, he’s loaning money to real estate developers building hotels. It’s a very unequal contest. And in due time, they lost all those billions of dollars.

CBS provides an interesting example of another rule of psychology—namely, Pavlovian association. If people tell you what you really don’t want to hear what’s unpleasant—there’s an almost automatic reaction of antipathy. You have to train yourself out of it. It isn’t foredestined that you have to be this way. But you will tend to be this way if you don’t think about it.

Television was dominated by one network—CBS in its early days. And Paley was a god. But he didn’t like to hear what he didn’t like to hear. And people soon learned that. So they told Paley only what he liked to hear. Therefore, he was soon living in a little cocoon of unreality and everything else was corrupt—although it was a great business.

So the idiocy that crept into the system was carried along by this huge tide. It was a Mad Hatter’s tea party the last ten years under Bill Paley.

And that is not the only example by any means. You can get severe misfunction in the high ranks of business. And of course, if you’re investing, it can make a lot of difference. If you take all the acquisitions that CBS made under Paley, after the acquisition of the network itself, with all his advisors—his investment bankers, management consultants and so forth who were getting paid very handsomely—it was absolutely terrible.

For example, he gave something like 20% of CBS to the Dumont Company for a television set manufacturer which was destined to go broke. I think it lasted all of two or three years or something like that. So very soon after he’d issued all of that stock, Dumont was history. You get a lot of dysfunction in a big fat, powerful place where no one will bring unwelcome reality to the boss.

So life is an everlasting battle between those two forces—to get these advantages of scale on one side and a tendency to get a lot like the U.S. Agriculture Department on the other side—where they just sit around and so forth. I don’t know exactly what they do. However, I do know that they do very little useful work.

On the subject of advantages of economies of scale, I find chain stores quite interesting. Just think about it. The concept of a chain store was a fascinating invention. You get this huge purchasing power—which means that you have lower merchandise costs. You get a whole bunch of little laboratories out there in which you can conduct experiments. And you get specialization.

If one little guy is trying to buy across 27 different merchandise categories influenced by traveling salesmen, he’s going to make a lot of poor decisions. But if your buying is done in headquarters for a huge bunch of stores, you can get very bright people that know a lot about refrigerators and so forth to do the buying.

The reverse is demonstrated by the little store where one guy is doing all the buying. It’s like the old story about the little store with salt all over its walls. And a stranger comes in and says to the storeowner, “You must sell a lot of salt.” And he replies, “No, I don’t. But you should see the guy who sells me salt.”

So there are huge purchasing advantages. And then there are the slick systems of forcing everyone to do what works. So a chain store can be a fantastic enterprise.
It’s quite interesting to think about Wal-Mart starting from a single store in Bentonville, Arkansas against Sears, Roebuck with its name, reputation and all of its billions.

How does a guy in Bentonville, Arkansas with no money blow right by Sears, Roebuck? And he does it in his own lifetime—in fact, during his own late lifetime because he was already pretty old by the time he started out with one little store….

He played the chain store game harder and better than anyone else. Walton invented practically nothing. But he copied everything anybody else ever did that was smart—and he did it with more fanaticism and better employee manipulation. So he just blew right by them all.

He also had a very interesting competitive strategy in the early days. He was like a prizefighter who wanted a great record so he could be in the finals and make a big TV hit. So what did he do? He went out and fought 42 palookas. Right? And the result was knockout, knockout, knockout—42 times.

Walton, being as shrewd as he was, basically broke other small town merchants in the early days. With his more efficient system, he might not have been able to tackle some titan head-on at the time. But with his better system, he could destroy those small town merchants. And he went around doing it time after time after time. Then, as he got bigger, he started destroying the big boys.

Well, that was a very, very shrewd strategy.

You can say, “Is this a nice way to behave?” Well, capitalism is a pretty brutal place. But I personally think that the world is better for having Wal-Mart. I mean you can idealize small town life. But I’ve spent a fair amount of time in small towns. And let me tell you you shouldn’t get too idealistic about all those businesses he destroyed.

Plus, a lot of people who work at Wal-Mart are very high grade, bouncy people who are raising nice children. I have no feeling that an inferior culture destroyed a superior culture. I think that is nothing more than nostalgia and delusion. But, at any rate, it’s an interesting model of how the scale of things and fanaticism combine to be very powerful.

And it’s also an interesting model on the other side—how with all its great advantages, the disadvantages of bureaucracy did such terrible damage to Sears, Roebuck. Sears had layers and layers of people it didn’t need. It was very bureaucratic. It was slow to think. And there was an established way of thinking. If you poked your head up with a new thought, the system kind of turned against you. It was everything in the way of a dysfunctional big bureaucracy that you would expect.

In all fairness, there was also much that was good about it. But it just wasn’t as lean and mean and shrewd and effective as Sam Walton. And, in due time, all its advantages of scale were not enough to prevent Sears from losing heavily to Wal-Mart and other similar retailers.

Here’s a model that we’ve had trouble with. Maybe you’ll be able to figure it out better. Many markets get down to two or three big competitors—or five or six. And in some of those markets, nobody makes any money to speak of. But in others, everybody does very well.

Over the years, we’ve tried to figure out why the competition in some markets gets sort of rational from the investor’s point of view so that the shareholders do well, and in other markets, there’s destructive competition that destroys shareholder wealth.

If it’s a pure commodity like airline seats, you can understand why no one makes any money. As we sit here, just think of what airlines have given to the world—safe travel, greater experience, time with your loved ones, you name it. Yet, the net amount of money that’s been made by the shareholders of airlines since Kitty Hawk, is now a negative figure—a substantial negative figure. Competition was so intense that, once it was unleashed by deregulation, it ravaged shareholder wealth in the airline business.

Yet, in other fields—like cereals, for example—almost all the big boys make out. If you’re some kind of a medium grade cereal maker, you might make 15% on your capital. And if you’re really good, you might make 40%. But why are cereals so profitable—despite the fact that it looks to me like they’re competing like crazy with promotions, coupons and everything else? I don’t fully understand it.

Obviously, there’s a brand identity factor in cereals that doesn’t exist in airlines. That must be the main factor that accounts for it.

And maybe the cereal makers by and large have learned to be less crazy about fighting for market share—because if you get even one person who’s hell-bent on gaining market share…. For example, if I were Kellogg and I decided that I had to have 60% of the market, I think I could take most of the profit out of cereals. I’d ruin Kellogg in the process. But I think I could do it.

In some businesses, the participants behave like a demented Kellogg. In other businesses, they don’t. Unfortunately, I do not have a perfect model for predicting how that’s going to happen.

For example, if you look around at bottler markets, you’ll find many markets where bottlers of Pepsi and Coke both make a lot of money and many others where they destroy most of the profitability of the two franchises. That must get down to the peculiarities of individual adjustment to market capitalism. I think you’d have to know the people involved to fully understand what was happening.

In microeconomics, of course, you’ve got the concept of patents, trademarks, exclusive franchises and so forth. Patents are quite interesting. When I was young, I think more money went into patents than came out. Judges tended to throw them out—based on arguments about what was really invented and what relied on prior art. That isn’t altogether clear.

But they changed that. They didn’t change the laws. They just changed the administration—so that it all goes to one patent court. And that court is now very much more pro-patent. So I think people are now starting to make a lot of money out of owning patents.

Trademarks, of course, have always made people a lot of money. A trademark system is a wonderful thing for a big operation if it’s well known.

The exclusive franchise can also be wonderful. If there were only three television channels awarded in a big city and you owned one of them, there were only so many hours a day that you could be on. So you had a natural position in an oligopoly in the pre-cable days.

And if you get the franchise for the only food stand in an airport, you have a captive clientele and you have a small monopoly of a sort.

The great lesson in microeconomics is to discriminate between when technology is going to help you and when it’s going to kill you. And most people do not get this straight in their heads. But a fellow like Buffett does.

For example, when we were in the textile business, which is a terrible commodity business, we were making low-end textiles—which are a real commodity product. And one day, the people came to Warren and said, “They’ve invented a new loom that we think will do twice as much work as our old ones.”

And Warren said, “Gee, I hope this doesn’t work because if it does, I’m going to close the mill.” And he meant it.

What was he thinking? He was thinking, “It’s a lousy business. We’re earning substandard returns and keeping it open just to be nice to the elderly workers. But we’re not going to put huge amounts of new capital into a lousy business.”

And he knew that the huge productivity increases that would come from a better machine introduced into the production of a commodity product would all go to the benefit of the buyers of the textiles. Nothing was going to stick to our ribs as owners.

That’s such an obvious concept—that there are all kinds of wonderful new inventions that give you nothing as owners except the opportunity to spend a lot more money in a business that’s still going to be lousy. The money still won’t come to you. All of the advantages from great improvements are going to flow through to the customers.

Conversely, if you own the only newspaper in Oshkosh and they were to invent more efficient ways of composing the whole newspaper, then when you got rid of the old technology and got new fancy computers and so forth, all of the savings would come right through to the bottom line.

In all cases, the people who sell the machinery—and, by and large, even the internal bureaucrats urging you to buy the equipment—show you projections with the amount you’ll save at current prices with the new technology. However, they don’t do the second step of the analysis which is to determine how much is going stay home and how much is just going to flow through to the customer. I’ve never seen a single projection incorporating that second step in my life. And I see them all the time. Rather, they always read: “This capital outlay will save you so much money that it will pay for itself in three years.”

So you keep buying things that will pay for themselves in three years. And after 20 years of doing it, somehow you’ve earned a return of only about 4% per annum.

That’s the textile business.

And it isn’t that the machines weren’t better. It’s just that the savings didn’t go to you. The cost reductions came through all right. But the benefit of the cost reductions didn’t go to the guy who bought the equipment. It’s such a simple idea. It’s so basic. And yet it’s so often forgotten.

Then there’s another model from microeconomics which I find very interesting. When technology moves as fast as it does in a civilization like ours, you get a phenomenon which I call competitive destruction. You know, you have the finest buggy whip factory and all of a sudden in comes this little horseless carriage. And before too many years go by, your buggy whip business is dead. You either get into a different business or you’re dead—you’re destroyed. It happens again and again and again.

And when these new businesses come in, there are huge advantages for the early birds. And when you’re an early bird, there’s a model that I call “surfing”—when a surfer gets up and catches the wave and just stays there, he can go a long, long time. But if he gets off the wave, he becomes mired in shallows….
But people get long runs when they’re right on the edge of the wave—whether it’s Microsoft or Intel or all kinds of people, including National Cash Register in the early days.

The cash register was one of the great contributions to civilization. It’s a wonderful story. Patterson was a small retail merchant who didn’t make any money. One day, somebody sold him a crude cash register which he put into his retail operation. And it instantly changed from losing money to earning a profit because it made it so much harder for the employees to steal….

But Patterson, having the kind of mind that he did, didn’t think, “Oh, good for my retail business.” He thought, “I’m going into the cash register business.” And, of course, he created National Cash Register.

And he “surfed”. He got the best distribution system, the biggest collection of patents and the best of everything. He was a fanatic about everything important as the technology developed. I have in my files an early National Cash Register Company report in which Patterson described his methods and objectives. And a well-educated orangutan could see that buying into partnership with Patterson in those early days, given his notions about the cash register business, was a total 100% cinch.

And, of course, that’s exactly what an investor should be looking for. In a long life, you can expect to profit heavily from at least a few of those opportunities if you develop the wisdom and will to seize them. At any rate, “surfing” is a very powerful model.

However, Berkshire Hathaway , by and large, does not invest in these people that are “surfing” on complicated technology. After all, we’re cranky and idiosyncratic—as you may have noticed.

And Warren and I don’t feel like we have any great advantage in the high-tech sector. In fact, we feel like we’re at a big disadvantage in trying to understand the nature of technical developments in software, computer chips or what have you. So we tend to avoid that stuff, based on our personal inadequacies.

Again, that is a very, very powerful idea. Every person is going to have a circle of competence. And it’s going to be very hard to advance that circle. If I had to make my living as a musician…. I can’t even think of a level low enough to describe where I would be sorted out to if music were the measuring standard of the civilization.

So you have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as close to certain as any prediction that you can make. You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.

If you want to be the best tennis player in the world, you may start out trying and soon find out that it’s hopeless—that other people blow right by you. However, if you want to become the best plumbing contractor in Bemidji, that is probably doable by two-thirds of you. It takes a will. It takes the intelligence. But after a while, you’d gradually know all about the plumbing business in Bemidji and master the art. That is an attainable objective, given enough discipline.

And people who could never win a chess tournament or stand in center court in a respectable tennis tournament can rise quite high in life by slowly developing a circle of competence—which results partly from what they were born with and partly from what they slowly develop through work.

So some edges can be acquired. And the game of life to some extent for most of us is trying to be something like a good plumbing contractor in Bemidji. Very few of us are chosen to win the world’s chess tournaments.

Some of you may find opportunities “surfing” along in the new high-tech fields—the Intels, the Microsofts and so on. The fact that we don’t think we’re very good at it and have pretty well stayed out of it doesn’t mean that it’s irrational for you to do it.

Well, so much for the basic microeconomics models, a little bit of psychology, a little bit of mathematics, helping create what I call the general substructure of worldly wisdom. Now, if you want to go on from carrots to dessert, I’ll turn to stock picking—trying to draw on this general worldly wisdom as we go.

I don’t want to get into emerging markets, bond arbitrage and so forth. I’m talking about nothing but plain vanilla stock picking. That, believe me, is complicated enough. And I’m talking about common stock picking.

The first question is, “What is the nature of the stock market?” And that gets you directly to this efficient market theory that got to be the rage—a total rage—long after I graduated from law school.

And it’s rather interesting because one of the greatest economists of the world is a substantial shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway and has been for a long time. His textbook always taught that the stock market was perfectly efficient and that nobody could beat it. But his own money went into Berkshire and made him wealthy. So, like Pascal in his famous wager, he hedged his bet.

Is the stock market so efficient that people can’t beat it? Well, the efficient market theory is obviously roughly right—meaning that markets are quite efficient and it’s quite hard for anybody to beat the market by significant margins as a stock picker by just being intelligent and working in a disciplined way.

Indeed, the average result has to be the average result. By definition, everybody can’t beat the market. As I always say, the iron rule of life is that only 20% of the people can be in the top fifth. That’s just the way it is. So the answer is that it’s partly efficient and partly inefficient.

And, by the way, I have a name for people who went to the extreme efficient market theory—which is “bonkers”. It was an intellectually consistent theory that enabled them to do pretty mathematics. So I understand its seductiveness to people with large mathematical gifts. It just had a difficulty in that the fundamental assumption did not tie properly to reality.

Again, to the man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If you’re good at manipulating higher mathematics in a consistent way, why not make an assumption which enables you to use your tool?

The model I like—to sort of simplify the notion of what goes on in a market for common stocks—is the pari-mutuel system at the racetrack. If you stop to think about it, a pari-mutuel system is a market. Everybody goes there and bets and the odds change based on what’s bet. That’s what happens in the stock market.

Any damn fool can see that a horse carrying a light weight with a wonderful win rate and a good post position etc., etc. is way more likely to win than a horse with a terrible record and extra weight and so on and so on. But if you look at the odds, the bad horse pays 100 to 1, whereas the good horse pays 3 to 2. Then it’s not clear which is statistically the best bet using the mathematics of Fermat and Pascal. The prices have changed in such a way that it’s very hard to beat the system.

And then the track is taking 17% off the top. So not only do you have to outwit all the other betters, but you’ve got to outwit them by such a big margin that on average, you can afford to take 17% of your gross bets off the top and give it to the house before the rest of your money can be put to work.

Given those mathematics, is it possible to beat the horses only using one’s intelligence? Intelligence should give some edge, because lots of people who don’t know anything go out and bet lucky numbers and so forth. Therefore, somebody who really thinks about nothing but horse performance and is shrewd and mathematical could have a very considerable edge, in the absence of the frictional cost caused by the house take.

Unfortunately, what a shrewd horseplayer’s edge does in most cases is to reduce his average loss over a season of betting from the 17% that he would lose if he got the average result to maybe 10%. However, there are actually a few people who can beat the game after paying the full 17%.

I used to play poker when I was young with a guy who made a substantial living doing nothing but bet harness races…. Now, harness racing is a relatively inefficient market. You don’t have the depth of intelligence betting on harness races that you do on regular races. What my poker pal would do was to think about harness races as his main profession. And he would bet only occasionally when he saw some mispriced bet available. And by doing that, after paying the full handle to the house—which I presume was around 17%—he made a substantial living.

You have to say that’s rare. However, the market was not perfectly efficient. And if it weren’t for that big 17% handle, lots of people would regularly be beating lots of other people at the horse races. It’s efficient, yes. But it’s not perfectly efficient. And with enough shrewdness and fanaticism, some people will get better results than others.

The stock market is the same way—except that the house handle is so much lower. If you take transaction costs—the spread between the bid and the ask plus the commissions—and if you don’t trade too actively, you’re talking about fairly low transaction costs. So that with enough fanaticism and enough discipline, some of the shrewd people are going to get way better results than average in the nature of things.

It is not a bit easy. And, of course, 50% will end up in the bottom half and 70% will end up in the bottom 70%. But some people will have an advantage. And in a fairly low transaction cost operation, they will get better than average results in stock picking.

How do you get to be one of those who is a winner—in a relative sense—instead of a loser?

Here again, look at the pari-mutuel system. I had dinner last night by absolute accident with the president of Santa Anita. He says that there are two or three betters who have a credit arrangement with them, now that they have off-track betting, who are actually beating the house. They’re sending money out net after the full handle—a lot of it to Las Vegas, by the way—to people who are actually winning slightly, net, after paying the full handle. They’re that shrewd about something with as much unpredictability as horse racing.

And the one thing that all those winning betters in the whole history of people who’ve beaten the pari-mutuel system have is quite simple. They bet very seldom.
It’s not given to human beings to have such talent that they can just know everything about everything all the time. But it is given to human beings who work hard at it—who look and sift the world for a mispriced be—that they can occasionally find one.

And the wise ones bet heavily when the world offers them that opportunity. They bet big when they have the odds. And the rest of the time, they don’t. It’s just that simple.

That is a very simple concept. And to me it’s obviously right—based on experience not only from the pari-mutuel system, but everywhere else.

And yet, in investment management, practically nobody operates that way. We operate that way—I’m talking about Buffett and Munger. And we’re not alone in the world. But a huge majority of people have some other crazy construct in their heads. And instead of waiting for a near cinch and loading up, they apparently ascribe to the theory that if they work a little harder or hire more business school students, they’ll come to know everything about everything all the time.

To me, that’s totally insane. The way to win is to work, work, work, work and hope to have a few insights.

How many insights do you need? Well, I’d argue: that you don’t need many in a lifetime. If you look at Berkshire Hathaway and all of its accumulated billions, the top ten insights account for most of it. And that’s with a very brilliant man—Warren’s a lot more able than I am and very disciplined—devoting his lifetime to it. I don’t mean to say that he’s only had ten insights. I’m just saying, that most of the money came from ten insights.

So you can get very remarkable investment results if you think more like a winning pari-mutuel player. Just think of it as a heavy odds against game full of craziness with an occasional mispriced something or other. And you’re probably not going to be smart enough to find thousands in a lifetime. And when you get a few, you really load up. It’s just that simple.

When Warren lectures at business schools, he says, “I could improve your ultimate financial welfare by giving you a ticket with only 20 slots in it so that you had 20 punches—representing all the investments that you got to make in a lifetime. And once you’d punched through the card, you couldn’t make any more investments at all.”

He says, “Under those rules, you’d really think carefully about what you did and you’d be forced to load up on what you’d really thought about. So you’d do so much better.”

Again, this is a concept that seems perfectly obvious to me. And to Warren it seems perfectly obvious. But this is one of the very few business classes in the U.S. where anybody will be saying so. It just isn’t the conventional wisdom.

To me, it’s obvious that the winner has to bet very selectively. It’s been obvious to me since very early in life. I don’t know why it’s not obvious to very many other people.

I think the reason why we got into such idiocy in investment management is best illustrated by a story that I tell about the guy who sold fishing tackle. I asked him, “My God, they’re purple and green. Do fish really take these lures?” And he said, “Mister, I don’t sell to fish.”

Investment managers are in the position of that fishing tackle salesman. They’re like the guy who was selling salt to the guy who already had too much salt. And as long as the guy will buy salt, why they’ll sell salt. But that isn’t what ordinarily works for the buyer of investment advice.

If you invested Berkshire Hathaway-style, it would be hard to get paid as an investment manager as well as they’re currently paid—because you’d be holding a block of Wal-Mart and a block of Coca-Cola and a block of something else. You’d just sit there. And the client would be getting rich. And, after a while, the client would think, “Why am I paying this guy half a percent a year on my wonderful passive holdings?”

So what makes sense for the investor is different from what makes sense for the manager. And, as usual in human affairs, what determines the behavior are incentives for the decision maker.

From all business, my favorite case on incentives is Federal Express. The heart and soul of their system—which creates the integrity of the product—is having all their airplanes come to one place in the middle of the night and shift all the packages from plane to plane. If there are delays, the whole operation can’t deliver a product full of integrity to Federal Express customers.

And it was always screwed up. They could never get it done on time. They tried everything—moral suasion, threats, you name it. And nothing worked.
Finally, somebody got the idea to pay all these people not so much an hour, but so much a shift—and when it’s all done, they can all go home. Well, their problems cleared up overnight.

So getting the incentives right is a very, very important lesson. It was not obvious to Federal Express what the solution was. But maybe now, it will hereafter more often be obvious to you.

All right, we’ve now recognized that the market is efficient as a pari-mutuel system is efficient with the favorite more likely than the long shot to do well in racing, but not necessarily give any betting advantage to those that bet on the favorite.

In the stock market, some railroad that’s beset by better competitors and tough unions may be available at one-third of its book value. In contrast, IBM in its heyday might be selling at 6 times book value. So it’s just like the pari-mutuel system. Any damn fool could plainly see that IBM had better business prospects than the railroad. But once you put the price into the formula, it wasn’t so clear anymore what was going to work best for a buyer choosing between the stocks. So it’s a lot like a pari-mutuel system. And, therefore, it gets very hard to beat.

What style should the investor use as a picker of common stocks in order to try to beat the market—in other words, to get an above average long-term result? A standard technique that appeals to a lot of people is called “sector rotation”. You simply figure out when oils are going to outperform retailers, etc., etc., etc. You just kind of flit around being in the hot sector of the market making better choices than other people. And presumably, over a long period of time, you get ahead.
However, I know of no really rich sector rotator. Maybe some people can do it. I’m not saying they can’t. All I know is that all the people I know who got rich—and I know a lot of them—did not do it that way.

The second basic approach is the one that Ben Graham used—much admired by Warren and me. As one factor, Graham had this concept of value to a private owner—what the whole enterprise would sell for if it were available. And that was calculable in many cases.

Then, if you could take the stock price and multiply it by the number of shares and get something that was one third or less of sellout value, he would say that you’ve got a lot of edge going for you. Even with an elderly alcoholic running a stodgy business, this significant excess of real value per share working for you means that all kinds of good things can happen to you. You had a huge margin of safety—as he put it—by having this big excess value going for you.

But he was, by and large, operating when the world was in shell shock from the 1930s—which was the worst contraction in the English-speaking world in about 600 years. Wheat in Liverpool, I believe, got down to something like a 600-year low, adjusted for inflation. People were so shell-shocked for a long time thereafter that Ben Graham could run his Geiger counter over this detritus from the collapse of the 1930s and find things selling below their working capital per share and so on.

And in those days, working capital actually belonged to the shareholders. If the employees were no longer useful, you just sacked them all, took the working capital and stuck it in the owners’ pockets. That was the way capitalism then worked.

Nowadays, of course, the accounting is not realistic because the minute the business starts contracting, significant assets are not there. Under social norms and the new legal rules of the civilization, so much is owed to the employees that, the minute the enterprise goes into reverse, some of the assets on the balance sheet aren’t there anymore.

Now, that might not be true if you run a little auto dealership yourself. You may be able to run it in such a way that there’s no health plan and this and that so that if the business gets lousy, you can take your working capital and go home. But IBM can’t, or at least didn’t. Just look at what disappeared from its balance sheet when it decided that it had to change size both because the world had changed technologically and because its market position had deteriorated.

And in terms of blowing it, IBM is some example. Those were brilliant, disciplined people. But there was enough turmoil in technological change that IBM got bounced off the wave after “surfing” successfully for 60 years. And that was some collapse—an object lesson in the difficulties of technology and one of the reasons why Buffett and Munger don’t like technology very much. We don’t think we’re any good at it, and strange things can happen.

At any rate, the trouble with what I call the classic Ben Graham concept is that gradually the world wised up and those real obvious bargains disappeared. You could run your Geiger counter over the rubble and it wouldn’t click.

But such is the nature of people who have a hammer—to whom, as I mentioned, every problem looks like a nail that the Ben Graham followers responded by changing the calibration on their Geiger counters. In effect, they started defining a bargain in a different way. And they kept changing the definition so that they could keep doing what they’d always done. And it still worked pretty well. So the Ben Graham intellectual system was a very good one.

Of course, the best part of it all was his concept of “Mr. Market”. Instead of thinking the market was efficient, he treated it as a manic-depressive who comes by every day. And some days he says, “I’ll sell you some of my interest for way less than you think it’s worth.” And other days, “Mr. Market” comes by and says, “I’ll buy your interest at a price that’s way higher than you think it’s worth.” And you get the option of deciding whether you want to buy more, sell part of what you already have or do nothing at all.

To Graham, it was a blessing to be in business with a manic-depressive who gave you this series of options all the time. That was a very significant mental construct. And it’s been very useful to Buffett, for instance, over his whole adult lifetime.

However, if we’d stayed with classic Graham the way Ben Graham did it, we would never have had the record we have. And that’s because Graham wasn’t trying to do what we did.

For example, Graham didn’t want to ever talk to management. And his reason was that, like the best sort of professor aiming his teaching at a mass audience, he was trying to invent a system that anybody could use. And he didn’t feel that the man in the street could run around and talk to managements and learn things. He also had a concept that the management would often couch the information very shrewdly to mislead. Therefore, it was very difficult. And that is still true, of course—human nature being what it is.

And so having started out as Grahamites which, by the way, worked fine—we gradually got what I would call better insights. And we realized that some company that was selling at 2 or 3 times book value could still be a hell of a bargain because of momentums implicit in its position, sometimes combined with an unusual managerial skill plainly present in some individual or other, or some system or other.

And once we’d gotten over the hurdle of recognizing that a thing could be a bargain based on quantitative measures that would have horrified Graham, we started thinking about better businesses.

And, by the way, the bulk of the billions in Berkshire Hathaway have come from the better businesses. Much of the first $200 or $300 million came from scrambling around with our Geiger counter. But the great bulk of the money has come from the great businesses.

And even some of the early money was made by being temporarily present in great businesses. Buffett Partnership, for example, owned American Express and Disney when they got pounded down.

Most investment managers are in a game where the clients expect them to know a lot about a lot of things. We didn’t have any clients who could fire us at Berkshire Hathaway. So we didn’t have to be governed by any such construct. And we came to this notion of finding a mispriced bet and loading up when we were very confident that we were right. So we’re way less diversified. And I think our system is miles better.

However, in all fairness, I don’t think a lot of money managers could successfully sell their services if they used our system. But if you’re investing for 40 years in some pension fund, what difference does it make if the path from start to finish is a little more bumpy or a little different than everybody else’s so long as it’s all going to work out well in the end? So what if there’s a little extra volatility.

In investment management today, everybody wants not only to win, but to have a yearly outcome path that never diverges very much from a standard path except on the upside. Well, that is a very artificial, crazy construct. That’s the equivalent in investment management to the custom of binding the feet of Chinese women. It’s the equivalent of what Nietzsche meant when he criticized the man who had a lame leg and was proud of it.

That is really hobbling yourself. Now, investment managers would say, “We have to be that way. That’s how we’re measured.” And they may be right in terms of the way the business is now constructed. But from the viewpoint of a rational consumer, the whole system’s “bonkers” and draws a lot of talented people into socially useless activity.

And the Berkshire system is not “bonkers”. It’s so damned elementary that even bright people are going to have limited, really valuable insights in a very competitive world when they’re fighting against other very bright, hardworking people.

And it makes sense to load up on the very few good insights you have instead of pretending to know everything about everything at all times. You’re much more likely to do well if you start out to do something feasible instead of something that isn’t feasible. Isn’t that perfectly obvious?

How many of you have 56 brilliant ideas in which you have equal confidence? Raise your hands, please. How many of you have two or three insights that you have some confidence in? I rest my case.

I’d say that Berkshire Hathaway’s system is adapting to the nature of the investment problem as it really is.

We’ve really made the money out of high quality businesses. In some cases, we bought the whole business. And in some cases, we just bought a big block of stock. But when you analyze what happened, the big money’s been made in the high quality businesses. And most of the other people who’ve made a lot of money have done so in high quality businesses.

Over the long term, it’s hard for a stock to earn a much better return than the business which underlies it earns. If the business earns 6% on capital over 40 years and you hold it for that 40 years, you’re not going to make much different than a 6% return—even if you originally buy it at a huge discount. Conversely, if a business earns 18% on capital over 20 or 30 years, even if you pay an expensive looking price, you’ll end up with a fine result.

So the trick is getting into better businesses. And that involves all of these advantages of scale that you could consider momentum effects.

How do you get into these great companies? One method is what I’d call the method of finding them small get ‘em when they’re little. For example, buy Wal-Mart when Sam Walton first goes public and so forth. And a lot of people try to do just that. And it’s a very beguiling idea. If I were a young man, I might actually go into it.

But it doesn’t work for Berkshire Hathaway anymore because we’ve got too much money. We can’t find anything that fits our size parameter that way. Besides, we’re set in our ways. But I regard finding them small as a perfectly intelligent approach for somebody to try with discipline. It’s just not something that I’ve done.

Finding ‘em big obviously is very hard because of the competition. So far, Berkshire’s managed to do it. But can we continue to do it? What’s the next Coca-Cola investment for us? Well, the answer to that is I don’t know. I think it gets harder for us all the time….

And ideally and we’ve done a lot of this—you get into a great business which also has a great manager because management matters. For example, it’s made a great difference to General Electric that Jack Welch came in instead of the guy who took over Westinghouse—a very great difference. So management matters, too.

And some of it is predictable. I do not think it takes a genius to understand that Jack Welch was a more insightful person and a better manager than his peers in other companies. Nor do I think it took tremendous genius to understand that Disney had basic momentums in place which are very powerful and that Eisner and Wells were very unusual managers.

So you do get an occasional opportunity to get into a wonderful business that’s being run by a wonderful manager. And, of course, that’s hog heaven day. If you don’t load up when you get those opportunities, it’s a big mistake.

Occasionally, you’ll find a human being who’s so talented that he can do things that ordinary skilled mortals can’t. I would argue that Simon Marks—who was second generation in Marks & Spencer of England—was such a man. Patterson was such a man at National Cash Register. And Sam Walton was such a man.

These people do come along—and in many cases, they’re not all that hard to identify. If they’ve got a reasonable hand—with the fanaticism and intelligence and so on that these people generally bring to the party—then management can matter much.

However, averaged out, betting on the quality of a business is better than betting on the quality of management. In other words, if you have to choose one, bet on the business momentum, not the brilliance of the manager.

But, very rarely, you find a manager who’s so good that you’re wise to follow him into what looks like a mediocre business.

Another very simple effect I very seldom see discussed either by investment managers or anybody else is the effect of taxes. If you’re going to buy something which compounds for 30 years at 15% per annum and you pay one 35% tax at the very end, the way that works out is that after taxes, you keep 13.3% per annum.

In contrast, if you bought the same investment, but had to pay taxes every year of 35% out of the 15% that you earned, then your return would be 15% minus 35% of 15%—or only 9.75% per year compounded. So the difference there is over 3.5%. And what 3.5% does to the numbers over long holding periods like 30 years is truly eye-opening. If you sit back for long, long stretches in great companies, you can get a huge edge from nothing but the way that income taxes work.

Even with a 10% per annum investment, paying a 35% tax at the end gives you 8.3% after taxes as an annual compounded result after 30 years. In contrast, if you pay the 35% each year instead of at the end, your annual result goes down to 6.5%. So you add nearly 2% of after-tax return per annum if you only achieve an average return by historical standards from common stock investments in companies with tiny dividend payout ratios.

But in terms of business mistakes that I’ve seen over a long lifetime, I would say that trying to minimize taxes too much is one of the great standard causes of really dumb mistakes. I see terrible mistakes from people being overly motivated by tax considerations.

Warren and I personally don’t drill oil wells. We pay our taxes. And we’ve done pretty well, so far. Anytime somebody offers you a tax shelter from here on in life, my advice would be don’t buy it.

In fact, any time anybody offers you anything with a big commission and a 200-page prospectus, don’t buy it. Occasionally, you’ll be wrong if you adopt “Munger’s Rule”. However, over a lifetime, you’ll be a long way ahead—and you will miss a lot of unhappy experiences that might otherwise reduce your love for your fellow man.

There are huge advantages for an individual to get into a position where you make a few great investments and just sit back and wait: You’re paying less to brokers. You’re listening to less nonsense. And if it works, the governmental tax system gives you an extra 1, 2 or 3 percentage points per annum compounded.

And you think that most of you are going to get that much advantage by hiring investment counselors and paying them 1% to run around, incurring a lot of taxes on your behalf’? Lots of luck.

Are there any dangers in this philosophy? Yes. Everything in life has dangers. Since it’s so obvious that investing in great companies works, it gets horribly overdone from time to time. In the “Nifty-Fifty” days, everybody could tell which companies were the great ones. So they got up to 50, 60 and 70 times earnings. And just as IBM fell off the wave, other companies did, too. Thus, a large investment disaster resulted from too high prices. And you’ve got to be aware of that danger….

So there are risks. Nothing is automatic and easy. But if you can find some fairly-priced great company and buy it and sit, that tends to work out very, very well indeed—especially for an individual,

Within the growth stock model, there’s a sub-position: There are actually businesses, that you will find a few times in a lifetime, where any manager could raise the return enormously just by raising prices—and yet they haven’t done it. So they have huge untapped pricing power that they’re not using. That is the ultimate no-brainer.

That existed in Disney. It’s such a unique experience to take your grandchild to Disneyland. You’re not doing it that often. And there are lots of people in the country. And Disney found that it could raise those prices a lot and the attendance stayed right up.

So a lot of the great record of Eisner and Wells was utter brilliance but the rest came from just raising prices at Disneyland and Disneyworld and through video cassette sales of classic animated movies.

At Berkshire Hathaway, Warren and I raised the prices of See’s Candy a little faster than others might have. And, of course, we invested in Coca-Cola—which had some
untapped pricing power. And it also had brilliant management. So a Goizueta and Keough could do much more than raise prices. It was perfect.

You will get a few opportunities to profit from finding underpricing. There are actually people out there who don’t price everything as high as the market will easily stand. And once you figure that out, it’s like finding in the street—if you have the courage of your convictions.

If you look at Berkshire’s investments where a lot of the money’s been made and you look for the models, you can see that we twice bought into twonewspaper towns which have since become onenewspaper towns. So we made a bet to some extent….

In one of those—The Washington Post—we bought it at about 20% of the value to a private owner. So we bought it on a Ben Grahamstyle basis—at onefifth of obvious value—and, in addition, we faced a situation where you had both the top hand in a game that was clearly going to end up with one winner and a management with a lot of integrity and intelligence. That one was a real dream. They’re very high class people—the Katharine Graham family. That’s why it was a dream—an absolute, damn dream.

Of course, that came about back in ‘73-74. And that was almost like 1932. That was probably a once-in-40-yearstype denouement in the markets. That investment’s up about 50 times over our cost.

If I were you, I wouldn’t count on getting any investment in your lifetime quite as good as The Washington Post was in ‘73 and ‘74.

But it doesn’t have to be that good to take care of you.

Let me mention another model. Of course, Gillette and Coke make fairly lowpriced items and have a tremendous marketing advantage all over the world. And in Gillette’s case, they keep surfing along new technology which is fairly simple by the standards of microchips. But it’s hard for competitors to do.

So they’ve been able to stay constantly near the edge of improvements in shaving. There are whole countries where Gillette has more than 90% of the shaving market.
GEICO is a very interesting model. It’s another one of the 100 or so models you ought to have in your head. I’ve had many friends in the sick business fixup game over a long lifetime. And they practically all use the following formula—I call it the cancer surgery formula:

They look at this mess. And they figure out if there’s anything sound left that can live on its own if they cut away everything else. And if they find anything sound, they just cut away everything else. Of course, if that doesn’t work, they liquidate the business. But it frequently does work.

And GEICO had a perfectly magnificent business submerged in a mess, but still working. Misled by success, GEICO had done some foolish things. They got to thinking that, because they were making a lot of money, they knew everything. And they suffered huge losses.

All they had to do was to cut out all the folly and go back to the perfectly wonderful business that was lying there. And when you think about it, that’s a very simple model. And it’s repeated over and over again.

And, in GEICO’s case, think about all the money we passively made…. It was a wonderful business combined with a bunch of foolishness that could easily be cut out. And people were coming in who were temperamentally and intellectually designed so they were going to cut it out. That is a model you want to look for.

And you may find one or two or three in a long lifetime that are very good. And you may find 20 or 30 that are good enough to be quite useful.

Finally, I’d like to once again talk about investment management. That is a funny business because on a net basis, the whole investment management business together gives no value added to all buyers combined. That’s the way it has to work.

Of course, that isn’t true of plumbing and it isn’t true of medicine. If you’re going to make your careers in the investment management business, you face a very peculiar situation. And most investment managers handle it with psychological denial just like a chiropractor. That is the standard method of handling the limitations of the investment management process. But if you want to live the best sort of life, I would urge each of you not to use the psychological denial mode.

I think a select few—a small percentage of the investment managers—can deliver value added. But I don’t think brilliance alone is enough to do it. I think that you have to have a little of this discipline of calling your shots and loading up—you want to maximize your chances of becoming one who provides above average real returns for clients over the long pull.

But I’m just talking about investment managers engaged in common stock picking. I am agnostic elsewhere. I think there may well be people who are so shrewd about currencies and this, that and the other thing that they can achieve good longterm records operating on a pretty big scale in that way. But that doesn’t happen to be my milieu. I’m talking about stock picking in American stocks.

I think it’s hard to provide a lot of value added to the investment management client, but it’s not impossible.

I hope I have not broken any copyright laws. I take the risk only because I don’t want to not be able to find this article when I need to re-read it.

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.

Gurumurthy concludes with

Manmohan Singh today does what Sonia wants like Narasimha Rao did then what she wanted. Yet, there is a difference between how the two obliged her. Rao felt shy to do what she wanted. So he did it stealthily. Singh does what she wants openly and shamelessly. Even, a Sonia family retainer like H R Bharadwaj feels shy to own up the shameless withdrawal of the Red Corner Notice on Q; but the PM owns it proudly. Singh is shameless about what Rao used to feel shy. Why? Unlike Rao, Singh is not an elected prime minister but a nominated one; he is not chosen by democratic process, but selected by the dynasty; he is not backed by the people, but backed by the family. So the shift from shyness to shamelessness, from Rao to Singh .

Fortunately, Mr Singh is a Sikh and does not have to shave. He does not have to face himself. But one does wonder how he shows his face in public, though. Perhaps he minimizes his public expose. That could explain why he never contests elections. At some level, the sadness one feels for him is mixed in with heaps of contempt and pity.

Still I find it hard to believe that people actually vote for a party which has him as a member. What does it say about those voters? Some things are best not delved into too deeply.

Post script: Please do read “A Self-confessed Slave” — a post about Mr Manmohan Singh.

I have an excerpt from the piece below the fold. I agree with the particulars that Sally (who is director of the European Centre for International Political Economy) mentions supporting the argument that Manmohan Singh is a singular disaster but I cannot agree with the title of the piece.

The Congress party has been in power for decades, an order of magnitude longer than any other party. India is in dire straits, never mind the hype to the contrary. The Congress party brought it about. But they were not thrust upon India by divine intervention or providence. The people of India exercising their democratic right repeatedly voted them into power. A certain segment of Indians in their wisdom (or crass stupidity, depending on how you look at it) have determined that anyone, no matter how demented or retarded, as long as they had the last name Gandhi, was divinely ordained to rule India and have exercised their choice in voting for the Congress party. They will most likely do so again, sickening though the thought is.

The Congress party can be blamed for a lot of things but they are not exceptional in their greed for power. That is common to the human lot. If blame has to be assigned at all, it must surely lie within the Indian public. Regardless of whether the Congress deserves to win or lose, the sad fact is that the Indians deserve the Congress. That’s just deserts.

And now for the extended excerpt from Razeen Sally.

The government’s response to the present global economic crisis was to introduce further market-distorting restrictions, including higher tariffs, anti-dumping duties and assorted non-tariff import barriers.

Finally, the Congress party entered the general election campaign with pledges to expand its hugely wasteful rural employment guarantee programme and increase food subsidies.

The government has squandered the boom years, left the country more vulnerable to malign global economic conditions and compromised prospects for a healthy recovery. But Manmohan Singh and his “dream team” have been given an easy ride: they have escaped blame, especially outside India. The conventional excuse is that their hands are tied by Sonia Gandhi and her Congress coterie, and by coalition politics.

This explanation just does not wash. Mr Singh has impeccable academic credentials and is by all accounts incorruptible. He deserves credit for his performance as finance minister in the 1990s – although credit should also go to Narasimha Rao, then prime minister, who took the tough decisions.

But Mr Singh has proved a hopeless decision-maker as prime minister. Sadly, he proves the rule that academics should generally be “on tap” but not “on top”.

The whole reform programme relies on the prime minister himself. Mr Rao and A.B. Vajpayee proved their mettle, despite heavy political constraints. Mr Singh has failed; he should bear much of the blame. The Congress party does not deserve to be re-elected and the dream team does not deserve to continue in office. An alternative BJP-led government may do better if it has a decisive leader with a core of able reformers. It will not if its leader follows the dictates of short-term opportunism and messy coalition politics.

Nevertheless, the failures of the Congress-led government should be put into a larger institutional context. The Indian state, led by a venal political-bureaucratic elite, remains unreformed. State institutions – the political class, political parties, parliaments, the bureaucracy, the judiciary – have got worse at both national and state levels. Since the late 1980s, “stealth” reforms have taken place outside the state. But India cannot be expected to grow fast with such shaky foundations. The upshot is that much-needed market reforms cannot continue to skirt round the reform of the state itself. Politically, that is the hardest nut to crack.

It’s all karma, neh?

The article is a must-read. Punj points out that Dr Singh is deliberately kept directly unelected. “Even during the five years that he has been the Prime Minster, the party chose to play safe and again got him in through Assam. Was that deliberate to keep him weak lest he gets elected directly and challenges the family’s heirloom?”

Whether personal or societal, transformations generally require will and vision. In the case of personal transformation, unless one is a schizophrenic, a combination of intelligence, basic human values, determination, foresight and will is sufficient. For social transformation, something more is needed. Clearly leadership matters.

Here’s something to think about. Below the fold is an extended excerpt from the book, “Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas” by Kwang, Tan and Fernandez. Indian leaders ought to take note. Or at the very least, they should read what Lee Kuan Yew has accomplished.

When Lee Kuan Yew wanted Singapore to become a garden city, to soften the harshness of life in one of the world’s most densely populated countries, he did not write a memorandum to the environment minister or to the head of the agency responsible for parks and trees.

He did not form a committee nor seek outside help to hire the best landscapists money could buy. For one thing, in the 1960s, when he was thinking of these matters, money was in short supply. In fact, having been unceremoniously booted out of Malaysia, the country’s economic survival was hanging in the balance. For another, there was no environment minister to speak of then, so low down in the list of priorities were these matters. When jobs had to be created and communists fought in the streets, only the birds were interested in flowers and trees.

But Lee was interested. And he became personally involved in the project of transforming Singapore from just concrete and steel to concrete, steel, trees, shrubs, flowers and parks. He would become personally knowledgeable about soil and vegetation, trees and drainage, climate and fertilisers. And he surveyed the world for ideas, taking advantage of his travels abroad to look out for them. In France, for example, he discovered that the broad tree-lined boulevards were possible because a drainage system had been built below the pavements. Around each tree was a metal grating through which surface water flowed into the underground system.

The problem of the grass in Singapore, which everyone could see in the bald, yellow football fields, needed a nationwide solution. When he saw beautiful rolling meadows in New Zealand he was moved to ask for the services of two experts from the country under the Colombo Plan technical assistance scheme. Lee was told that Singapore did not have a grassland climate in which rain fell gently from the skies. Instead, being part of an equatorial region, it experienced torrential rainfall that would wash off the topsoil and with it the vital nutrients necessary for strong plant growth. In an equatorial forest, with tall big trees forming a canopy, the rain water drips down. But in Singapore, where the trees had been chopped down, it would all come down in a big wash.

But Lee was not one to let climate get in the way. Fertilisers would replenish the soil, and so began the task of making compost from rubbish dumps, adding calcium, and lime where the ground was too acidic.

Years later, when economic survival was no longer an issue and Singapore’s success was acknowledged worldwide, he was still working at it to make the garden city possible. When expressways and flyovers sprouted all over the island, he had officials look for plants which could survive below the flyovers where the sun seldom shone. And instead of having to water these plants regularly, which was costly, he got them to devise a way to channel water from the roads, after filtering it to get rid of the oil and grime from the traffic above.

The constant search for solutions would not end. When development intensifed even further and the roads and flyovers became broader still, shutting out the light completely from the plants below, he did not give up. The road was split into two so there would be a gap in the middle with enough space for sunshine and rain to seep through and greenery and vegetation to thrive below. “I sent them on missions all along the Equator and the tropical, subtropical zones, looking for new types of trees, plants, creepers and so on. From Africa, the Caribbean, Latin, Middle, Central America, we’ve come back with new plants. It’s a very small sum. But if you get the place greened up, if you get all those creepers up, you take away the heat, you’ll have a different city,” he said.

Making Singapore a different city! That has been Lee’s constant obsession. Even when the difference had to do with trees and flowers, subjects which one would not normally associate with the man who has been at Singapore’s helm for 38 years, 31 of which he served as prime minister, his approach to the problem has been typically hardheaded and pragmatic. For him, the object of the exercise was not all about smelling roses. In the end it was about keeping Singapore ahead of the competition. A well kept garden, he would say, is a daily effort, and would demonstrate to outsiders the people’s ability to organise and to be systematic. “The grass has got to be mown every other day, the trees have to be tended, the flowers in the gardens have to be looked after so they know this place gives attention to detail.” [Source.]

You will find a collection of evolution related segments here.

In honor of Charles Darwin turning 200 years young today (you don’t look a day over 139, Chuck!), I’ve assembled some of the finest evolution-related clips from The Daily Show’s history. I have to say though, I have some misgivings about this, because I don’t believe I descended from some damn monkeys. No, I believe we all descended from space-pandas, like it says in The Bible.

How’s this for a coincidence? Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born in the same year, on the same day: Feb. 12, 1809. As historical facts go, it amounts to little more than a footnote. Still, while it’s just a coincidence, it’s a coincidence that’s guaranteed to make you do a double take the first time you run across it. Everybody knows Darwin and Lincoln were near-mythic figures in the 19th century. But who ever thinks of them in tandem? Who puts the theory of evolution and the Civil War in the same sentence? Why would you, unless you’re writing your dissertation on epochal events in the 19th century? But instinctively, we want to say that they belong together. It’s not just because they were both great men, and not because they happen to be exact coevals. Rather, it’s because the scientist and the politician each touched off a revolution that changed the world.

. . .

Darwin, the man who would almost singlehandedly redefine biological science, started out as an amateur naturalist, a beetle collector, a rockhound, a 22-year-old rich-kid dilettante who, after flirting with the idea of being first a physician and then a preacher, was allowed to ship out with the Beagle as someone who might supply good conversation at the captain’s table. His father had all but ordered him not to go to sea, worrying that it was nothing more than one of Charles’s lengthening list of aimless exploits—years before, Dr. Darwin had scolded his teenage son, saying, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.”

. . .

Lincoln was self-made in the more conventional sense—a walking, talking embodiment of the frontier myth made good. Like Darwin, Lincoln was not a quick study. Both men worked slowly to master a subject. But both had restless, hungry minds. After about a year of schooling as a boy—and that spread out in dribs and drabs of three months here and four months there—Lincoln taught himself. He mastered trigonometry (for work as a surveyor), he read Blackstone on his own to become a lawyer. He memorized swaths of the Bible and Shakespeare. At the age of 40, after he had already served a term in the U.S. House of Representatives, he undertook Euclidean geometry as a mental exercise. After a while, his myth becomes a little much—he actually was born in a log cabin with a dirt floor—so much that we begin looking for flaws, and they’re there: the bad marriage, some maladroit comments on racial inferiority.

. . .

Darwin seems to have been able to think only with a pen in his hand. He was a compulsive note taker and list maker. He made an extensive list setting down the pros and cons of marriage before he proposed to his future wife. His first published work, “The Voyage of the Beagle,” is a tidied-up version of the log he kept on the five-year trip around the world, and he is unflaggingly meticulous in his observations of the plant and animal life he saw or collected along the way. To live, for Darwin, meant looking and examining and then writing down what he saw and then trying to make sense of it.

. . .

What [Darwin] did not have was a controlling mechanism for this process. It was not until two years later [in 1838] that he conceived the idea of natural selection, after reading economist Thomas Malthus on the competition for resources among humans brought on by the inexorable demands of overpopulation. There he had it: a theory of everything that actually worked. Species evolve and the ones best adapted to their environment thrive and leave more offspring, crowding out the rest.

. . .

Like Darwin, Lincoln was a compulsive scribbler, forever jotting down phrases, notes and ideas on scraps of paper, then squirreling the notes away in a coat pocket, a desk drawer—or sometimes his hat—where they would collect until he found a use for them in a letter, a speech or a document.

. . .

Lincoln’s political genius stood on two pillars: he possessed an uncanny awareness of what could be done at any given moment, and he had the ability to change his mind, to adapt to circumstances, to grow. This is Lincoln in 1838, addressing the Springfield Young Men’s Lyceum on a citizen’s obligations to the legal system with such lines as, “Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap.” Here he is not quite 30 years later in the Second Inaugural of 1865 (there’s a mother and child in this one, too, but what a difference): “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Allow me to interject here. His words, “With malice toward none; with charity for all” are the words of a buddha. Those are words that only a person who profoundly understands dharma can utter, a dharma that is based on universal values. “Sarve bhavantu sukhinah, Sarve santu niraamayaah“.

There is no doubt that Lincoln believed in some god but it is equally doubtless that it was not the monotheistic god. Belief in the monotheistic god does not allow universal benevolence; in fact, monotheism compels its followers to be ruthless towards all who don’t believe in one specific god. The prophets and founders of the monotheistic religions have never expressed any sentiments that come even remotely close to universal benevolence.

Now back to the bits from the article.

Lincoln and Darwin were both revolutionaries, in the sense that both men upended realities that prevailed when they were born. They seem—and sound—modern to us, because the world they left behind them is more or less the one we still live in. So, considering the joint magnitude of their contributions—and the coincidence of their conjoined birthdays—it is hard not to wonder: who was the greater man? It’s an apples-and-oranges—or Superman-vs.-Santa—comparison. But if you limit the question to influence, it bears pondering, all the more if you turn the question around and ask, what might have happened if one of these men had not been born? Very quickly the balance tips in Lincoln’s favor. As much of a bombshell as Darwin detonated, and as great as his book on evolution is (E. O. Wilson calls it “the greatest scientific book of all time”), it does no harm to remember that he hurried to publish “The Origin of Species” because he thought he was about to be scooped by his fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who had independently come up with much the same idea of evolution through natural selection. In other words, there was a certain inevitability to Darwin’s theory. Ideas about evolution surfaced throughout the first part of the 19th century, and while none of them was as cogent as Darwin’s—until Wallace came along—it was not as though he was the only man who had the idea.

Lincoln, in contrast, is sui generis. Take him out of the picture, and there is no telling what might have happened to the country.

. . .

Their identical birthdays afford us a superb opportunity to observe these men in the shared context of their time—how each was shaped by his circumstances, how each reacted to the beliefs that steered the world into which he was born and ultimately how each reshaped his corner of that world and left it irrevocably changed.

Malcom Jones ends his article with his answer to the question of who was the more important of the two. He says that Lincoln was the greater of the two men. But then he would say that considering that Jones is an American and Lincoln defines the US more than most leaders have ever defined their countries.

My position is that both these men were incomparable — to others of course but even relative to each other.

Darwin wrote:

“To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.”

“My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding laws out of large collection of facts.”

Quotes from the Jan 2009 special issue of Scientific American on the Most Powerful Idea in Science issue.
[Image source]

Here’s what Gary Stix’s article, “Darwin’s Living Legacy”, in that issue begins with:

When the 26-year-old Charles Darwin sailed into the Galapagos Islands in 1835 onboard the HMS Beagle, he took little notice of a collection of birds that are now intimately associated with his name. The naturalist, in fact, misclassified as gosbeaks some of the birds that are now known as Darwin’s finches. After Darwin returned to England, ornithologist and artist John Gould began to make illustrations of a group of preserved bird specimens brought back in the Beagle’s hold, and the artist recognized them all to be different species of finches.

From Gould’s work, Darwin, the self-taught naturalist, came to understand how the finches’ beak size must have changed over the generations to accommodate differences in the size of seeds or insects consumed on the various islands.

What I find interesting about this little story is that it illustrates an important truth, namely, specialization matters and the collaboration among specialists is important in pushing the envelope. No single person has the wisdom and knowledge to do everything on their own. No one is really self-sufficient and most advances in any field are the result of a gradual accretion of small but significant insights given to different minds.

A leading official declared yesterday that Darwin’s theory of evolution was compatible with Christian faith, and could even be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. “In fact, what we mean by evolution is the world as created by God,” said Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

. . .

Father Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti, Professor of Theology at the Pontifical Santa Croce University in Rome, said that Darwin had been anticipated by St Augustine of Hippo. The 4th-century theologian had “never heard the term evolution, but knew that big fish eat smaller fish” and that forms of life had been transformed “slowly over time”. Aquinas had made similar observations in the Middle Ages, he added.

Exactly a 150 years after Darwin’s publication of his book on evolution is the Roman Catholic church coming around to the idea that Darwin was right, but even now they are reluctant to admit that they were wrong. It is really pathetic. Brings to mind Samuel Johnson’s lines from “The Vanity of Human Wishes“:

See Nations slowly wise, and meanly just,
To buried Merit raise the tardy Bust.

It’s really shameful how monotheism retards scientific inquiry. Large segments of the populations of the advanced industrialized world — people you would have expected to be informed and educated — believe in absolute nonsense. Here are some frightening figures that Richard Dawkins quotes:

Polls in both Britain and the United States show a majority wanting “intelligent design” to be taught in science classes. In Britain, according to MORI, only 69 per cent want evolution to be taught at all. In America, more than 40 per cent believe that “life on Earth has existed in its present form since the beginning of time” (Pew) and that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so” (Gallup).

. . . I am loath to admit, in Britain. The Guardian reported that, in February 2006, “Muslim medical students in London distributed leaflets that dismissed Darwin’s theories as false”. The Muslim leaflets were produced by the Al-Nasr Trust, a registered charity with tax-free status. The British taxpayer, that is to say, is subsidizing the systematic distribution of scientific falsehood to educational institutions. Science teachers across Britain will confirm that they are coming under slight, but growing, pressure from creationist lobbies, usually inspired by American or Islamic sources.

The US is an astonishing place. There are people who do the most cutting-edge science and there are those who build creation museums costing tens of millions of dollars.

India is not far behind, I think. Since literacy and educational levels are very low in India, I am sure that those who know of, and agree with, Darwin’s theory are fairly low. But the government of India is trying its best to dumb down the population, especially the Muslim population of the country. Recently it was decided by the UPA government that madrassa education (schools that are run by mullahs where they primarily teach Islam) is equivalent to a high school diploma (CBSE, if I recall correctly). Islam emphatically denies a rational scientific view of the world and therefore those who are indoctrinated into that faith, are condemned to wallow in the most dangerous superstitions. The madrassa eduation will ensure that those Muslims are denied a real education and thus perpetuate their dependency on government handouts and therefore guarantee their continued political patronage of the Congress government.

Feb 12, 1809 must have been an extraordinary day.

It is special for me because two of my heroes were born on that day. Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were both born on this day 200 years ago. This year, 2009, is also the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s book, On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

So I will dedicate the next couple of posts on Darwin and Lincoln.

Happy Birthday, Mr Lincoln and Happy Birthday Mr Darwin. The world is a better place for your having been here.

Gandhi cast a very long shadow on India. Mao is supposed to have replied, when asked about his opinion of the French revolution, “It is too early to tell.” The official line in India — and therefore the line parroted by the vast majority of ‘educated’ Indians — is that Gandhi was a prime factor in India gaining political independence. I think it is too early to tell whether Gandhi was good for India or not. But give it a few more decades and I am confident that Gandhi’s image will undergo a radical transformation. Satyam eva, as the old Sanskrit saying (which is India’s motto) goes, jayatey. Truth alone prevails. Eventually.

Update: Thanks to all those who pointed out that the title of the post was incorrect. I have changed the “Jan 13th” to “Jan 23rd.”

Thanks to rahushar for correcting my incorrect transcription of “satyam eva jayate.”

If India cannot have Lee Kuan Yew, it is not a problem because India has Narendra Modi. That is not quite true — Gujarat has Modi, not India.

Here’s a piece on Modi. Go read it and admire the man. (Link thanks to Prashant Kothari.)

Ram Guha wrote a funny entry in his Oslo diary with the title “Nobel Longings.” (Thanks to Sushant for the link.)

After my talk, a lady comes up and introduces herself as a doctor, and an advisor to the Peace Institute. The names I had mentioned were all very good, she said, but surely it was time that the peace prize went to an Indian? She mentions the name of a fellow townsman of mine, a man who has grown long hair, given himself four fancy initials (HH/SS), and whose name is also that of a very great exponent of the sitar.
The Norwegian doctor had heard that this man had brought peace to Kashmir, and had promoted organic agriculture in thousands of Indian villages. She had been asked to promote his candidacy for the prize, and indeed the man himself had been to Oslo several times recently. She asked me if I would give my opinion on the matter.

I answered that so far as I knew, there was no peace in Kashmir. I observed that what the West refers to as ‘organic farming’ we knew as rain-fed agriculture—and that it is nothing new. Where there was no canal water and where they had little capital, millions of Indian farmers had, for the past thousands of years, grown crops without the use of any chemicals (and without any spiritual counselling) whatsoever.

Finally, I suggested to the doctor that if not giving Gandhi the prize was a scandal, awarding it to my fellow townsman would be an even bigger scandal.

I am not a big fan of Ram Guha and I don’t see eye to eye with him on the issue of Nehru and MK Gandhi. But he appears to share my disdain for the self-promotion of His Holiness (how does one anoint oneself HH with a straight face?) Sri Sri (not once but twice!) Ravi Shankar.

Interestingly, I like Francois Gautier, even though he is a big supporter of SSRS.

Singapore, Oct 10: Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Minister Mentor, Singapore, on Friday said the PURA model advocated by the former Indian President, Mr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, will not work in bringing about India’s transformation into a developed country.

Answering a question at a session of ‘PBD Singapore’, he said, “He is a great scientist and a very powerful man. I don’t want to cross swords with him.

“But if you study very carefully how other countries have industrialised and become knowledge economies – Korea, Japan, China and Eastern Europe – you will realise you cannot bring urban amenities to rural areas.

“How can you do it? Where is the manpower? How will you get the best doctors to stay in the rural areas?”

Getting into the area of some “hard headed analysis”, he said one needed to look at the fact that while companies such as Pepsi and Citicorp were headed by Indians, “they are outside India.”

The way to do it, Mr Lee Kuan Yew said, was by rapid urbanisation as Singapore had done it (“we don’t have a single village left in Singapore”), or by planned urbanisation, as China was doing it by moving 10 million villagers to urban areas every year. “Look at Brazil: They are building huge centres, factories for making cars, aeroplanes and all kinds of things.”

Villagers are moving to these centres, he noted.

“If you look at ancient Greece – Socrates and Virgil, were they in the countryside?

“They were in the cities where all services were concentrated.”

(Link thanks to a comment by t.)

As I always argue, Singapore got lucky in the random draw for dictators and drew Lee Kuan Yew; India got unlucky and drew Nehru. (Nehru did not know much but had at least tried to educate himself, though somewhat unsuccessfully. But what he spawned — the whole uneducated khaandaan — would not know which end of a book was the correct end to start from.)

LKY is smart. He understands why urbanization matters. He has practical understanding of it. It’s interesting that Krugman who got the Bank of Sweden Prize in economics (the economics Nobel prize) has done important theoretical work on urbanization.

LKY is also very diplomatic. I like the way he says, “I would not want to cross swords with [Kalam].” Basically he means that it would be an uneven match and it would be unsportsmanlike of LKY to fight Kalam.

I think that Mr APJ Kalam was (and still is) very powerful. His PURA model was flawed from the word go and yet it got a huge amount of press and a lot of attention among the movers and shakers of industry. No one of any importance ever spoke out against it. I did but then my name is nobody. I did develop RISC before PURA came along, though. Here’s a comparison of RISC and PURA (Nov 2006).

RISC and PURA are in some sense diametrically opposed concepts. There is of course a superficial commonality of objective: economic development. But even that superficial commonality disappears once the objective is stated in more details.

PURA’s objective is based on what I would call “village centric development” while RISC is about “urban centric development.” PURA is about distributing economic activity among a group of villages and then connecting these villages so that people are constantly moving from one village to another to get something achieved. (In one version of PURA, I believe they want to connect all villages with bi-directional high speed modern alternative fuel buses — which makes me wonder why not implement PURA in Pune since this metropolis lacks a decent public transportation system.)

RISC concentrates all economic activity of a large number of villages in one location so that it can catalyze economic growth through lowered transaction costs, and economies of scale and scope are achieved. PURA attempts to keep people in 600,000 villages and disperse economic activity around the rural countryside. RISC says that the village as an economic social unit is inherently incompatible with development, and that the rural economy can be helped by urbanizing the population in place. RISC is feasible with limited resources while PURA is only possible if there is about $600 billion spare cash. RISC requires minimal government involvement, while PURA is what can be a license-permit-control-quota bureaucrat’s wet dream.

But once again, it is unsportsmanlike to pitch RISC against PURA.

Let’s get a little more wisdom from LKY. Here’s a bit from a 2005 Der Spiegel interview, “It’s Stupid to be Afraid.” (Thanks t again for the link.)

SPIEGEL: You’ve been the leader of a very successful state for a long time. Returning from your time in China, are you afraid for Singapore’s future?

Mr. Lee: I saw it coming from the late 1980s. Deng Xiaoping started this in 1978. He visited Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore in November 1978. I think that visit shocked him because he expected three backward cities. Instead he saw three modern cities and he knew that communism — the politics of the iron rice bowl — did not work. So, at the end of December, he announced his open door policy. He started free trade zones and from there, they extended it and extended it. Now they have joined the WTO and the whole country is a free trade zone.

SPIEGEL: But has China’s success not become dangerous for Singapore?

Mr. Lee: We have watched this transformation and the speed at which it is happening. As many of my people tell me, it’s scary. They learn so fast. Our people set up businesses in Shanghai or Suzhou and they employ Chinese at lower wages than Singapore Chinese. After three years, they say: “Look, I can do that work, I want the same pay.” So it is a very serious challenge for us to move aside and not collide with them. We have to move to areas where they cannot move.

SPIEGEL: Such as?

Mr. Lee: Such as where the rule of law, intellectual property and security of production systems are required, because for them to establish that, it will take 20 to 30 years. We are concentrating on bio medicine, pharmaceuticals and all products requiring protection of intellectual property rights. No pharmaceutical company is going to go have its precious patents disclosed. So that is why they are here in Singapore and not in China.

SPIEGEL: But the Chinese are moving too. They bought parts of IBM and are trying to take over the American oil company Unocal.

Mr. Lee: They are learning. They have learnt takeovers and mergers from the Americans. They know that if they try to sell their computers with a Chinese brand it will take them decades in America, but if they buy IBM, they can inject their technology and low cost into IBM’s brand name, and they will gain access to the market much faster.

SPIEGEL: But how afraid should the West be?

Mr. Lee: It’s stupid to be afraid. It’s going to happen. I console myself this way. Suppose, China had never gone communist in 1949, suppose the Nationalist government had worked with the Americans — China would be the great power in Asia — not Japan, not Korea, not Hong Kong, not Singapore. Because China isolated itself, development took place on the periphery of Asia first.

Further down in the interview, he talks about democracy and why he had to do things differently.

The British came here, never gave me democracy, except when they were about to leave. But I cannot run my system based on their rules. I have to amend it to fit my people’s position. In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion. Supposing I’d run their system here, Malays would vote for Muslims, Indians would vote for Indians, Chinese would vote for Chinese. I would have a constant clash in my Parliament which cannot be resolved because the Chinese majority would always overrule them. So I found a formula that changes that…

People voting for narrow sectarian interests — sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Worse yet, how the politicians do their best in India to divide the population on caste, creed and religious lines just so as to get the vote. The wonders of democracy in India are a marvel to behold. A few days ago I saw a full-page ad in the Times of India which declared proudly what Mayawati had done to privilege Muslims over non-Muslims. It was a blatant display of religious discrimination and a shameful admission of the failure of the Indian political system.

Singapore gets Lee Kuan Yew. India gets Nehru and soon enough will have Mayawati. Makes you want to weep.

I have one piece of advice to all. Stop wasting so much time on news. If you stop reading the newspapers and watching TV news for a few days, you will not have missed much. Things that matter are not news; they persist. So by not wasting too much time on news, you free up some time to gain some insight into deeper issues. Knowledge of the deeper issues would help you makes sense of the news when you do get around to the news eventually.

That advice applies to reading stupid blogs as well (including this one.)

I appear to have made an abrupt left turn after the first paragraph. Getting back on topic, here’s the point. LKY is a very smart guy, and is head and shoulders above the crowd of stupid nincompoops that pretend to lead almost all countries around the world. I know that these idiot leaders are too busy doing their best to wreck whatever little good there is in their countries to have time to read Lee Kuan Yew. But you should rise above these fools (and that is not a very high bar) and read LKY whenever you get the urge to learn something about the nature of the world, how it works, and how to make it work better. Forget the news for a bit. That’s why I took that hard left turn in the second paragraph.

You may ask what am I going on about? I was coming to that.

I was reading the transcript of an interview that LKY gave last year in September at his office in Singapore. The interviewers were Tom Plate of the UCLA Media Center and new-media expert Jeffrey Cole of the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future.

Reading the transcript is a bitter-sweet experience for me. Sweet that LKY is going strong even past his 80th birthday; bitter that LKY was not the guy in charge of India since its political independence. If only, lord if only, Lee Kuan Yew had been India’s prime minister! Even today, if somehow the BT were to take orders from LKY instead of the SoT, India would take off like a interstellar rocket ship headed to the stars. But no such luck.

Stupidity is humanity’s common lot. It is hard to not be stupid. But there are grades of stupidity. The zeroth grade is “Not Stupid.” The first grade is “Stupid — and know it.” The second grade is “Stupid — and don’t know it.” 1st grade stupid know that they have to ask the not stupid for advice. 2nd grade stupid are too stupid to even ask for advice from smart people. Most of us cannot avoid being 1st grade stupid. The problem is that Indian leaders appear to be 2nd grade stupid.

A country which has a few 0th grade stupid and the rest 1st grade stupid is not in too much trouble. After all, the rest can depend on the wisdom of the few smart ones. But if the majority are 2nd grade stupid, there is no way that the smart people would even be consulted. Impose democracy on a population of 2nd grade stupid, and you have the makings of a colossal disaster. Evidence: Exhibit A — India. (For Pakistan and others of its kind, the stupidity meter breaks under overload.)

Anyway, back to the interview. At one point, LKY is asked about his choice in the US presidential elections of 2008.

Q: You have a candidate in the coming American presidential election that you prefer? You’d like to endorse whom? I have my candidate, but you’ve got to get American citizenship!

Lee: Who’s your candidate?

Q: You! You’ve helped run this pretty well country for so many years.

I would write LKY in if I were voting at the US elections.

Go read the transcript. I will quote some of my favorite bits here, for the record.

On China and the challenges to the leaders Rongji and Zemin.

Lee: Their problem now is convincing the world that they’re serious about a “peaceful rise.” These are thinking people. You’re not dealing with ideologues.

I don’t know if you’ve been seeing this or heard of this series that [the Chinese] produced called The Rise of the Great Nations. It’s now on the History Channel. I got our station here to dub it in English and show it. It was quite I would say a bold decision to tell the Chinese people this is the way the European nations, the Russians and Japanese became great. Absolutely no ideology and they had a team of historians, their own historians. To get the program going, they went to each country, interviewed the leaders and historians of those countries.

You should watch the one on Britain, because I think that gives you an idea of how far they have gone in telling their people this is what made Britain great. I was quite surprised. The theme was [doing away with] the Divine Right of Kings, a Britain that was challenged by the barons who brought the king down to Runnymede and then they had the Magna Charta, and suddenly your “Divine Right” is based on Parliament and [the barons] are in Parliament. That gave the space for the barons to grow and the middle class eventually emerged. When the King got too uppity, Charles the First got beheaded.

Now this series was produced in a communist state, you know. In other words, if you want to be a great nation, so, if the leader goes against the people’s interests, you may have to behead him! They also said that because there was growing confidence between the people and the leaders, the country grew.

It is in fact a lesson to support their gradual opening up and their idea of how they can do it without conflict — the “peaceful rise.” They have worked out this scheme, this theory, this doctrine to assure America and the world that they’re going to play by the rules.

On the US:

Q: What about inside America itself? Do you see any indices that worry you, whether it’s education?

Lee: For the next 10, 15, 20 years what you have will keep you going as the most enterprising, innovative economy with leading-edge technology, both in the civilian and military field. You have got that already.

You will lose that gradually over 30, 40, 50 years unless you are able to keep on attracting talent and that’s the final contest, because what you have done, the Chinese and other nations are going to adopt parts of it to fit their circumstances and they are also going around looking for talented people and wanting to build up their innovative enterprising economies. And finally this is now an age where you will not have military contests between great nations because you will destroy each other, but you will have economic and technological contests between the great powers.

I see that as the main arena of competition by 2040, 2050 and it’ll be the U.S.; China for sure; Japan, keeping up with the U.S. and trying to retain its separate position from China, closer to the U.S. and hoping to maintain a special position; India, somewhat behind China, trying to catch up. I don’t know about Brazil.

Q: Charles de Gaulle had a great comment about Brazil. His advisers said to President de Gaulle that he had to go to Latin America — Brazil. He said why? They said Brazil has great potential. De Gaulle said, “Ah, yes Brazil has great potential … and always will.”

Lee: I put my money on China, India and Western Europe. If Western Europe can get past the welfare approach to society and get their unions modernized, I think they have got the technological basis and the talent to rise again, not as a military power because I don’t think they got the stomach for that, but as an economic power which they can do. I think they’ll give the world a run for their money.

Can they do it? I don’t know. Their history is so deep, you never know. Under pressure, as they feel they’re being left behind by history, they may decide to do it. I mean, you look at [French President] Sarkozy, he may or may not succeed, but he’s convinced himself and he’s convincing quite a group of the French elite. The CEOs of the big multinationals in France don’t need convincing. They know it. It’s the broad think-tanks, the media, the intellectuals who still feel that they have a superior system. They loath having to give that [welfare approach] up, but they may, you know, because that’s the only way to catch up.

Russia may become a player if they are able to find a way to convert the oil and gas into a more enterprising economy. I don’t know if they can get out of their corruption and the mismanagement of the resources, but they have got talented people.

But long-term for America, if you ask me, say, project another 100 years, 150 years into the 22nd century, say, 2150, whether you stay on top depends upon the kind of society you will be because if the present trends continue, you’ll have a Hispanic element in your society that’s about 30, 40 percent. So, the question is do you make the Hispanics Anglo-Saxons in culture or do they make you more Latin American in culture.”

On Singapore’s future, and matters related to Western Europe, and India:

Q: I read somewhere recently that you actually have a bit of a worry about your country’s survivability over the long run? Are you serious?

Lee: Singapore is not a 4,000-year culture. This is an immigrant community that started in 1819. It’s a migrant community that left its moorings and therefore, knowing it’s sailing to unchartered seas, guided by the stars, I say let’s follow the stars and they said okay, let’s try. And we’ve succeeded and here we are, but has it really taken root? No. It’s just worked for the time being. If it doesn’t work, again, we say let’s try something else. This is not entrenched. This is not a 4,000-year society.

Q: You really have a sense of the country’s endangerment.

Lee: Yes, of course.

Q: It’s amazing, you come in here and you walk around here in one of the great cities in the world. Yet you are worried about survival.

Lee: Where are we? Are we in the Caribbean? Are we next to America like the Bahamas? Are we in the Mediterranean, like Malta, next to Italy? Are we like Hong Kong, next to China and therefore, will become part of China? We are in Southeast Asia, in the midst of a turbulent, volatile, unsettled region. Singapore is a superstructure built on what? On 700 square kilometers and a lot of smart ideas that have worked so far — but the whole thing could come undone very quickly.

For this to work, you require a world where there are some rules of international law and there is a balance of forces of power that will enforce that international law and the U.S. is foremost in that. Without that balance of power and international law, the Vietnamese will still be in Cambodia and the Indonesians will still be in East Timor, right? Why are they out? Because there were certain norms that had to be observed. You can’t just cross boundaries. This little island with four and a half million people, of whom 1.3 are foreigners working here, has got to maintain an army, navy and an air force. Can we withstand a concerted attempt to besiege us and blockade us? We can repel an attack, yes. Given the armed forces in the region and our capability, we can repel and we can damage them. Three weeks, food runs out, we are besieged, blockaded.

Q: Who will come after you? Who would come after you?

Lee: There are assets here to be captured, right?

Q: Some unnamed bad regime?

Lee: When [Malaysia] kicked us out [in 1965], the expectation was that we would fail and we will go back on their terms, not on the terms we agreed with them under the British. Our problems are not just between states, this is a problem between races and religions and civilizations. We are a standing indictment of all the things that they can be doing differently. They have got all the resources. If they would just educate the Chinese and Indians, use them and treat them as their citizens, they can equal us and even do better than us and we would be happy to rejoin them.

Q: Do you think it’s healthy for the citizens of Singapore to feel that pressure, that tension that it all could change quickly? Do you think that makes them run this country more effectively, be better citizens by not getting complacent?

Lee: My generation, the ones above 50, who have lived through the first part, they know. The ones under 30, who’ve just grown up in stability and growth year by year, I think they think that I’m selling them a line just to make them work harder but they are wrong. The problem is they don’t believe. They think I’m wrong. That’s a problem that all countries face. You look at the Japanese, I remember their parents. After their defeat, they had great leaders not just in politics but in business at every level. They travel, they work, and they sold their goods like mad to rebuild Japan. Now you look at them … You look at the younger generation, will they work like some of the fathers did? I don’t think so, but in a corner will they do it again? I think yes because it’s a deeply-imbedded culture. They will fight. That’s the difference between an ancient culture and a new one. Theirs is embedded, ours is not. At the same time that ancient culture is preventing them from making rational decisions about migration, immigration and meeting the problems of ageing.

Q: Singapore’s armed forces are in pretty good shape, right? So when are you all planning to invade neighboring Indonesia?

Lee [laughing]: All we want is a quiet peaceful world. We have made something of our lives and we’ll be quite happy to carry on like this and help them get along and do better. We started this LKY School of Public Policy, giving them scholarships to prove to them it’s done by good governance. It’s not by robbing you.

Q: I (Plate) graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton. And so I’m a big fan of public policy schools. I think you all are doing a great job at the Singapore policy school. I think you chose a wonderful dean [former U.N. Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani]. I was recently there to offer a humble seminar. The quality of the students knocked me out.

Lee: I think that’s an investment worth making because [students from the region] will go back and they will tell their media chaps and their leaders and say, look this country works because it’s working like this: first, it’s honest; second, it’s rational; third, it makes decisions and follows through on those decisions. The decisions are made after very careful consideration of all options and consequences.

Q: I agree with you and if you look at the course list, it’s a very impressive course list. Now, you were educated in England and many of your top people were educated in America or England, so Western education for a long time has been the cutting edge, has been the leader, the place you wanted to go to. Is it your sense that American higher education is still terrific?

Lee: It will stay like that for as long as you keep on getting talented people into your country and staying on, but will you do that? I think yes for 10, 20 years, but 30, 40, 50 years, I’m not sure because other countries will become more attractive or as attractive. It is the extra inputs you get.

Let me explain how I see it. If Singapore depended on its own domestic talent, we wouldn’t have made it, but we were the center for education in this region from British days and many came to be educated and many stayed behind. Our top layer was drawn from a larger base and in my first Cabinet of 10, there were only two of us who were born and bred in Singapore. The others came from Malaysia, China, Ceylon, from India and elsewhere. It’s a talent pool that was drawn from a bigger region, and that’s the secret of your success. You drew in first your talent from Europe because you offered them opportunities. In the last few decades, you’ve been drawing your talent from all over the world, including Asia. If you can continue to do that, you will continue to succeed.

Not only must you attract them, you must get them to stay.

Q: How are you doing on that?

Lee: We give a lot of scholarships to Chinese and Indians. If one quarter stay on here in Singapore, we’re winners, especially with the Chinese. They come in here, they get an English education, they get our credentials and they’re off to America because they know that the grass is greener there. The Indians, strangely enough, more of them stay here in Singapore because they want to go home to visit their families, America is too far away. We are net gainers for how long? I think in the case of China, maybe another 20, 30 years and then the attraction is gone. We can’t offer them that difference in opportunities and standards. India, maybe longer — 50, 60 years before their infrastructure catches up. Anyway, this is not my worry anymore!

Q: On India, there’s been a lot of hype in America, in foreign affairs publications and so on, about India becoming the next superpower. I was in New Delhi about three months ago — it seems to me India’s got a long way to go.

Lee: They are a different mix, never mind their political structures. They are not one people. You can make a speech in Delhi; [Prime Minister] Manmohan Singh can speak in Hindi and 30, 40 percent of the country can understand him. He makes a speech in English and maybe 30 percent of the elite understand him.

In China, when a leader speaks, 90 percent will understand him. They all speak one language, they are one people. In India, they have got 32 official languages and in fact, 300-plus different languages. You look at Europe, 25 languages, 27 countries, how do you? The European Parliament? Had we not moved into one language here in Singapore, we would not have been able to govern this country.

We have to pay attention to what Lee Kuan Yew is saying. One important point: deep culture matters. If you don’t value it, it can get eroded. There’s a caution that India needs take seriously. Another point: the dangers of becoming complacent.

A great point that LKY made is the investment in education. Just the other day, my friend Alok told me that his cousin who is studying in Singapore has received a Singapore government scholarship to go to Stanford for a year. The catch? After graduation, she has to work for a Singaporean firm in Singapore or abroad for a couple of years.

India has the potential to become a giant collection of universities. Unfortunately, indications are that India will have that potential to perpetuity, unless the government lets go of the stranglehold it has on Indian education.

It is all karma, neh?

[There is a good collection of LKY related links at www.lee-kuan-yew.com. One of my blog posts is also included in that set.]

The setting is in Brooklyn, New York, a few weeks after Nehru’s death in 1964. Someone asks the guru Prabhupada what he thought became of Nehru after his death. The writer of the article recounts Prabhupada’s answer. Read on.

The question was a loaded one, I thought. In fact, I had the misgiving that Prabhupada might refuse to answer. But then, I was wrong. I had not yet known Prabhupada so well. He was undaunted by any question and his reply came forth instantly. Quite clearly Prabhupada knew Nehru like the palm of his hand; it was us who knew so little of the man, thanks to all the well executed suppression of details of Nehru’s private and personal life by the GoI and the Indian media. For instance, even today, some half a century after Nehru and his family took over the reins of Indian government, we do not know who indeed was Indira’s father-in-law!

Prabhupada started his discourse. He said that Nehru was re-born almost immediately after his death, a thing that happens only to the most sinful people. He did not even have a short-lived taste of heaven before he was born again. What was worse, is that Nehru was born this time in the form of a dog. He was a dog in a small town of Sweden. His master had another dog before the dog-Nehru was acquired by him and so the dog-Nehru had to share the love of his master with another dog.

Prabhupada explained that to be born as a dog, after having been born as a Kashmiri Brahmin in India, is a big fall. It indicated that Nehru had led a vile life, a very vile life, during his existence as a man in India. Also, Nehru’s hatred for anything vaishnava did not make things any easier for him.

That Nehru was a meat-eater, specially beef-eater, a regular wine-drinker, made things even worse for him. On top of that, Nehru was (a fact which we did not know then and learnt later, much later, only after having read M.O. Mathai’s treatises on Nehru; Mathai should know for he was the Catholic private secretary for Nehru for a decade or so) a notorious womanizer. It was not only Mrs. Mountbatten that he slept with on a regular basis while our jawans were dying on battle fields in the north-east and in Kashmir; he used to sleep with each and every woman he could lay his hands on. Thus, he had left a chain of bastards one of whom had been delivered in a Catholic nunnery in Bangalore. In the mean time, his sidekick, one Krishna Menon, became the Minister of Defense. First thing he did was dismantle the Ichhapore Gun Factory and turned it into a coffee making machine factory. He was a communist and he loved the Chinese more than he loved Indians.

Prabhupada was quite discreet; we know now, for he did not divulge to us at the time that Nehru finally died of syphilis (exactly like the communist leader Lenin of Russia) and not a bullet wound on the battle front. Prabhupada, however, told us in detail all the harms Nehru did to the Hindus of India, all the insults that he had heaped on them during his reign.

Nehru used to brag of his non-Hindu upbringing. He used to say openly that he was brought up as a Mohammedan, educated as a westerner; it was only by accident that he was born a Hindu. It is now known that he was born in a house in the red-light district of Allahabad, where his father Motilal used to ply a brothel-keeper’s trade. No one wants to talk of this dark side of Nehru’s upbringing. On the other hand, it is said openly, wrongly of course, that he was born in the Anand Bhavan, which was not even owned by Moti Lal at the time Nehru was born.

However, the few little details that we learnt from Prabhupada opened our eyes and I returned home very depressed. I was even more depressed to think that our people in India were singing all kinds of fulsome obituaries for this man who was worse than a traitor to the Hindus, the overwhelming majority of India. What was wrong? The next few years showed us all that was wrong! His daughter, in order to create differences between the Hindus and the Sikhs, the fighting arm of the Hindus since generations, attacked the sacred temple at Hari-Mandir Sahib in Amritsar. She had to pay for the crime with her life and event-ually, as we have all seen, our gods saw to it that the dynasty was totally destroyed for the sins of Nehru, now a dog in Sweden!

Re-incarnation is a lot of content-less nonsense, in my opinion. I don’t think that there is any abiding self, or soul, that migrates from living being to living being. What tickles me is the really fanciful notion that the man responsible for the Himalayan Blunder (and scores of other blunders) ends up as a dog in Sweden. Why Sweden? What sin has Sweden committed? Why not Pakistan? I don’t know. Maybe that Swedish dog continued to be reincarnated and finally ended up as Musharraf’s pet in Pakistan.

BTW, the book, Himalayan Blunder by Brigadier John P. Dalvi was banned by the Indian government when it was published in 1969. Thankfully in the age of the internets (or should that be the interwebs?), censorship and banning is meaningless. “Satya Meva Jayate” — Truth Alone Prevails — is India’s motto. The Internet is helping significantly in making that happen.

I think one easy test of whether a society is free or not is to check whether there is freedom of expression. Can you say, read or write what you please? More importantly, can you say, read or write what you please without being hauled off to some gulag? How does India figure on this test. Not very well, I am afraid.

Radio and TV in India, until very recently, were controlled by the government to the extent that those were totally owned by the government. Add to that, the entire education system was (and still is to a disturbing degree) controlled by the state. That made it very easy to brainwash the kids and raise the next generation of obedient citizens who knew nothing other than the party line. The government routinely censors movies, bans books, and fails to protect writers who are unpopular with specific vote banks.

No, India does not epitomize the free society, although it is most certainly not at the bottom of the barrel. For real oppressive government, one has to look to India’s neighbors. In any case, considering that India is tom-tommed as a democracy (the largest in fact, although how that is supposed to impress one is not clear), it could have been a freer society.

But now it does not matter any more. Censorship was a technical problem and it is technology that has crippled the once-powerful state’s ability to control what people talk about and consequently how people think. Let me take a concrete example. Cha-cha Nehru.

I like to call him “Cha-cha” (uncle) rather than “pundit” (learned scholar). Cha-cha sits better on the man. His policies were paternalistic. His syle dictatorial, like that of a strict uncle towards his rather dissolute nieces and nephews. Besides, calling him a “learned scholar” would be stretching the term beyond any recognition.

Indians who were brought up on a steady diet of state-approved educational content have no idea that Nehru was a petty tyrant and his policies really were pretty harmful. Of course, I can only judge his economic policies to be brain-dead. But others with varied expertise have judged his other policies and come up aghast. Books have been written about them but those are the types of books you don’t get to hear much about in school or in the popular press.

Thanks to the internet, though, now it is all coming out. I am doing my bit of course by recording my opinion of Nehru. (See Was Nehru a Dictator? on this blog and the category Jawaharlal Nehru.)

Recently Vipin on his blog First Principles wrote a piece on “Respecting Tyrants?” which brought out a few comments in defense of Mr Nehru. I would surmise that the dissenting views are from people of the previous generation. Vipin’s blog is definitely recommended.

The very name Pakistan inscribes the nature of the problem. It is not a real country or nation but an acronym devised in the 1930s by a Muslim propagandist for partition named Chaudhary Rahmat Ali. It stands for Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, and Indus-Sind. The stan suffix merely means “land.” In the Urdu language, the resulting acronym means “land of the pure.” It can be easily seen that this very name expresses expansionist tendencies and also conceals discriminatory ones. Kashmir, for example, is part of India. The Afghans are Muslim but not part of Pakistan. Most of Punjab is also in India. Interestingly, too, there is no B in this cobbled-together name, despite the fact that the country originally included the eastern part of Bengal (now Bangladesh, after fighting a war of independence against genocidal Pakistani repression) and still includes Baluchistan, a restive and neglected province that has been fighting a low-level secessionist struggle for decades. The P comes first only because Pakistan is essentially the property of the Punjabi military caste (which hated Benazir Bhutto, for example, because she came from Sind). As I once wrote, the country’s name “might as easily be rendered as ‘Akpistan’ or ‘Kapistan,’ depending on whether the battle to take over Afghanistan or Kashmir is to the fore.”

It did not require meticulous research, but just some serious reading, to know that Jammu’s troubles had begun soon after the monarch of J & K, Maharaja Hari Singh, from the Dogra community of Jammu, chose to sign his princely state’s accession to India, rather than to Pakistan, in October 1947 under the British Parliament’s Indian Independence Act, 1947. The troubles emanated from Sheikh Abdullah, the towering National Conference leader from the predominantly Muslim populated Kashmir Valley, who, for reasons as yet unclear, was the pet of Jawaharlal Nehru, our first Prime Minster among several Congress ones who believed that the Hindu community was a danger to free India. It was just a matter of time therefore that Nehru coerced Maharaja Hari Singh to hand over the reins of the J&K state to the interim government of Sheikh Abdullah and his National Conference Party — the first time that Muslims, not Hindus, became the rulers in J&K.

That is from Arvind Lavakare’s article “It’s Jammu vs Kashmir — finally“. Here’s the full article below the fold, for the record. It is a must read if one wants to understand how the dead hand of the Nabob of Cluelessness continues to strangle India and squeeze the life out of the nation.

When several of our mainline English dailies recently splashed what they thought was the novel headline, “Jammu vs Kashmir”, on account of the unprecedented angst and anger in the Jammu region of J & K state over the denial of land to the Amarnath Shrine Board, I was amused.

I was amused because as many as seven years and 11 months ago a major web portal had posted an article of mine bearing the headline “It could finally be Jammu vs Kashmir”. My forecast then was not based on astrology or prescience but on a study of the past agonies of Jammu that had run over into the present. And study is something that current bred of “Breaking News” journalists hardly do, if at all.

It did not require meticulous research, but just some serious reading, to know that Jammu’s troubles had begun soon after the monarch of J & K, Maharaja Hari Singh, from the Dogra community of Jammu, chose to sign his princely state’s accession to India, rather than to Pakistan, in October 1947 under the British Parliament’s Indian Independence Act, 1947. The troubles emanated from Sheikh Abdullah, the towering National Conference leader from the predominantly Muslim populated Kashmir Valley, who, for reasons as yet unclear, was the pet of Jawaharlal Nehru, our first Prime Minster among several Congress ones who believed that the Hindu community was a danger to free India. It was just a matter of time therefore that Nehru coerced Maharaja Hari Singh to hand over the reins of the J&K state to the interim government of Sheikh Abdullah and his National Conference Party — the first time that Muslims, not Hindus, became the rulers in J&K.

So enamoured of Sheikh Abdullah was Nehru that while he had left the integration of 561 princely states either into India or Pakistan to his deputy and Home Minister, Sardar Vallabhai Patel, he chose to deal with J & K himself. And so crafty and cunning was Sheikh Abdullah that he got Nehru to agree to include in the Constitution of India,1950, the Article 370 that gave J & K a special status that no other state of India has ever enjoyed. And even as J & K was allowed to draft its own State Constitution (separate from the Indian Constitution), Abdullah was permitted to hold the position of the state’s Wazir-e- Azam, or Prime Minister and the J&K state was permitted to have its own flag.

The supreme dominance of the Kashmir Valley and its Muslims over Jammu & Kashmir state had begun. The suppression of Jammu and the state’s third region, Ladakh (predominantly Buddhist) had begun.

And the first opposition to this monopoly over the state of J&K was started more than half a century ago. Ironically, it was started by Nehru’s ministerial colleague, Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee. The Bengal tiger staked his life in his effort to (i) secure the integration of J&K with the rest of India and (ii) save the Dogras of Jammu from Sheikh Abdullah’s actions that were reportedly described by a former central intelligence chief as a bid at ethnic cleansing.

In a speech at Kanpur on December 29, 1952, Dr Mookerjee had made the grave charge that, “Mr Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah have jointly decided to carry on a ruthless policy of repression in Jammu.” He had referred to “an impression gaining ground that with our blood and money we are carving out a virtually autonomous state for Sheikh Abdullah.” Therefore, he proclaimed, “Jammu and Ladakh must be fully integrated with India according to the wishes of their people.”

Dr Mookerjee categorically stated that while he did not want the partition of J&K, it had become a matter of Hobson’s choice: Kashmir Valley could be made a separate state with all necessary subventions desired by the Sheikh and his advisers, but Jammu and Ladakh must not be sacrificed.

Dr Mookerjee died on June 23, 1953, under suspicious circumstances while under house arrest in an abandoned cottage on a hill outside Srinagar, with no telephone or medical facility within miles, without Nehru meeting him there even once during his 40-day detention. His soul must surely be astir now with talk gaining ground about the revived call for a separate Jammu and a separate Ladakh.

Contrary to the allegations of the pseudo-secularists, this separatist drive and the present anger in Jammu over the Amarnath land are not based on the Hindu-Muslim divide. Instead, it is entirely based on the economic deprivation and political despotism exercised by the Abdullah clan and its kith and kin from Srinagar. The charges against the Kashmir Valley clique are many. Writing in the May 2000 issue of Voice of Jammu Kashmir magazine, J N Bhat, retired judge of the J&K high court, alleged that:

1. Thousands of plots carved out in the suburbs of Jammu have been allotted to Kashmiris, all the beneficiaries belonging to one particular community.
2. In some localities of Jammu city, water is supplied after a gap of three to four days, and not even enough of it to quench the thirst of the people. Obviously, funds got for development get misused.
3. In the Jammu region, the Hindu minorities of Doda and Poonch districts have been tortured and many of them have found, according to sources, conversion the only option, though they prefer death to forced conversion.

Another eminent person who has made more serious accusations is Hari Om, professor of history in Jammu University, and a member of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). In a newspaper article — eight years ago, mind you — the professor complains that:

1. Though Kashmiris constitute roughly 22 per cent of the state’s total population, the delimitation mechanism cleverly devised by Sheikh Abdullah’s National Conference Party in 1951 enables it to capture nearly half of the total assembly and Lok Sabha seats. The trick lies in 46 assembly segments having been created in the small Valley as against 41 segments combined in Jammu and Ladakh regions that are far bigger and more populated than the Valley. This mechanism is apparently contrary to the rules framed under the Indian Parliament’s Representation of People’s Act and those under the relevant State Act of 1957.

2. Kashmiris hold over 2,30,000 positions out of a nearly 2,40,000 positions in government and semi-government organisations in the Valley. In addition, they corner nearly 25 per cent of the jobs in the regional services of Jammu and Ladakh.

3. All the professional and technical institutions, universities and all the big public sector industrial units like HMT, the television, telephone and cement factories located in the Valley are the sole preserve of the Kashmiris. Besides, they manipulate for themselves more than 50 per cent of the seats in Jammu’s ill-equipped and under-staffed medical and engineering college and in the Agricultural University in R S Pura. No such institution exists in Ladakh.

4. The Kashmiris control trade, commerce, transport and industry, and own big orchards as well as landed estates. None of them is without a house. Likewise, the per capita expenditure on woollen clothes in Kashmir is perhaps the highest in the world. Till date, no one in Kashmir has, unlike in UP, Bihar and Orissa, died either of hunger or cold.

5. Interestingly, yet not surprisingly, a vast majority of the Kashmiris don’t pay even a single penny to the state in the form of revenue due to it. It is Jammu and Ladakh that contribute over 90 per cent to the state exchequer, but a major part of this money is spent not in the extremely backward and underdeveloped Jammu and Ladakh but in the highly prosperous and developed Kashmir Valley.

As a result of the above, professor Hari Om says, “It is Kashmiris and Kashmiris everywhere and all others in the state exist nowhere.”

The dismal scenario above has apparently prevailed for so long that even editors of our national daily newspapers refer most casually to J&K merely as “Kashmir”, forgetting the fundamental fact that “J&K” is not Kashmir and that “Kashmir” is not J&K.

Sheikh Abdullah and his National Conference cabal created that scenario with the connivance of Nehru and his Congress dynasty. Today, the Mufti clan has added fuel to the fire. It has all become perpetuated because Pakistan’s cross border terrorism has struck New Delhi with cowardice, denying them the courage to fight against the Kashmiriyat clan for the rights of the meek and the oppressed, the Jammuites and the Ladakhis who too have been demanding freedom from the tyranny of the rulers from the Valley.

The coming months will show whether the Jammuites have finally stopped turning the other cheek. If Jammu’s old political outfit, the Praja Parishad Party, can take re-birth as it were and join hands with the Ladakhis, Buddhists and all, the ongoing Jammu vs Kashmir battle will add another page of history to J&K and India.

You could see the google video of Richard in Berkeley (56 mins) or you could see it in six parts on YouTube. Here’s YouTube part 1/6 of Richard at Berkeley:

Part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6.

Related post: Darwin’s Big Idea

The truth is that Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Pakistan are just different fronts in the same war. The core problem is that the Arab-Muslim world in too many places has been failing at modernity, and were it not for $120-a-barrel oil, that failure would be even more obvious. For far too long, this region has been dominated by authoritarian politics, massive youth unemployment, outdated education systems, a religious establishment resisting reform and now a death cult that glorifies young people committing suicide, often against other Muslims.

The humiliation this cocktail produces is the real source of terrorism. Saddam exploited it. Al Qaeda exploits it. Pakistan’s intelligence services exploit it. Hezbollah exploits it. The Taliban exploit it.

The only way to address it is by changing the politics. Producing islands of decent and consensual government in Baghdad or Kabul or Islamabad would be a much more meaningful and lasting contribution to the war on terrorism than even killing bin Laden in his cave. But it needs local partners. The reason the surge helped in Iraq is because Iraqis took the lead in confronting their own extremists — the Shiites in their areas, the Sunnis in theirs. That is very good news — although it is still not clear that they can come together in a single functioning government.

The main reason we are losing in Afghanistan is not because there are too few American soldiers, but because there are not enough Afghans ready to fight and die for the kind of government we want. [Emphasis added.]

There you have it: the Afghanis are just being mean and recalcitrant in refusing to die for what the Americans desire. Friedman outdoes himself. (Thanks Jayant for the link.)

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.

The poem is a lament on the ruin of the countryside brought upon by modernization. But I was reminded of Goldsmith’s poem in a different context. Lee Kuan Yew, my hero, recently noted that “we [the leaders of Singapore] have not got richer, Singapore has.”

What a terrific point, LKY makes. Let me paraphrase Goldsmith:

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey
Where the leaders’ wealth accumulates, and the country decays …

On a related note, 1.7 percent of Singaporeans — or about 77,000 — have wealth exceeding US$1 million. In the immortal words of Tevya, “I realize of course that it’s not a shame to be poor.” But what would have been so terrible if India too had no one who was really poor?

In India, the leaders are rich and the people poor.

Here, for the record, a bit of the report from the Straits Times

ONE freak election result is all it will take to wipe out Singapore’s success in building up the city state, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew warned last night.

This could happen if voters became bored and decided to give the ‘vociferous opposition’ a chance – out of ‘light-heartedness, fickleness or sheer madness’.

‘In five years, you can ruin this place and it’s very difficult to pick up the pieces,’ he told 650 participants of a dinner forum at the Shangri-La Hotel.

[snip snip]

He said a country needed three elements to succeed.

First, a government that people have confidence in and will trust when tough decisions need to be taken.

Second, leaders who are above board, who make decisions based on necessity, not how they will personally benefit. He said Singaporeans know they have such leaders because, over the years, ‘we have not got richer, Singapore has’.

Third and most importantly, a country needs able men in charge.

The problem with popular democracy, he said, is that during elections, candidates are not judged on how well they can govern, but on their persuasive power.

Good luck, Mr Lee Kuan Yew. Hope all goes well.

I suppose the court would figure out if Mr Chee’s charge is true or not. If the charge is false, I would be much relieved because I would hate to find out that the man I have very high regard for — Mr Lee Kuan Yew — has feet of clay.

Why do I admire the man so much? Perhaps because of what he achieved. Here’s the NY Times:

“The final test is what Singapore was when I became prime minister in 1959 and what Singapore is now,” Mr. Lee said. “We had less than $100 million in the kitty.” Today, he said, “global financial services assess Singapore to have sovereign wealth funds of over $300 billion.”

Singapore is just a few million people. LKY worked the miracle of transforming a third world resource-poor mosquito-infested swamp into a wealthy first world nation state admired around the world for efficiency, lack of corruption, order and cleanliness. He didn’t make pretty speeches about scaling the commanding heights of the economy. He just did it and did it within a generation. Not just the phenomenal infrastructure of the tiny place, not just the rich stock of human capital, Singapore has also amassed $300 billion in reserves. Under LKY’s guidance, Singapore’s reserves have multiplied 3000 times. How great is that?

Lee says that Singapore has $300 billion in the kitty. Chee says that it does not make up for

the silencing of political opponents, the closing down of independent media “and all your shenanigans, including making sure that I’m not allowed to speak during an election rally.”

Speaking strictly for myself, I value political freedom and the freedom of expression. A civilized human existence requires freedom. But in what sense is there freedom if one is starving? Isn’t one willing to sell one’s soul for a piece of bread when starvation threatens one’s life? What would you give up in exchange for not seeing your child starve to death? I know that I would give up a lot of my highly prized freedom of political expression if in the process I could at least see my children not starve.

Mr Chee says that $300 billion in the bank (and of course all other goodies that Singapore enjoys) is too high a price to pay for the lack of political freedom and the muzzling of the press. Perhaps the restrictions on the press and on political opposition were wholly unnecessary and Singapore would have been what it is today even otherwise. Perhaps it was merely to satisfy LKY’s personal whims and fancies that political opposition was curbed and which actually did not serve any instrumental purpose. But I doubt it. When a country is poor, the squabbling for resources does push to the fore the most opportunistic criminals to enter the policymaking circles.

I know that no one reading this is actually starving. When one is sitting comfortably with a full tummy, it is easy to see how valuable it is to have the freedom to speak your mind. It is clearly better to have political freedom than not to have it, all else being equal. But how would one rank these two: one, a very full stomach but limited political freedom; two, a very empty stomach but unlimited political freedom.

At which point does the benefits of political freedom of the few outweigh the material concerns of 500 million others? How many million people is it ok to condemn to a pitiably poor life so as to guarantee that a few people have the right to make fiery political speeches?

And often times, the only political speeches made are ostensibly on behalf of the starving millions. If those starving millions did not exist, these politicians would have little to make speeches about. So it would seem that if by banning idiotic political speeches, one achieves a level of prosperity such that it makes political speeches about poverty completely irrelevant and inconsequential, it would be a good thing.

I think that there is a hierarchy of needs, as Maslow pointed out. Only after the lower level needs are met can one attempt to satisfy needs higher up. I will secure air before I start worrying about food and water. I will not worry about free speech if I am in imminent danger of keeling over from hunger. I would trade in a lot of pretty political speeches in exchange for a decent shot at living a comfortable life. If I were in the bottom 300 million in India, I would happily trade in my situationally useless right to political freedom in exchange for the life of an average Singaporean.

All the above with the usual disclaimer that your mileage may vary.

POSTSCRIPT:

Why do I stress so much on the starvation bit? Because I know how it feels to starve for 2 days. If it feels that awful to starve for just 2 days, I wonder how it must be to chronically starve — as do an estimated 200 million in India. I know that I could not handle it and I would make a deal with the devil himself to try to avoid it. That is what I fear: that millions of people at the edge of starvation are quite capable of making deals with the devil. Don’t believe me? Well, then, how do you think the communists get elected in India?

I’m writing to thank you for your well-reasoned articles on Ravi Shankar and the Art of Living Foundation. I recently became involved in this group, taking their Part 1 course and just this past weekend completing their Part 2 Retreat. I have had my own doubts about the organization and the founder which crystallized after I left the retreat. Finding your articles reassured me that my doubts are well-founded.

A small, possibly interesting aside on the cultish nature of the organization: Since I have developed some personal relationships with teachers and other students, I felt obliged to write them and let them know I would no longer be participating in any AOL activities. Immediately after sending that e-mail I felt an extreme rush of unexplained anxiety. This may be meaningless, random, and unrelated, or it may be akin to the feelings cult members experience when they contemplate abandoning the group.

Regards,
Bill

Thanks, Bill, for writing. Next up, an email from Sunil (not his real name) which arrived with the subject line, “yet another hapless zombie responds” and said:

Dear Atanu,

I came across your blog recently. Some interesting stuff, I was intrigued till I came across my description as a zombie.

I wallowed in self pity for a while, at this description and then started framing a response; I then came across the following question and answer session with Sri-Sri from the last couple of days, and felt it was appropriate response. (attached below)

Like a true zombie, I felt this answered the need of the moment, and no further thought from me was required in framing a response.
With luck, this is first time you have seen this answer in your in-box.

Cheers,
Sunil

Thank you, Sunil, for writing and for the permission to quote your email.

Following that, Sunil included the transcript of a question-answer session which I quote below with a few of my own comments interspersed:

In a satsang at the Art of Living centre in Germany last night, someone asked Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: “Guruji, I have observed that Guruphiliac seems to follow your every move and then write negative things about you. Why are they doing this?”

This is the gist of what Guruji said: I have inherited an ancient lineage and my job is to further its cause. Neither by thought, nor through word, nor by deed, have I ever done any harm to anyone, nor will I ever do so in the future; it is simply not in my nature. Nobody can expose me because there is nothing to expose: I stand tall, clean and naked in front of the whole world.

Fair enough. As I had assumed before in my first opinion piece on SSRS, he is like you and me: not intending any harm to anybody and by nature a good person; in other words, useful like the rest of us. The mystery is of course the umbrage that some of his followers take at this characterization. They insist that SSRS is way beyond merely mortal. I have not seen any evidence of that. But I have seen plenty of evidence that the Art of Living organization peddles its wares with as much gusto and enthusiasm as any corporation and does so with a deep commitment to making as much money as they can.

I absolutely salute any legitimate organization for doing its best to make money. That is what makes the world tick. But I am reluctant to label the head of a commercial establishment as a supreme being.

I do whatever maximum good I can, and I inspire others to do so. These people who keep writing about me simply cannot leave me alone – they must be in deep love with me! (laughter) When they keep comparing me with other people all the time, I must have made a very deep impression on them. I cannot help it if they can’t get over me – that’s the way I am! If I am that bad and fake, they should simply be able to ignore me and move onto the truth –why are they are holding onto me, again and again?

That bit from SSRS reads funny. It is a mix of arrogance and hurt, with a defensive bit of egotistic self-congratulation thrown in. It is arrogant to imply that one is incomparable — that people who compare him to others are somehow stupid. The defensive self-congratulation is the claim that he inspires to do good like the good he does himself.

I don’t doubt that people do good and inspire others to do good by example. But let others note that fact. If a person himself makes that claim, it sort of sounds cheap and vulgar. One is left feeling a bit of pity for the person. One should not have to say, “Look at me, look at me! I am good, am I not?” if one is totally confident of one’s own achievements.

To me, that answer reveals a defensive posture that is wholly unbecoming of a person who is absolutely confident in his own self. A really honorable person will never have to talk loudly of his honor. (“The louder he talked about his honor, the faster we counted the silverware,” is one of my favorite quotations.)

If they are trying to teach me a lesson, if their intention is to correct me, then I’m sorry, I am incorrigible! (laughter)

Very droll. And in a very I-specialist sort of way. “I know it all and there is nothing that you can ever teach me anything. How wonderful am I, am I not, eh?”

If their idea is to stop people from coming to me, and if people do stop coming just by reading these blogs, then I really thank them; it is good for me, it reduces my responsibility! If they think I am doing this for publicity, they are unaware of the disadvantages of popularity. I pity them. Celebrities enjoy only popularity, but spiritual leaders have a huge responsibility with that popularity. People do not go to celebrities for guidance and blessings, but with spiritual leaders they do.

OK, I get the message. “I am a spiritual leader and you have no idea of how heavy a burden that is. Just look at me! I am shouldering a burden that mere mortals will buckle under. If only, Lord if only, someone will stop people from coming to me, I would be grateful for the relief. My popularity sits like a millstone around my neck. You ordinary folks have no idea how heavy is the responsibility of popularity. Celebrities love popularity because it comes without any responsibility. But look at me! LOOK AT ME!! I am a spiritual leader and for us spiritual leaders, popularity is a matter of grave responsibility which you — you murakh na-layak you — can never understand.”

Yeah, I get the message. It must be a terrible burden to have your Art of Living promoted ceaselessly and strenuously until every nook and cranny of India is plastered with your hirsute visage. (Note to self: must post that picture of SSRS’s promotional flyer I took at the Edison NJ train station last month.)

If they think I have no right to exist on this planet, then they can crucify me; I am afraid neither of death nor of being defamed. I am not afraid, because nothing can destroy me.

Don’t you just love a martyr? “Go ahead, crucify me. I am so wonderful that I even take your ingratitude in my huge steps and think that your criticism is like nothing. Look at me! Am I not the most wonderful thing you have ever laid your eyes upon? Yeah, after Jesus F Christ, I am the greatest. I am indestructible. I float like a butterfly and sting like a bee, also.”

We do charity with the hard earned money from our courses. We are, of course, rich with people and with good character, and I am ready to share this wealth with anyone.

Lest they understand that their hatred is nothing but love standing upside down.

Okie dokie. Hats off to you sir. You are most clever. I note that you did not say “I will share the wealth that I have (which goes into the hundreds of millions of dollars.)” He said that his wealth is his followers and he has generously offered to share that “wealth of people”. How very magnanimous of you sir.

I was about to send you my bank account number with the hope that you will share the money you have with me. But I guess that option is out. I see no need for worshipful followers and so you will excuse me if I don’t take you up on your offer to share your “wealth.”

Goodbye, goodnight, and may your god go with you.

[I know that this naming of the man is getting a bit out of hand. Previously I had been persuaded by his worshipers that the proper title for the man should be "the Supreme Commander of the Universe out of whose Nether Regions the Sun shines in all its Splendor" which for convenience one should write as SCOTUOOWNRTSSIAIS. So I say, take your pick -- use HMEHSMHPGBSSSRSM or SCOTUOOWNRTSSIAIS -- whichever you fancy, until of course another embellishment comes along to do proper justice to the amazing abilities of this god on earth.]

One Sri Joe Blow (not the actual name of the person) wrote me an email. As his email to me was in response to something that I had written in the public domain — namely, a post on this blog titled “Is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar a con man?” — I wrote back and asked if he could show cause why his email to me could not be considered to be in the public domain. He replied but did not show any cause why his email should not be part of the pubic record and why I should not respond to his email publicly. So here’s my response.

Sri Jeffery’s email is quoted and my response is interleaved:

Hi!

The note you wrote to your brother about Art of Living was done so long ago that you might have a completely new orientation.

I might. On the other hand, I might not have. You see, just because something is old does not mean that it needs revision. Not all things are in the nature of fads and fashion. There are things that are enduring because they reflect what is true and that which is true need not change.

I would have a completely “new orientation” if I had new information. From what I have learnt since my first tentative conclusions about His Most Exalted Holiness Sri Maha Param Pujaniya Gurudevji Bhagwanji Sriman Sri Sri Ravi Shankarji Mahadevji (HMEHSMHPGBSSSRSM) — mostly from emails from his worshipers such as yourself — I have not found any reason to deviate from my conclusion that HMEHSMHPGBSSSRSM is a very useful person doing very good business and thus promoting social welfare. HMEHSMHPGBSSSRSM is not any more a con man than any other business man doing legitimate business.

What you wrote then was interesting but strange. Looking over a website and claiming to able to declare not only the motives but even the state of consciousness of the founder has got to be a new level of confidence in the world. I wonder how you would evaluate yourself if you ran across your own letter. Or maybe it was some kind of satire on people who make judgments by projecting their experience on other things.

Perhaps I am satirically inclined and do jump to conclusions. But that still does not detract from the fact that HMEHSMHPGBSSSRSM promotes himself to the hilt and has legions of brainwashed morons to do his bidding. I don’t envy him his legions of brainwashed morons but I do take exception when some of them legions of brainwashed morons write to me telling me what I should or should not do. There are limits.

You also claim to know that his technique must be nothing new — even though you don’t know what it is. It reminds me of the Harvard researcher Herbert Benson, who had the theory that you didn’t need to practice TM to get the same results. But to prove his point he only cited research on TM! (And of course other researchers found that the mantra was key in creating brainwave coherence, and that the level of rest was deeper when using those mantras.)

Yes, I do know what he teaches as there are sufficient number of people who have undergone the training and have personally spoken about it to me. His technique is nothing new because it is part of the traditional methods of breath control that have been in practice for thousands of years in India. For ignorant Westerners, perhaps, HMEHSMHPGBSSSRSM’s technique may come as a shockingly amazingly new thing. But for the average well-informed Indian, it is as amazingly novel as the fact that bears shit in woods.

It is also interesting how common it is for people to elevate the consciousness of people who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago, and proclaim that no one could possibly have that level of consciousness or grace today.

Thanks for that non sequitur. I will add it to my collection and let you know if it wins the first prize in the “Annual Totally Irrelevant Comment I have Ever Received Contest.”

I would recommend taking the post down, and striving for a bit of innocence and humility. Why not support something that is doing so much good in the world? (If it is a joke, the humor isn’t that good. In my opinion. But even bad comedians seem to get work. Humor is a funny thing.)

You would recommend, would you now? Take that post down? Are you out of your friggin’ mind? I take that back. You have to be out of your mind to have the gumption to write to me asking me to remove a post that has in any way done nobody any harm. All my post did was to reason that there is nothing special about a man who is so fucking full of himself that it has started straining credulity.

Get over it, mister. Judging from the emails that I get from people such as yourself — brainwashed zombies who have lost the power of reason — I am beginning to suspect that the answer to the question “Is SSRS a con man?” to be a most definite yes.

I’m sure you are quite wonderful and like to be able to give your brother advice (and you do advise him ultimately to go with his own experience, which seems very wise), but it would probably help him more to speak about things you know more about.

Feeling a tad patronizing, are we today? Stick it where the sun don’t shine, sweetheart. Here’s what’s puzzling about your attitude. If HMEHSMHPGBSSSRSM is all that wonderful, perhaps he should have taught you some humility. What you display is naked arrogance of a person whose understanding is so little that he doesn’t even know that he is ignorant.

I am finally coming around to the conclusion that SSRS aka HMEHSMHPGBSSSRSM is overall not as harmless as I had first thought. He is turning too many average people into zombies.

In any case, good luck to you.

Mister, it is you who needs all the luck you can get. Don’t go about handing it out so generously.

Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was the third President of the United States (1801–1809), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States. [Wikipedia]

Happy birthday, Mr Jefferson.

Here’s something that Jefferson insisted upon that the Indian government would do well to adopt. In the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, Jefferson wrote:

“[no citizen] shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever…[to] compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of [religious] opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.”

I think that it is immoral and wrong that the Indian government forces me to pay for the support of religious activities that I find is sinful and tyrannical.

Today is also the birthday of Christopher Hitchens. Happy birthday and many happy returns, Christopher. May you continue your good fight against the theists. I should mention that I totally disagree with Hitchens on his support for the American invasion of Iraq.

Here’s Christopher Hitchens debating his brother Peter. It is a 14-part video and the first four parts were on Iraq. This part is where they start debating the proposition that the (monotheistic) god does not exist and that god is not great.

Why is India poor? As some have argued, India is poor by choice. I will explore that idea a bit here.

Of course, that does not mean that every poor Indian has chosen to be poor. Someone else in a position of power made choices whose consequences are evident. India’s leaders – past and present – have consistently made choices that have had, and are having, a disastrous effect on the lives of hundreds of millions of human beings. What motivates these people is a question that directly follows from any attempt to answer the question of why India is poor. Nehru epitomizes the class of people that have through their choices doomed India to being an almost irrelevant nation of one billion humans.

To better understand the source of the great screw ups that Nehru is responsible for, I think we need to examine the primary personal motivation of the man. My contention is that the primary motivation was that he wanted absolute personal power. Note he had acquired power in the years preceding India’s independence. But it was the old story being retold: power corrupting and that corruption leading one to seek absolute power, and that absolute power corrupting absolutely.

Why did Nehru decide to not align India with the victorious Western nations and instead chose that India should be non-aligned? I believe that it is instructive to examine what the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir did at the time of India’s independence.

Following the withdrawal of the British from India and the creation of Pakistan, the Princely States had the option to align themselves with either the union of India or with the Islamic nation of Pakistan, or remain ‘independent.’ Kashmir chose to be independent. Or more accurately, the Maharaja of Kashmir chose to be independent. It is important to recognize that it was the leader who chose, not the people.

How the existence of J&K as an independent state could be contemplated by any sane person is difficult to understand unless one posits that the Maharaja was not entirely sane. How can a sane person think that the territorial avariciousness of the newly formed Islamic nation would not extend to a beautiful state with nearly half its population Muslims?

I think that Maharaja Hari Singh was insane.

The Maharaja was suffering under a grand delusion — the goal of personal power blinded him to reality and led to his disastrous mistake for which hundreds of millions are paying today. The Maharaja refused to align Kashmir with India until after the Pakistanis invaded. Then he suddenly realized that he wasn’t as great and mighty as he had imagined himself to be. That is when he turned to India to save his sorry ass. Maharaja Hari Singh’s story is the story of Nehru played out on a smaller stage.

There are certain parallels between the actions (or rather the inaction) of the Maharaja during 1947-48, and the actions of the leaders of independent India. The Maharaja, by acceding neither to India nor to Pakistan, wanted to be non-aligned and be independent. In attempting to do so, he failed miserably and ended up being a dhobi ka kutta, na ghar ka, na ghat ka.

India too followed that same policy with equally disastrous results. I lay the blame on Nehru. I believe that his idealism was the result of arrogance rather than wisdom. He saw the world as he wanted it to be rather than seeing the world as it was. Being a pukka Britisher was more important to him than being realistic. So in his attempt to be more British than the English, to do what was ‘cricket,’ he bought into what the British themselves don’t buy.

This is pure conjecture of course but I think that Nehru wanted to be the monarch of an independent India. He could not countenance being the monarch of an India that was certainly going to be a junior partner in any coalition had he aligned India with on either side of the Cold War. In this sense, Nehru was merely following the same impulses that forced Jinnah to demand a separate nation to be the monarch over. They all — from Hari Singh to Jinnah to Nehru — wanted to be king. They were arrogant but their arrogance was not supported by sufficiently powerful armies. Perhaps Nehru should have read and understood Machiavelli at least, even if he was too much of a Pukka Sahib to read Kautilya’s Arthashastra. He should have paid attention to this part of Machiavelli’s The Prince:

A prince is further esteemed when he is a true friend or a true enemy, when, that is, he declares himself without reserve in favour of some one or against another. This policy is always more useful than remaining neutral. For if two neighboring powers come to blows, they are either such that if one wins, you will have to fear the victor, or else not. In either of these two cases it will be better for you to declare yourself openly and make war, because in the first case if you do not declare yourself, you will fall a prey to the victor, to the pleasure and satisfaction of the one who has been defeated, and you will have no reason nor anything to defend you and nobody to receive you. For, whoever wins will not desire friends whom he suspects and who do not help him when in trouble, and whoever loses will not receive you as you did not take up arms to venture yourself in his cause.

Reality intrudes into the lives of even the most able dreamers. So the ideal of non-alignment was shelved from time to time and Nehru repeatedly cast his lot (and more tragically, the lot of India) with the wrong side of the Cold War. The Chinese read their Sun Tzu’s Art of War quite diligently. They understood it too:

War is a matter of vital importance to the state; a matter of life or death, the road either to survival or to ruin. Hence, it is imperative that it be studied thoroughly.

Clearly Nehru was no match for the Chinese who must have been amused by Nehru’s naivete. I am sure that Chou En-lie must have been contemptuous of Nehru and pitied India to some extent.

Nehru fancied himself to be a student of history. But he never learnt the lessons of history himself. History tends to repeat itself, however imperfectly. He could have learnt the lessons directly following from the actions of the Maharaja and seen the disastrous consequences of non-alignment. In the end, Nehru must have started believing his own whitewashed version of history in which high principles triumph over strategic realities. He refused to form strategic alliances and instead chose to have a ’swadeshi’ attitude towards defense, much as the economic policy he advocated. Both are, admittedly in hindsight, failed policies.

Contrast this failed non-aligned policy with that of Pakistan’s. Pakistan played both sides of the fence while India decided to sit on the fence. In doing so, Pakistan won the gratitude of both sides while India was regarded contemptuously. Running with the hares and hunting with the hounds is a trick Pakistanis have been perfecting for long enough that it has become second nature to them. Without batting an eye-lid they can now simultaneously fight the war against terrorism and give support and comfort to the terrorists of every stripe. And for doing this, the Western countries are immensely grateful to Pakistan.

Back to Kashmir. If Nehru had not screwed up, the UNCIP would have expeditiously concluded that Pakistan had been the aggressor in sending an army into an independent Kashmir and that the Maharaja had been right in acceding to India.

The Kashmir conflict is sufficiently complex for it to be resolved in multiple ‘right’ ways. Whatever be the facts, they can be interpreted differently by powerful interests depending on the global environment. India was sufficiently large and thus potentially significant that its actions could create the environment in which the issue was embedded. Pakistan, on the other hand, could not materially affect that environment. It was therefore not Pakistan’s being ‘right’ that caused the UN to take the stance that it took; it was India that defied the powerful and created an environment in which the West saw it fit to punish India for its arrogance.

I take that back: It was not India at fault, it was Nehru, the Nabob of Cluelessness, who was at fault. India merely paid, and is continuing to pay, the price of his cluelessness.

Minor dimwits are basically harmless; but when dimwits gain absolute power, they become capable of unleashing great disasters. The US will point to George W Bush as an illustration of that point; in time to come, Indians will point to Nehru.

[The above is from nearly five years ago. An article by N Rajaram about India's interest in Tibet. "The monks and the dragon" (The Pioneer, April 6th, 2008), prompted the repost. I post Rajaram's article in its entirety with my emphasis.]

Tibet and Jammu & Kashmir offer striking examples of a self-absorbed leadership placing personal glory ahead of national interest. India is still paying the price for these blunders by being the only country of its size without a recognised border with its giant neighbour. The failure is not just geopolitical, but also one of morality and even identity of India as a nation. It is an unhappy fact that Indian leaders gave no clear vision of national identity: instead, what they gave and followed were personal fetishes like ahimsa and Panchasheel that have cost the country dear.

Indian leaders have avoided taking morally forthright stands over international issues like Tibet and Hungary as well as over domestic issues like the Shah Bano affair and jihadi terrorism. For this India has earned the label of being a ’soft’ state. By supporting the Tibetan people, India could send a clear message to the world and to its own people that it stands for some values that it holds sacred. But this calls for political courage that has been missing so far.

The Tibetan uprising has brought to light some uncomfortable facts which Nehruvians would like to see removed from history books. There is an attempt to whitewash the Chinese occupation of Tibet as a reaction to a CIA conspiracy to turn Tibet into a Western colony with the Dalai Lama as a puppet; one ’secular’ writer has even compared him to Osama bin Laden!

This creative rewriting cannot obscure the fact that it was Jawaharlal Nehru’s pursuit of international glory in Korea that led to his giving up India’s rights in Tibet. As China appeared on India’s doorstep by occupying Tibet, the Jawaharlal Nehru Government made a strenuous effort to gain international recognition for Mao’s China at India’s cost. It is not widely known that India was offered a UN seat as a permanent member of the Security Council, which Nehru rejected insisting that China be admitted first.

In 1950, as Chinese troops were invading Tibet, India’s Ambassador in Beijing KM Panikkar went so far as to claim that protesting the Chinese occupation would be an “interference to India’s efforts on behalf of China in the UN”. Nehru concurred: “Our primary consideration is maintenance of world peace… Recent developments in Korea have not strengthened China’s position, which will be further weakened by any aggressive action (by India) in Tibet.”

Deeply disturbed by these developments, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel complained to Nehru that Panikkar “has been at great pains to find an explanation or justification for Chinese policy and actions”. India got nothing in return from China. At the very least India could have demanded settling its border with India for its support. But Nehru gave up India’s diplomatic rights in Tibet by closing down missions in Lhasa and Gyangtse.

An argument is now being made that Nehru had no choice because India was not strong enough to challenge China in Tibet. Nehru himself never made this dubious claim, then or later. China, just coming out of the civil war was overcommitted in Korea and was vulnerable in Tibet. Tibet also had international support.

The highly influential English publication The Economist echoed the Western viewpoint when it wrote: “Having maintained complete independence of China since 1912, Tibet has a strong claim to be regarded as an independent state. But it is for India to take a lead in this matter. If India decides to support independence of Tibet as a buffer state between itself and China, Britain and the US will do well to extend formal diplomatic recognition to it.”

India would have lost nothing by protesting and gained much in goodwill, but Nehru’s infatuation with Communism made him blind to the gross immorality of allowing a peaceful neighbouring people being enslaved. Nehru covered this moral obtuseness with self-righteous arrogance. He saw the spiritual civilisation of Tibet as primitive that could benefit from a dose of socialism administered by the Chinese occupiers. (“A very large dose,” said the Dalai Lama.)

Sixty years after independence, it is time for Indians to re-examine their recent history and see how they have been misled by self-righteous rhetoric and posturing leaders pursuing personal glory at the cost of national interest. This has also weakened the country’s moral fibre, leaving it without a national vision. It is time India came out of this moral stupor by taking a forthright stand on the side of the oppressed people of Tibet. At the very least there should be no second betrayal.

Like millions of others of my generation, I grew up reading science fiction. I liked Arthur C Clarke the best. Based on his story “The Sentinel,” the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” is one of my all-time favorite movies. He collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on the book and the film. I suppose I will have to watch it again soon in his memory.

Whenever I am astounded by technology, I am reminded of Clarke’s Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

He was a true visionary. He is called the godfather of the communications satellite; he outlined the idea in a paper in 1945, and the first geostationary comm sat was launched in 1963.

Just the other day I was wasting time on the web researching stuff on the web and came across this site Kubrick2001: The Space Odyssey Explained. Be careful: the site has spoilers. So watch the movie first if you ever intend to watch the movie. Here are some screen shots from the flash presentation.

Here are two obituaries: BBC and LA Times.

[Picture source.]

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity… Never lose a holy curiosity.”

From “The World As I See It.” (Hat tip: Veer.)

My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality… The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor… This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man… I am satisfied with the mystery of life’s eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence — as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.

What we chiefly need is “the creative, sentient individual.” The individual is the principal, not the state. I think that to the extent that India has deviated from considering the individual at the top and instead put the state at the top, India is suffering. We have to make the state subservient to the individual, not the other way around.

On a related note, the Guardian.co.uk reported that (as of Feb 17th), “180,000 demands to remove images of the Prophet” from the Wiki page on Muhammad have been made. I assume that these were followers of Islam who made that demand. Islam forbids the depiction of Muhammad because it could lead to idolatry — that is worshiping of Muhammad — and Islam calls for the death of all idolaters.

Yes, the followers of Islam if they so choose should not depict Mohammed or any other living creature. But demanding that non-Muslims follow the dictates of Islam is patently idiotic, and ridicule and derision should be heaped on attempts at controlling others.

Here’s a clue to those clueless retards that want to control others. You are not required by law — human or physical — to go check out any material that is not consistent with your ridiculous belief system. If you don’t like to read something or watch something because it offends you, then don’t do it. Just read or watch or listen to what you don’t find offensive. Don’t like a novel? Don’t read it. Write your own which suits your taste and follows your religion’s dictates.

Let me remind you. I find your belief system offensive and inhuman. (Don’t thank me. I am merely returning the compliment. Check out what your “holy” books say about my belief system.) But I would not presume to tell you not to practice it in the privacy of your own home. I don’t call for the ban of your “holy” writings that the majority of humanity finds offensive. Yes, however millions of Pastafarians exist, there are more non-Pastafarians. And that goes for the followers of every other religion — including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Let me also remind you that the world is a pretty big place. It is much much bigger than could be conceived by the writers of the “holy” books who lived and died their whole miserable lives in a desert in the Middle East a couple of thousand years ago. They thought that what they could see from the top of their camels is all that the universe was. Nope, the world is much bigger. Other people have other ways of living and thinking. Believing that the entire world was just a huge freakin’ desert where everyone must do everything exactly the same way is retarded and unimaginative.

It is stupid and dangerous insanity to want to dictate to others how they should live under your religion’s prohibitions. Let me give you an example. To most Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, and Buddhists, killing cows and eating them is offensive and against their religion. Would you support a worldwide ban on the slaughter of cattle? If not, why not? What makes your ban any more reasonable than the ban on something that most Indians find offensive?

Grow up. It is way past the 7th century and we are no longer in the Arab peninsula, Toto.

The Wikipedia team told the wackos who want to control what is published on the web to shove it but did it very politely.

Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with the goal of representing all topics from a neutral point of view, Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group.

So long as they are relevant to the article and do not violate any of Wikipedia’s existing policies, nor the law of the US state of Florida where Wikipedia’s servers are hosted, no content or images will be removed because people find them objectionable or offensive.

See, there is a place outside of the desert and it is called Florida and there is a time called the 21st century that is not the 7th century. Sweetie, if you are offended by something that you have no reason to be able to control, then it is your problem, isn’t it? Can’t you get it into your pointy little head that YOU are the one who is taking offense — others have better things to do than go around offending you.

Live and let live, my preciouses.

This ends my little rant. But wait, there is more. Here’s Christopher Hitchens on YouTube. It is part of a debate on free speech in Canada in November 2006.

Hitchens (the author of “God is not great: How religion poisons everything”) is great. An Englishman who became an American citizen a few months ago. What is with these Englishmen? You have Hitchens, and Dawkins, and Pat Condell. Condell’s rants on religion are amazingly lucid and hard-hitting. Here are two for your watching pleasure. As Condell says, “Peace.”

NOTE NOTE

Follow up to this post is here.

Richard Dawkins summarizes Darwin’s big idea in one sentence: “Given sufficient time, the non-random survival of hereditary entities (which occasionally miscopy) will generate complexity, diversity, beauty, and an illusion of design so persuasive that it is almost impossible to distinguish from deliberate intelligent design.”

Dawkins remarks on the amazing explanatory power of the idea of natural selection. I find reflections of that sort of explanatory power in Adam Smith’s idea that markets work and lead to social welfare gains.

It is interesting that it takes many years of internalizing of a big idea before one can fully comprehend it. It is only after it has been comprehended that one can then express it succinctly and accurately. And to understand why some others find it hard to comprehend certain ideas. Dawkins writes:

It is mainly its power to simulate the illusion of design that makes Darwin’s big idea seem threatening to a certain kind of mind. The same power constitutes the most formidable barrier to understanding it. People are naturally incredulous that anything so simple could explain so much. To a naive observer of the wondrous complexity of life, it just must have been intelligently designed.

I have worked out a model why we find it hard to comprehend — internalize — certain ideas. I will go into it one of these days. For now I would like to note that Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) was influenced by the ideas of a fellow Englishman, the great economist Thomas Malthus (1766 – 1834).

Great ideas are the greatest achievements of humans. What is worth pondering is why these ideas arise among certain people and not among others. Are there any regularities that characterize the populations within which great ideas arise? In 1776, Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) published his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. In the same year, the founding document of the United States of America, the Declaration of Independence, was written (principally) by Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826). And again it was in 1776 that Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809), “The Father of the American Revolution,” published Common Sense.

Why?

[Link: Richard Dawkins on "Why Darwin Matters."]

Soon after Independence, the first commander-in-chief of the Indian armed forces, General Sir Robert Lockhart, presented a paper outlining a plan for the growth of the Indian Army to Prime Minister Nehru.

Nehru’s reply: ‘We don’t need a defence plan. Our policy is non-violence. We foresee no military threats. You can scrap the army. The police are good enough to meet our security needs.’

He didn’t waste much time. On September 16, 1947, he directed that the army’s then strength of 280,000 be brought down to 150,000. Even in fiscal 1950-51, when the Chinese threat had begun to loom large on the horizon, 50,000 army personnel were sent home as per his original plan to disband the armed forces.

After Independence, he once noticed a few men in uniform in a small office the army had in North Block and angrily had them evicted.

Soon after Independence, he separated the army, navy, and air force from a unified command and abolished the post of commander-in-chief of the armed forces, thus bringing down the status of the senior most military chief.

He continued to demote the status of the three service chiefs at irregular intervals in the order of precedence in the official government protocol, a practice loyally continued by successive governments to the benefit of politicians and bureaucrats.

During the 1947-48 war with Pakistan in Kashmir, Nehru interfered with purely military decisions at will which delayed the war and changed the ultimate outcome in Pakistan’s favour. He developed a precedent to violate channels and levels of communications at that time. His penchant for verbal orders to the various army commanders, of which he kept no records, violated the chain of command.

The army thereafter reversed this trend. [Emphasis mine.]

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is in all likelihood a duck.

[Previous part: Was Nehru a dictator?]

The thing is, we still live in a world that’s filled with opportunity. In fact, we have more than an opportunity — we have an obligation. An obligation to spend our time doing great things. To find ideas that matter and to share them. To push ourselves and the people around us to demonstrate gratitude, insight, and inspiration. To take risks and to make the world better by being amazing.

Are these crazy times? You bet they are. But so were the days when we were doing duck-and-cover air-raid drills in school, or going through the scares of Three Mile Island and Love Canal. There will always be crazy times.

So stop thinking about how crazy the times are, and start thinking about what the crazy times demand. There has never been a worse time for business as usual. Business as usual is sure to fail, sure to disappoint, sure to numb our dreams. That’s why there has never been a better time for the new. Your competitors are too afraid to spend money on new productivity tools. Your bankers have no idea where they can safely invest. Your potential employees are desperately looking for something exciting, something they feel passionate about, something they can genuinely engage in and engage with.

You get to make a choice. You can remake that choice every day, in fact. It’s never too late to choose optimism, to choose action, to choose excellence. The best thing is that it only takes a moment — just one second — to decide.

Before you finish this paragraph, you have the power to change everything that’s to come. And you can do that by asking yourself (and your colleagues) the one question that every organization and every individual needs to ask today: Why not be great?

If I were an illiterate person, I would be convinced that Gandhi is goodness personified. After all, doesn’t Indian money carry his image? Isn’t he the father of the nation? And should I not vote for Gandhi’s children — Rajiv, Sonia, Rahul, whoever? And should I not vote for the party that Gandhi founded? And should I not believe everything from a person who says he is a Gandhian?

Anyway, I must admit that the Congress party of India has a winning formula and they know it. Gandhi is the biggest brand name in the world — forget Coca Cola and McDonalds. Mera Bharat Mahan!

Anyway, here’s my response to the gentleman, for the record.

Dear Mr N:

Thanks for writing. I believe that you have mis-read my pieces on SSRS. That is easy to do because many people — such as yourself — arrive at the posts with the preconceived idea that I am trashing SSRS. Let me restate my position even though it should not require restating as I have made these points again and again in my posts and in my responses to comments.

1. AoL is a personality driven cult. It makes many of its followers zombies who worship SSRS and have abdicated their reason. I have met SSRS followers in person and in cyberspace. Some of them — not all — are totally brainwashed and can only talk of SSRS as the Supreme Commander and Owner of the Universe. I am serious about this. And if you need some evidence, see some of the comments and emails that I have published from such people on my blog.

I am all for the promotion of good ideas — and Indian philosophy and religions have an incredible store of that sort of thing. But when the personality becomes the focus, the ideas take a back seat. This is a pity because the ideas are important, whereas the person is merely the instrument. Of course AoL is not the only organization which promotes a person over ideas, and SSRS is not the only demi-god in the world. We can name quite a large number of them — J Krishnamurty, Sai Baba, Satya Sai Baba, Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, and so on.

2. AoL is a commercial operation. Nothing wrong with that as I am an economist and fully endorse all commercial activities that contribute to society and make a profit. But to attribute superior motives to it is flawed, in my opinion. Coca Cola company and AoL are in this way doing exactly the same thing: supplying to what people want. There is a difference though: the CC company makes a product and sells it to make a profit. AoL takes donations (and course fees) and part of its income it devotes to social work. In purely economic terms, it is a transfer of resources, not the creation of wealth.

Suppose BigCorporation makes and sells cars and then of the $1 billion profits, contributes $100 million to build schools for the blind. That it makes a profit means that its cost of making the cars is lower than the revenues. And the revenues is a measure of how much value people who buy those cars put on the work of the BigCorporation. The BigCorporation therefore actually creates the wealth and then spends part of that to build schools.

Now AoL takes donations from people and aggregates it and does social work. It does not create the wealth — it only transfers it from a large number of people (who have presumably worked in creating that wealth) to itself and then claims that it has done social work itself. I am not saying that the intermediation that AoL does in taking the money from its followers and aggregating it is worthless. That is valuable. But it cannot be claimed that they created the wealth that they used. They merely took it by persuading people that they are good people.

I think that SSRS can claim that he built those schools only if the funding came out of his pocket. And if indeed it was his own personal wealth that went into the social work, then I don’t see why anyone can fault the position that he runs a commercial organization whose owner he is.

From my point of view, SSRS and Ratan Tata are both useful people. And so are most of us — useful. The scale differs but not the basic idea. We work, we create some wealth, we get paid, we consume some of that income, we give some of that income to charity, etc. Sure I don’t give the same amount to charity as say Ratan Tata gives. But qualitatively there is no difference, even though the quantitative difference is huge.

I note the dismissive tone you took to “logic” and other such things. Perhaps logic is not very useful in your scheme of things. Many people do derisively dismiss logic while quietly enjoying the luxuries that a hardheaded use of logic by others has created. Faith, they say, is more important than logic. OK, so tell me which of the things that you find useful was developed and created by faith? Let me put that in a different way: imagine a poor person who has little food, no shelter, and is materially impoverished. He is given two bundles of goods to choose from. One bundle consists of goods that are the end product of logic and hard work. The other bundle is of goods that are the result of faith. Which one is he likely to choose?

Only the rich can afford the luxury of claiming all sorts of benefits of having faith. The rest of us have to somehow manage to get some stuff so that we can continue to keep body and soul together in this material world. Once that is achieved, I am sure that I will be happy to talk about faith — with a full stomach.

Just a few days over a century ago Jacob Bronowski was born in Poland. Among the people whose sojourn on this material plane overlapped mine and whom I admire, Bruno (as his friends and family called him) is up there with a select few. I consider him to be one of my spiritual teachers in the sense that his work has nourished my spirit over the years since I first read his words and then later watched his BBC production of The Ascent of Man. I still have the tattered book with me which I had acquired about 25 years ago and every now and then re-read to enrich the soul and receive solace after a long immersion in the dismal science.

Reading The Ascent of Man is a journey through science, philosophy, history, art, literature and poetry. If I had to choose a set of books that should be required reading for every high school student, TAoM would be in that bunch. And now that we can easily present multimedia content, I would also include his 13-part TV series, along with Carl Sagan’s COSMOS, and David Attenborough’s Life on Earth and Planet Earth. It is impossible for a person to be unmoved reading and watching that collection. One cannot but become a better human being as a result. In the schools that I will build, all this will be part of the core curriculum.

Here’s a bit from The Ascent of Man which is especially moving:

THERE ARE TWO PARTS to the human dilemma. One is a belief that the end justifies the means. That push-button philosophy, that deliberate deafness to suffering, has become a monster in the war machine. The other is the betrayal of the human spirit: the assertion of dogma that closes the mind, and turns a nation a civilisation into a regiment of ghosts – obedient ghosts, or tortured ghosts.

It is said that science will dehumanise people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false. In the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz, that is where people were turned into numbers. Into its pond were flushed the ashes of four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.

A scientific society is one in which specialists can indeed do the things like making the electric light work. But it is you, it is I, who have to know how nature works, and how (for example) electricity is one of her expressions in the light and in my brain.

The ascent of man is always teetering in the balance. There is always a sense of uncertainty, whether when man lifts his foot for the next step it is really going to come pointing ahead. And what is ahead for us? At last the bringing together of all that we have learned, in physics and in biology, towards an understanding of where we have come: what man is.

And now here’s the man himself, thanks to YouTube:

From The Identity of Man:

WE CANNOT HOPE to match the total complexity of nature any more precisely than a language matches the complexity of social life. The answer to the polite enquiry “How are you?” is not a medical bulletin. And the answer to the scientific enquiry “How are atoms of carbon made?” is not a full analysis of the mind of the Almighty. There is a tolerant give and take in the reply that we make to questions about our health; and there is the same give and take, an essential intolerance, in the sentences that we can frame to picture the improbable generation of the carbon atom. A single experiment can be described in a bulletin; but the grand processes of nature cannot be sketched without the ambiguity which dogs all language. Science would come to a standstill if every ambiguity were resolved, for there would be nothing left to discover. It is this which makes it more vivid and more enlightening to call science a language for the machinery of nature and not an engineering drawing.

From Science and Human Values:

THE DISCOVERIES OF SCIENCE, the works of art are explorations – more, are explosions, of a certain hidden likeness. The discoverer or the artist presents in them two aspects of nature and fuses them into one. This is the act of creation, in which an original thought is born, and it is the same act in original science and original art. But it is not therefore the monopoly of the man who wrote the poem or who made the discovery. On the contrary, I believe this view of the creative act to be right because it alone gives a meaning to the act of appreciation. The poem or the discovery exists in two moments of vision: the moment of appreciation as much as that of creation; for the appreciator must see the movement, wake to the echo which was started in the creation of the work.’

‘Science is not a mechanism but a human progress, and not a set of findings but the search for them. Those who think that science is ethically neutral confuse the findings of science, which are, with the activity of science, which is not. To the layman, who is dominated by the fallacy of the comic strips, that science would all be best done by machines, the distinction is puzzling. But human search and research is a learning by steps of which none is final, and the mistakes of one generation are rungs in the ladder, no less than their correction by the next. This is why the values of science turn out to be recognizably the human values: because scientists must be men, must be fallible, and yet as men must be willing and as a society must be organized to correct their errors. William Blake said that ‘to be an Error & to be Cast out is a part of God’s design’. It is certainly part of the design of science.’

‘The society of scientists is simple because it has a directing purpose: to explore the truth. Nevertheless, it has to solve the problem of every society, which is to find a compromise between man and men. It must encourage the single scientist to be independent, and the body of scientists to be tolerant. From these basic conditions, which form the prime values, there follows step by step a range of values: dissent, freedom of thought and speech, justice, honour, human dignity and self-respect.’

From The Face of Violence:

AT THE HEART of our violence, in act or in feeling, lies the wish to show ourselves men with a will. Since society is an instrument for controlling our chaotic wills, the gesture of violence we make is anti-social; we invent a symbol for the forces of society, obscure and impersonal, which shall be our scapegoat. But the symbol is only a mask for the fear of each of us that society thwarts what is best and personal in him. We fear that society disregards us. In the wilderness of cities, we look for respect.’

‘The slave has become extinct because he had no skill to give, and we can get his mere muscular energy from nature. The two hundred years of discovery from which the convolutions of our societies have grown have steadily increased the importance of the individual and with it his standing. But we have failed to find the forms which acknowledge this standing. This is why our world always seems to be on the edge of crisis. We have to try to fit the forms of society to what men do. I live by the skill of the bus driver and the sewer man, the chemist and the stenographer, the butcher and the mill hand; and over all these, I live by the lively minds of my readers. Here is a world in the making and moving, for which each man is a fulcrum. The difficulty is not that society must find him a worthy place; he has one. Society must find out how to recognize his place to his face.’

Add Bruno to the list of must-reads.

Links: Thanks to Pharyngula for the reminder. If you go there, don’t forget to check out the comments.

The excerpts are stolen from the site “The Ascent of Jacob Bronowski.”

You can also find all the bits of video of The Ascent of Man at guba.com.

Just as it is wrong to blame the United States for Pakistan’s failure, it is wrong to credit Nehru with India’s relative success. Assessing Nehru’s role in India’s development requires the space of several books. But one would think it reasonable to credit several hundred million ordinary people of India for doing little things right that contributed to their country being where it is. It is also reasonable to blame a small number of people for doing big things wrong that left India much behind what it could have been.

The comments to the post are interesting, as I said before. Here’s a bit from Pragmatic:

Obviously, Nehru made mistakes, huge ones, and they can’t be condoned. But let us give credit where it is due. Also, can we name any other country except India, where the leaders who fought for independence from colonial masters didn’t become dictators. And I have personally heard this from guys from all third-world countries, who wish that they had a leader like Nehru. Even Pakistanis and Bangladeshis talk about it in private.

I have never quite understood the claim that Nehru was not a dictator. I did not know the man personally, but I am told that he was quite the authoritarian. After all, he was from a rich family and was used to having his way around. Joining the struggle for political freedom is not inconsistent with a desire to be the ruler. In fact, the powerful natives in India had to have the desire to rule the natives as much as the foreigners must have had. It is the desire to rule, to control, to wield power over others that motivates people to colonize others. And it is that same desire that motivates the powerful among the natives to get the incumbents out of their thrones because they want to get on. I am not entirely sure that to the low man on the totem pole it makes any difference as to what the color of the skin or the national origin of the ruler is. In either event, they are the ruled. Further evidence for this is easy to find in India. A significant section of the Indian population is quite happy to have a white-skinned Italian-born woman as the ruler of India.

I consider Nehru as a faux-British and I am reasonably sure that he considered himself to be British. He was continuing to shoulder the white-man’s burden, so to speak. Mr Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka the Mahatma, elevated Nehru to be the ruler of India. A happy transition of power from the white sahibs to the brown sahib — though mind you, Nehru was not as brown as the average Indian. I have a sneaky feeling that if Nehru was really dark, he would not have been the blue-eyed boy.

Anyway, back to Pragmatic’s claim that Nehru did not become a dictator. I wonder. You know, if I had 99 percent of the people bowing and scraping in front of me, and doing my bidding without question, I don’t think I would have to impose a dictatorship. It is costly to maintain an army to control a population — which is what a dictator is forced to do. So why bother being a dictator when you can easily enough win any “election.”

The true test would have been if Nehru had lived long enough and if his popularity had dwindled to the point where he had lost an election. Then we could have judged whether he was a true believer in democracy or not. But alas, the good die young. Or at least they don’t live long enough for people to figure that they were not so good after all.

Nehru’s daughter, however, did live long enough to validate my conjecture above. As long as her popularity won her elections, she was happy to be a democratically elected leader. Lost one election and BANG! the immediate transformation into a dictator. Ascribing superior moral motives to Nehru’s not becoming a dictator is a hasty conjecture. Operationally, one cannot distinguish the actions of one who has almost absolute power democratically from one who is a dictator whose power flows from the barrel of a gun. I would rather be the average person who lives in a functioning economy, than be the average person who lives in a “democracy” ruled by well-meaning but intellectually challenged morons who run make it impossible for me to feed and educate my children.

Another commenter, Oldtimer, says:

I don’t give Nehru credit for our democracy. I’d say that dictatorship does not work on Indian soil — for long, at any rate. Indians might not have understood freedoms as post-Enlightenment Europe understood them, but they resisted oppression for centuries.

Indians resisted oppression? Really now. You could have fooled me! Indians have been subjugated for centuries. And that too by forces far weaker than themselves. At the height of British power, there were hardly any British in India. Perhaps maybe one British for 10,000 Indians. Indians resisting oppression is a joke. If the Indians wanted, they could have had the British for breakfast one morning and still felt hungry. But they meekly went about being the subjects of Britain for nearly a century. The British were not even pushed out; they left because the cost of colonization was not worth the benefits any more.

Anyway, Nitin responded to some of the comments and added:

It is not so much about dictatorship vs democracy. It was about clear-headed, purposeful policies vs wrong-headed, muddled ones. Democracy shouldn’t be used as an excuse to condone bad leadership.

I will write about why democracy fails in India (and works in many other places) separately, as I had promised at the end of my last post. It is too often that one has to hear the lame excuse for India’s dismal economy: it’s because India is a democracy. Wait, so is the US and many other prosperous European countries. But they are not desperately poor. So why drag democracy into it?

Moving on, Rahul Bajoria wrote, “Yes, India under Nehru followed a socialist path, which would not have worked for long. But his ideas were on the lines of industrialization, which itself were not completely flawed.” That is wrong. Wronggity wrong wrong wrong.

Nehru’s industrialization was completely flawed. First is was import substitution industrialization. ISI was bad for India and it is bad for any country (including the different ISI in our neighboring country.) I will not go into that here. Industrialization is good. But state controlled industrialization is a foxtrotting disaster. It has to be from first principles, and it is in practice. Yes, the USSR is a shining example of that sort of thing.

Industrialization which occurs naturally in an economy where the people are economically free leads to prosperity. The US did not have state controlled industrialization and precisely because of that became the greatest industrialized economy the world has ever seen.

Until India wakes up to the fact that Nehruvian socialism and Nehruvian industrialization have been unmitigated disasters, India is not going very far along the road to development. Even now the government has not realized that state control is inconsistent with and antithetical to growth and development.

Charge: The worst of all creatures in the political opinion jungle: a cretin who thinks he’s a genius. Friedman’s intolerable knack for converting irreducibly complex geopolitical/socioeconomic situations into simplistic, tin-eared insta-clichés makes him one of the most dangerous people on the planet, arming people even stupider than him with the illusion of knowledge in the form of a crude vocabulary of badly mixed metaphors and ill-conceived flashcard images, thereby having a negative net effect on the nation’s intellect. India and China are “like a bottle of champagne” which someone has been “shaking for 40 years;” the modern economy dictates that “you need to be at a certain level to be able to claim your share of a global pie that is both expanding and becoming more complex;” and the threat of terrorism is a “bubble” that threatens to “undermine” open society. Friedman’s disorienting literary ineptitude is nearly enough to distract us from the indisputable fact that he has no fucking idea what he’s talking about. For this dolt-friendly parlor trick and a slavish devotion to globalization and technology as abstract, almost mystical tenets, Friedman has achieved iconic status. Exhibits the easy smile and benevolent smugness of an unjustly celebrated man who has never thought very deeply or rigorously about anything at all.

Exhibit A: Despite his constant exaltation of the internet as some kind of global cure-all, Friedman had to actually fly to London to discover that European newspapers were having misgivings about Guantanamo Bay.

Sentence: Column outsourced to Bangalore, where there is some difficulty in finding a peasant ignorant and ineloquent enough to please his audience. Compelled at gunpoint to write a 500-page retraction of his recent best-seller, called “No, Actually the World is Round.”

Even though the [Indian] economy’s annual growth rate has been 8% to 9% for the last five years, India’s peaceful rise hasn’t led to unease over the country’s future. Instead, Americans, Japanese and western Europeans are keen to invest in India, ride on its growth and help develop another heavyweight country.

He contrasts that with the apprehension associated with China’s rise:

Why has China’s peaceful rise, however, raised apprehensions? Is it because India is a democracy in which numerous political forces are constantly at work, making for an internal system of checks and balances? Most probably, yes–especially as India’s governments have tended to be made up of large coalitions of 10 to 20 parties.

“Internal system of checks and balances” reminds me of a joke. At a particular seaport, they were unloading shipments of live crabs in crates from various countries. The crates from all countries, except those from India, had lids on them to prevent the crabs from escaping. The Indian exporter explained that the Indian crabs have internal checks and balances: if some crabs try to escape, the others pull them down and therefore those crates don’t need to have lids.

Lee Kuan Yew continues:

One example of India’s “checks and balances” at work was the suspension of its talks on a U.S. nuclear power deal. Although this deal is manifestly in India’s interests, 60 communist MPs–part of the Congress Party-led coalition government–opposed the deal. Subsequently, the Communists allowed negotiations to resume, reserving their position on the outcome. India’s development will, from time to time, run into domestic obstruction.

The Indian communists do the job of keeping a lid on the Indian economy and prevent it from escaping the crate of Nehruvian socialism. But the communists are not the problem — they are a symptom of a deeper problem with India. In the broadest terms I think it is Indian culture. Saying this exposes me to all sorts of charges. But unpalatable though it is, it is an inescapable conclusion. LKY goes on:

The speed of China’s change and the thoroughness, energy and drive with which the Chinese have built up their infrastructure and pursued their goals spring from their culture, one that is shared by the Koreans, Japanese and Vietnamese, who adopted the Chinese written script and absorbed Confucian culture. The Chinese are determined to catch up with the U.S., the EU and Japan. Fast-forward 20 to 30 years and the world will have to accommodate a more technologically advanced and economically more sophisticated China, whether under a single- or multiparty system.

The drive to excel derives from a knowledge of one’s place in the larger context, an understanding of one’s own worth, a certain confidence and pride in one’s heritage. At least in the Indian policy-making circles, this is impossible as they all Macaulay’s children.

LKY states what India needs to do simply:

India does not pose such a challenge–and won’t until it gets its social infrastructure up to First World standards and further liberalizes its economy. Indeed, the U.S., the EU and Japan root for India because they want a better-balanced world, in which India approximates China’s weight. [Emphasis added.]

So what is social infrastructure and what does “liberalize the economy” mean? I think social infrastructure is the set of rules that govern society. Do the rules allow individuals freedom or do they make the individual subservient to the group? Is discrimination institutionalized in the legal and civil code? Does the system create incentives for groups to fight against other groups?

How can we build social infrastructure if we are stuck with governments that insist on dividing and ruling? Can we at least have an argument about this?

No, I did not make it up. That is what is reported in a recent rediff article. The questions are so profound that I found myself moved to ask such questions. Mine are modest efforts, naturally, as I am not blessed with the immense holiness of SSRS. I am sure that you can also add to the list I present here.

“Does gravitation have anger? Can suitcases be psychic?”

“What philosophy do tables subscribe to? Where do eagles magnetize metaphysics?”

“When are horses psycho-somatic? Can oceans trust tangos?”

“Are unicorns induction resistors? Do white-boards somnolent?”

“Can creative levitate? Will green furious tightness vaporize magical?”

The mind simply boggles at the inanities that flow from pseudo-intellectual fake piety. The mindless bunch of followers swoon ecstatically when they hear those meaningless sentences, their adoration reaching new heights.

Here’s Hitchens (from one of his live debates):

What’s motherly about her? Hideous virgin and fraud, and fanatic and fundamentalist, shriveled old bat. [She was] as far from the nature of motherhood as a woman could decently get. . . We have to have the fortitude to say… to those who are afflicted, to those who are poor, to those who really are suffering, we should say honestly that those who offer them false consolation are not there friends. Who doesn’t know by now that the cure for poverty is not charity in Calcutta. Who doesn’t know that? Why did we decide to forget what we learnt over the generations that charity is an insult to the poor and a way of prolonging poverty; that Mother Teresa was not a friend of the poor, she was a friend of poverty. That there is only one cure for poverty, and that is, by the way, the liberation of women. And which works every time and against which all religions have set its face every time. And against which Mother Teresa has spent a lifetime campaigning, to ensure that misery and poverty and dirt and disease and ignorance would be continued so that there would be ever more people to testify to the Catholic faith.

Hitchens is accurate in his description of Teresa being a fraud. It has recently been revealed that she did not believe in the tripe she was peddling pretty much all her life. She did not have faith in her god. This did not come as a surprise to me because I had concluded that she was a supremely shrewed, cunning, and intelligent person. The way she manipulated the press, the way she used the high-ranking politicians (and the way she allowed herself to be used by them in turn), the way she rubbed shoulders with convicted frauds as long as they enriched her order, the way she handed out indulgences to mass murderers — it all indicated that she was nobody’s fool and she could not have possibly believed in the simple-minded nonsense that the Catholic church expects its flock to believe.

But apparently she wanted to believe in that vile nonsense. And being unable to believe, she was a tortured soul. Perhaps there is some justice in the world after all: at least she suffered a bit. Not a whole lot compared to the suffering that she inflicted by her evil machinations but still suffered. There is no hell but perhaps she did inhabit a bit of hell on earth. Unfortunately though, it is possible that if she had not been so tortured by her lack of faith, perhaps she would have been a little less merciless in her actions. A good person does not even unintentionally harm innocent humans. The evil she represents is absolute because she knowingly increased suffering and pain.

If she had toiled in obscurity whatever her motivation, if she was just another misguided monkey trying to save fish, if she had been just one more missionary hell-bent on converting the heathens — I would not waste my breath on her. But she was celebrated by the powers of the Western world, and celebrated by the morons in the Indian press, awarded all kinds of honors by the stupid Indian government, and finally given a state funeral. The louder these powers speak about her holiness, the more the general population gets brainwashed into believing a falsehood. So I consider it my duty to expose the evil she embodied. I am laying out the evidence and voicing my opinion. To this end, the best spokesman I have found is Christopher Hitchens. May his tribe increase.

Here is part 1 (of 3) of one of Hitchens’ documentary on Teresa titled “Hell’s Angel”.

Here are Part 2, and Part 3.

Teresa was absolutely against abortion, and even just plain contraception. At the very least, if one opposes abortion, one should at least be absolutely for contraception. She was vile. And absolute opposition to abortions leads to murder. Don’t believe me? Read this report in the Guardian titled “Killer Law” on Nicaragua’s anti-abortion legislation. Not pretty, is it? Check your pulse if it does not make your blood boil.

I am sure that I will continue to write against Teresa. For now, let me close with a letter that a friend of mine forwarded to me. It is part of a letter-writing campaign addressed to those in charge of the international airport in Kolkata.

4 November 2007

To
The Director
NSCBI Airport Kolkata
Kolkata 700052

Dear Sir

As a lover of Kolkata and frequent visitor to your city I was shocked to see, just at the entrance to the check-in section of the international airport, a large portrait of Mother Teresa.

The late nun has caused and is causing IMMENSE harm to Kolkata’s reputation through the worst kind of negative publicity. Most people in the world believe that Kolkata is one mass of disgusting slums where nothing except the most dire poverty exists. This belief system cuts through national, religious and social boundaries.

Let me assure you that without the oppressive yoke of the Teresa myth Kolkata would have enjoyed many many more visitors. Also Kolkata’s business prospects have been irrepairably harmed by the Teresa association.

We, the undersigned, therefore, ardently request you to remove the portrait of Mother Teresa from such a vantage point. We do not have any religious issues about her, as we are drawn from many religions (and none). But we deeply care about Kolkata and its honour and dignity.

Yours faithfully
Dr Z K Kittler

Copy: Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, Chief Minister, West Bengal

Kolkata, whatever its miseries, does not deserve the punishment that Teresa so mercilessly administered it. I do pity Kolkata but I also feel contempt for the ignorance of the people of Kolkata that they so shamelessly acquiesce to their own debasement.

Sayeth Desai:

If instead of the Hindu rate of growth of 3.5 per cent, India had achieved 6 per cent in 1950-80, we would have been twice as rich as we are today. But we have lost even more in terms of distribution of growth than of growth itself. We would have been even richer in terms of consumer goods. We would have worn better and cheaper clothes, and owned more white goods that take the daily toil out of people’s lives. Our villages would have received cheaper and more widely available electricity; with that electricity and their labour, they would have produced consumer goods at a fraction of the present cost. There would have been far more non-agricultural employment in rural areas. Instead of 5 per cent, we would have generated 25 per cent of world trade; all the nations of the Indian Ocean would have been closely tied to us by trade and investment. All we have to boast about today is our democracy; if we had been liberal for sixty years, we would have been a world model for lifestyle.

Quite a fine piece of analysis. Marred by the idiotic characterization of India’s dismal growth rate of 3.5 percent per year as the “Hindu rate of growth.” It was Nehru, Chacha Nehru and his band of clueless retards, that imposed socialistic state planning that doomed India to its retarded growth rate. Neither Nehru nor his bunch of moronic cabinet drew their inspiration from Hindu scriptures or Hindu ideology. The rate of growth of India during the Congress rule was not enforced by Hindu thought or Hindu philosophy. Hinduism is not an economic school of thought and it does not speak to state planning nor does it advocate socialism. The “Nehru rate of growth” has nothing to do with Hinduism or any other religion for that matter other than the religion of socialism.

Piece I have said my.

Among the intellectual and spiritual giants born in this land, Sri Aurobindo has a special standing. Go read about Sri Aurobindo and lament the fact that dwarfs rule the land today.

Here’s Sri Aurobindo on Indian spirituality:

Spirituality is the master key of the Indian mind. It is this dominant inclination of India which gives character to all the expressions of her culture. In fact, they have grown out of her inborn spiritual tendency of which her religion is a natural out flowering. The Indian mind has always realized that the Supreme is the Infinite and perceived that to the soul in Nature the Infinite must always present itself in an infinite variety of aspects. The aggressive and quite illogical idea of a single religion for all mankind, a religion universal by the very force of its narrowness, one set of dogmas, one cult, one system of ceremonies, one ecclesiastical ordinance, one array of prohibitions and injunctions which all minds must accept on peril of persecution by men and spiritual rejection or eternal punishment by God, that grotesque creation of human unreason which has been the parent of so much intolerance, cruelty and obscurantism and aggressive fanaticism, has never been able to take firm hold of the Indian mentality. [Wikiquote.]

SSRS’s followers continue to send me unsolicited mail. Lucky me once again.

They don’t seem to understand that I express my views on my blog; I don’t write emails to people I don’t know forcing my opinion on them. So if they want to express their views, there are dozens of options in terms of blogs. They should avoid sending me mail. Else I publish their idiotic rantings just to underline my case that some of SSRS’s followers are brainwashed retards that don’t have a clue and are clearly unable to comprehend written material.

Here’s one that I got yesterday, posted in its entirety for the record.

Subject:Is Atanu Dey a con man

You too are a con man because you recongnized SSRS so well…of course he is extremely good at marketing…better than you apparently.

He sends a message of peace and love while yours is hate. It is ok to put SSRS in the useful category but which category do you fall into…this is something you should ask yourself.

SSRS has millions of loving homes in 152 countries around the globe. How far has your con job gotten you.

SSRS has created many loving homes around the world…what is your message and what has your message accomplished?

I think you are just jealous that he is better con man than you are…you wish you could con as well he is able to.

Just one suggestion: Wake up first and then get your fetters off!

But then again, the fact that you have fetters on is just my opinion…I am entitled to the right of being wrong. But if you do have them on, take them off and do your research and present real facts, instead of misleading your readers with nonsense. The useless
comments such as yours can only come from a diseased body but then again that too is just my opinion.

Krishna Allam
Houston, Texas

The guy is, shall we say, mentally differently enabled. He admits that SSRS is a con man, a conclusion that I have not been able to arrive at. But his actual complaint is that I have categorized SSRS as “useful” — and not the Supreme Commander of the Universe out of whose Nether Regions the Sun shines in all its Splendor. Mr Allam wants all sentient beings to proclaim SSRS as SSRS the SCOTUoowNRtSsiaiS.

Nope, SSRS is merely useful. It does not matter how many houses he owns or how many people suck up to him. You Mr Allam, on the other hand, are a less-than-useful retard. Take a course in remedial reading.

[Related: Posts on SSRS. ]

Let me highlight a sentence fragment from that piece: ” . . . his work treats human frailties as something to be analysed and worked with, rather than denounced or denied.” That lies at the crux of a multitude of failures. People don’t fully appreciate the fact that what we have is frail human nature and if we refuse to confront reality, we are likely to make public policies that are wrong-headed and disastrous because they are built upon fairy-tale visions of human nature. Mohandas K Gandhi is the most illustrious example of a person who was seriously deluded about the nature of human beings and that, in my considered opinion, has contributed to a significant degree to the poverty that has dogged India for so long.

I continue to be educated about SSRS and AoL by those who have first-hand experience, as a consequence. From the hate mail I get the impression that to a large number of people, SSRS is a divine figure. But every now and then, I do hear from people who have been there without falling into the spell. This one came as a comment and I thought it best to haul it out so that it would reach a wider audience. The write is one who signs off as AV. Here it is, for the record.

First of all I must commend Atanu Dey on his very well-thought-out and articulate letter to his brother. It has been a long time since I read or heard anything on this topic that was not clouded by either fanaticism or extreme skepticism without willingness to examine the facts.

I’m one of those that was an ardent devotee but I snapped out of it in a year (and thank goodness I did). Why? I found SSRS hypocritical. Allow me to narrate just one incident:

Just last week he was in a 4-hour stopover at Bahrain airport. He has a fan following in the country and it would have been no trouble at all to get a visa so he could see them, but he refused. It seems he needed a State invitation! If that isn’t hugely egoistic I don’t know what is. I was totally disgusted. And then he had the audacity to add, ‘the people of Bahrain are not ready to meet me yet.’ Yeah, right.

In the private lounge at the airport where he met a few people, everyone sat on the floor, but the Indian ambassador to Bahrain sat next to him on the sofa. Why the distinction?

Meanwhile, outside, the devotees conducted themselves in a deplorable manner over the matter of who would get a pass to go in and meet him. Instead of exercising the love and compassion and detachment that they are taught about in the course, they fought about it, hurt each others’ feelings, and were generally bitchy. I’ve seen less ‘enlightened’ people behave with more decency.

I think it’s great that he’s improving so many lives, but I have also seen families ruined by this juggernaut that is the Art of Living Foundation. The tragedy of these people is that they think they have been ’saved’.

I don’t begrudge the man his millions and his terrific booming business, but I do mind him preaching about love and humility when he does not practice what he preaches. One only has to look at the two ‘Sris’ to see just how ‘humble’ he is.

Peace.

Thanks, AV, for adding your perspective.

When I look back at the 30 years from 1949 to 1979, China, under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong, was in utter chaos. You will remember the Great Leap Forward of 1958, the Cultural Revolution, and other idiotic economic policies… Mao Zedong, like Joseph Stalin, wanted to make everybody equal. They both succeeded — because they made everybody equally poor.

In India, we don’t engage in plain-speak. Does anyone in India of any stature speak plainly of the “Nehruvian penalty” (as Rajeev Srinivasan calls it) and the utter stupidity of the socialistic policies that condemned India to the “Nehru rate of growth”? The Indian leaders are still trying to do their best in ensuring equality of outcome and the results are evident — heaps of poverty. And where they fail in making everyone equally poor, they engage in the rhetoric of envy, darkly hinting that unless the rich also become poor, there will be social unrest. But here’s more from Wu:

So those 30 years were wasted. While China was trying to make everybody equal, people in Hong Kong and Taiwan had no alternative but to buckle down and try to create some wealth. Hong Kong’s wealth and tremendous economic growth happened in those three decades, as did Taiwan’s.

India beats China in that department. China wasted only 30 years. India has wasted 50 years and its leaders are doing their best to push that to a century. Makes one wonder, doesn’t it, that collectively Indians are rather retarded? We cannot learn from the others. China can. They learnt from what the Japanese had over a hundred years previously. Here’s Wu —

I read Deng’s speeches very carefully, and by about the fourth time it dawned on me that what was going on in China was a replication of what had happened in Japan during the Meiji Revolution (Restoration) of 1868. At that time, Meiji [Japan's emperor] was very young, but the officials in his court were very enlightened. They recognized that if Japan failed to change, the country would have no future. So they sent students and workers all over the world, and they led Japan through a complete transformation in which they remade their educational system, constitutional monarchy and industrial undertakings. As a result, 31 years later there was the birth of a new Japan. I saw Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door policy as nothing more than a replication of the Meiji Revolution.

You know, you don’t have to be a super-duper bright guy to figure that one out. Even I had with my limited understanding figured out that there is something worth emulating in the Meiji Restoration of Japan. Allow me to quote myself from a post from March 2003, “Enlightened Reformation”

BEGIN QUOTE

The depth of the Indic civilization is awe inspiring when you consider that it has been around for many thousands of years. The Vedas were composed long before the start of the Common Era. The people of India can claim direct lineage to those who composed the Vedas and the Upanishads. The Rig Veda epitomizes in one of its invocations what I am concerned about: adoption of ideas.

Let noble thoughts come to us from all universe.

The puzzle therefore is why has modern day India been so insular and close-minded? (By modern day I mean the last few centuries, and not the period variously called ‘internet era’ or ‘post-industrial era’.) Other countries appear to have become enlightened in that regard. Consider, for instance, the Meiji Restoration:

The Tokugawa bakufu came to an official end on November 9th, 1867 with the resignation of the 15th Tokugawa Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu and the “restoration” (Taisei Houkan) of imperial rule. The 15-year-old Mutsuhito succeeded his father, Emperor Komei, and the following year took the reign name Meiji or “enlightened rule,” and signed the Five Charter Oath.

What was the Five Charter Oath?

The Five charter oath (Gokajyo no Goseimon) was an outline of the main aims and the course of action to be followed by the new Meiji era government of Japan after the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1867 during the Meiji Restoration. The oath set a new path in Japanese history with an emphasis on modernization and the establishment of a new social structure.

I draw your attention to the fifth oath which reads:

“Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundation of Imperial Rule.”

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what transformed Japan and made it strong enough to dream of world domination and to ultimately grow so economically powerful that the US was forced for the first time after the Second World War to do some very urgent soul-searching.

The successes of the Meiji Reformation can be traced ultimately to their thirst for knowledge and understanding from around the world. They used ‘noble thoughts’ from all universe to learn and then out-do what others had done. They adopted and adapted to the modern world — a world that they indeed helped create at least in part.

It is time for India to have a reformation of its own. It has to have enlightened rule if it is to survive. There is no other way.

END QUOTE

Wu points out that in the old China there was equality – in poverty. Now, there are some people who make a lot of money but overall there is prosperity in the land. He points the rapid urbanization of China. “Today we are talking about some people who make a lot of money. Now, 43% of the people live in cities and within the next 20 years, I bet your bottom dollar that the number of people living in cities in China will be the greatest migration that the world has ever seen. Urbanization will probably hit a figure of 80%.”

I have argued here before that India’s development is tied with the urbanization of the Indian population. If we continue to be a nation that lives in tiny little Gandhian villages, we will continue to live in Gandhian poverty, enjoying the Nehru rate of growth, paying the Nehruvian penalty.

There is a sure way to success: stop being stupid, as I have been arguing for a while. (See my thoughts on “Aping for Fun and Profit.”) Wu apparently agrees with me. “Looking back I say, well, we are not going to be that stupid again. We are going to follow sound economic principles. What economic principles? I believe an American businessman has defined them very candidly – they have worked in the past, and I believe they will also work in the future. His name was J.P. Morgan, and he said the only way for someone to make money is either by providing others with services or providing them with capital. That is what China has done – it has become a manufacturing center that provides the world with services. In the beginning, the factory owners were in Hong Kong. They helped the people in China start the manufacturing process. Of course, the Chinese are very smart, and they have learned very quickly during the past 20 years. That is why there is a lot of manufacturing in China today.”

Here is some more quotes, for the record:

China still needs lots of infrastructure and hardware — for instance, telecommunications, power stations, superhighways, hotels, and so on. These are very easy to create, although in 1979 when I first went in and negotiated with Chinese leaders, it didn’t seem to them to be an easy thing to create. I told them that it was the easiest thing. An example is when I was trying to sell my concept of building superhighways in China, I explained that without transportation, there was no way modernization could be achieved or the economy put in order.

If you look at China today, the country already has 40,000 km of superhighways, which is second only to the interstate system in the U.S. with its 75,000 kms. Also, the consumption of electricity, steel and copper are in high demand right now, and China’s needs are driving the world market. The demand for urbanization will create enormous opportunities.

Ah that urbanization bit again. Not for India of course. We have to continue to keep our people in villages, and keep them poor.

One can either be original and smart, or one can be smart enough to copy what others have figured out. The Japanese learnt from the Westerners, and a little over a hundred years later, the Chinese learnt from the Japanese. Will Indians learn from the Chinese at least? Or do we need to continue to condemn hundreds of millions of Indians to dire poverty?

Of course I admire his intellect and his passion for rationality. What really amazes me is his indefatigable perseverance. Just listening to him repeatedly explain and defend his position in innumerable interviews on TV and radio, answering the same old questions that he has written eloquently and at length about in his many books, is itself tiring. I wonder how he can calmly and so politely deal with the steady barrage of nonsense that he faces relentlessly. That is what I admire the most about him — the Zen warrior who is not moved to distraction in his fight for sanity in a world that is given over to insanity. I bow deep in reverence to the Master.

Dawkins was recently at Time’s gala event celebrating ‘100 Most Influential People of the Year’. He wonders why he was chosen but most people who have read him would not hesitate to include him in the 100 most influential people alive in the world today.

Here’s a bit from his diary entry on his recent travels:

Whenever I suffer through an airport these days, I hear the mocking laughter of Osama bin Laden. Murdering three thousand innocent men and women with loved ones to weep for them (Allah be praised) was only the start (swamped by road accidents and domestic murders, 9/11 made no noticeable blip in the USA’s violent death statistics for a typical September). No, bin Laden’s lasting achievement, the one that has him sniggering daily into his beard, is to have created the Office of Homeland Security, risible monument to belated stable-door closure.

The payoff for bin Laden has been mayhem and chaos, costly delays and maddening inconvenience to millions of travellers, in every hour of every day, in every airport of every country (except some third world ones with the good sense to ignore the whole charade). Those useless plastic knives and forks were nothing but a signal to the home electorate: We’re gonna kick some ass, and these plastic knives show it, you better believe it. And did some bearded loon once pack explosives into his shoes? Right then, we’ll show those folks we mean business. We’ll smoke ‘em out and teach those terrists who rules this town, yessirree. From now on nobody – and ah mean nobody – boards a plane without first removing their shoes, whenever they board a plane anywhere – and ah mean anywhere – in God’s own country.

And all we like sheep refuse to go astray. We follow the flock because we know that, if we so much as joke about exploding brassieres being the next scare, we risk being summarily locked up until rescued by a harassed British Consul. Better bite our tongue and endure the joke that Osama bin Laden is playing on all of us, through his Keystone-cops-like agents in the Office of Homeland Security.

I recommend adding RichardDawkins.net to one’s daily dose of sanity reading.

1. Hitchens thinks he is great. (I agree.)
2. God is not great. (According to Hitchens as the title of his latest book is God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”)
3. Therefore, Hitchens doesn’t think he is god. Q.E.D.

(Proving Hitchens is allah is left as an exercise for the interested reader. )

Here’s Hitchens speaking with Lou Dobbs on CNN.

And talking of stupid people and their stupidity, read the Story of Stupidity at whereelse but stupidity.com. To get a quick feel for the book, I would recommend you read the last chapter, the Age of Arrogance. For the record, I quote the epilogue of the book here.

The overwhelming conclusion of this work must be that people are human. This profound insight is based not only on the fact that we err but that we do so stupidly because our schemas define the way we perceive and interact with our environment while interfering with the way we learn about it and ourselves. At best, stupidity is a necessary evil since we do need guiding schemas to help us order our lives, even if these systems of thought come to shape and dominate our conscious world by structuring our perceptions, values and beliefs.

This review of the history of stupidity indicates that perhaps we overrated words as defining elements of schemas. For example, Galileo was entranced by neither the Italian nor Latin word for “Circle” but by the image of the circle as the perfect form. Thus, while words may shape our beliefs and thoughts to some extent, they may also be simply masking labels we attach to images and ideas we already hold. In a more general sense, language does not seem to dictate our behavior directly as much as it shapes it indirectly by the way we evaluate, think and talk about it.

More important, this work indicates how our sense of morality interacts with our propensity for learning. One of the human universals is a standard for judging what we do and what we learn. The specific standards vary, of course, from culture to culture, but every group and every individual has some subjective standard for making such judgments. In the absence of knowledge of absolute ultimates, Western culture uses its material success as the measure of all things. However, even in the context of materialism, it is time we recognize the long-term negative impact our technological self-centeredness imposes on the environment as we pursue our own short-term interests and goals. Likewise, we must recognize the nationalistic self-centeredness which inhibits our perception of ourselves as part of a global community.

If there is a sign of hope, it must be that the West permits people to question as well as to do. This combination makes our civilization potentially self-corrective, as it promotes learning and makes us at least theoretically capable of adapting not only to nature in general but to our own subjective nature as well. Further, it invites us to adapt our moral code to what we learn.

Ultimately, the intellectual/moral imperative is for less imposition and more balance. We should not be imposing ourselves on the world or our values on each other. Rather, we should be balancing our need for myths, quest for moral order and desire for material achievement with the necessity of learning history’s overwhelming lesson: We must live together. To fail to do so would be very stupid indeed.

By the way, if you think this a trite way to end this book, take another look at the subtitle on the cover.

The American fiasco in Iraq is a potent example of national stupidity.

You have to agree that Siddhartha Gautama had great timing. His birth was during the full moon in the month of May. He attained enlightenment and became a buddha some years later on a full moon in the month of May. And to round it all off, he attained parinirvana (died) during a full moon of May when he was old.

The full moon is so bright outside my bedroom window this morning that it woke me up at 4 AM. It being the 2nd of May, this month we will have “a blue moon” – a second full moon in the same month. Two “purnima’s,” as a full moon is called in Sanskrit (and many of its daughter languages.) This purnima is called the Buddha Purnima.

So what does one do on the day that the Gautama became the Buddha? Listen to the Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra – the Prefection of Wisdom Heart Sutra! Here is a wonderful recording of the Sanskrit version of the Heart Sutra.

Heart Sutra

While it is loading, let me introduce you to the Heart Sutra. Wikepedia says:

Briefly the sutra introduces the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteśvara, who in this case is representing the faculty of prajña (wisdom). His analysis of phenomena is that there is nothing which lies outside the five aggregates of human existence (skandhas) — form (rūpa), feeling (vedanā), volitions (samskārā), perceptions (samjñā), and consciousness (vijñāna).

Avalokiteśvara then addresses Śariputra, who in this text — as with many other Mahāyāna texts — is a representative of the Early Buddhist schools, described in many other sutras as being the Buddha’s foremost disciple in wisdom. Avalokiteśvara famously states that, “form is emptiness (Śūnyatā) and emptiness is form” and declares the other skandhas to be equally empty — that is, without an independent essence. Avalokiteśvara then goes through some of the most fundamental Buddhist teachings such as the Four Noble Truths and explains that in emptiness none of these labels apply. This is traditionally interpreted as saying that Buddhist teachings, while accurate descriptions of conventional truth, are mere statements about reality — they are not reality itself — and that they are therefore not applicable to the ultimate truth that is by definition beyond dualistic description. Thus the bodhisattva, as the archetypal Mahāyāna Buddhist, relies on the perfection of wisdom, defined in the larger Perfection of Wisdom sutras to be the wisdom that perceives reality directly without conceptual attachment. This perfection of wisdom is condensed in the mantra with which the Sutra concludes.

The mantra is :

OM Gate, Gate, Para Gate, Parasam Gate, Bodhi Svaha

which is translated as “OM Gone, Gone, Gone Beyond, Gone Completely Beyond, Enlightend mind, So be it.” The Buddha is also known as the Tatha-gata — “thus gone” or “one who has gone thus,” one who has crossed the stream and gone to the other shore thus.

I like the Mahayana concept of the bodhisattva. A bodhisattva is someone who postpones attaining nirvana (total and final extinction from existence) and thus continues to be in samsara because of his vow to work ceaselessly till all sentient beings have achieved enlightenment.

One bodhisattva is Avalokiteshvara, the Mahasattva Bodhisattva, the Buddha of Infinite Compassion. In PrajnaParamita Hridaya Sutra, Avalokiteshvara is the one who answers Shariputra who asks “”How should a son or daughter of noble family train, who wishes to practice the profound perfection of wisdom?”

The sutra starts with laying out the scene, the setting.

“Thus have I heard. Once the Blessed One was dwelling in Rajagriha at Vulture Peak mountain, together with a great gathering of the sangha of monks and a great gathering of the sangha of bodhisattvas. At that time the Blessed One entered the samadhi that expresses the dharma called “profound illumination,” and at the same time noble Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva mahasattva, while practicing the profound prajnaparamita, saw in this way: he saw the five skandhas to be empty of nature.”

Then, through the power of the Buddha, venerable Shariputra said to noble Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva mahasattva, “How should a son or daughter of noble family train, who wishes to practice the profound prajnaparamita?”

Form and Emptiness

In my opinion, the most profound thought that has ever been thought is expressed within the answer that Avalokiteshvara gives: “Form is Emptiness, and Emptiness is Form.” The idea of shunyata and shunya lie at the heart of Indian thought. Buddhism perfected the notion.

Well, anyhow, enough of an introduction. Here is the Sanskrit version with English translation. Listen to the beautiful Sanskrit shlokas. Note around 1:15 (or 3:50 from the end) in the YouTube clip, the words “shunyata” and “rupam” – emptiness and form. And around 3:50 (or 1:15 from the end), hear the “gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha” – totally beautifully done. Follow the words along with the text of the entire Heart Sutra below (source.)

Namah sarvajnaaya
Adoration to the Omniscient!

Aaryaavalokiteshvara-bodhisattvo gambhiiraayaam prajnaapaaramitaayaam caryaam caramaano vyavalokayati sma: panca skandhaah; taamshca svabhaava-shuunyaan pashyati sma.
When Holy Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva performed the deep practice in the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom, he contemplated that there were five aggregates but observed that they were devoid of essential nature.

Iha Shaariputra ruupam shuunyataa shuunyataiva ruupam, ruupaan na prithak shuunyataa, shuunyataayaa na prithag ruupam, yad ruupam saa shuunyataa, yaa shuunyataa tad ruupam.
In this case, Shaariputra, form is voidness and voidness is itself form; voidness is not different from form, and form is not different from voidness; that which is form is voidness, and that which is voidness is form.

Evem eva vedanaa-samjnaa-samskaara-vijnaanaani.
So it is for perception, conception, volition and consciousness.

Iha Shaariputra sarva-dharmaah shuunyataa-lakshanaa, anutpannaa, aniruddhaa, amalaa, na vimalaa, nonaa, na paripuurnaah.
In this case, Shaariputra, all things have the characteristics of voidness; they neither arise nor perish; they are neither defiled nor pure, neither deficient nor complete.

Tasmaac Chaariputra shuunyaayaam na ruupam na vedanaa na samjnaa na samskaaraa na vijnaanaani.
Therefore, Shaariputra, within the voidness, there is no form, no perception, no conception, no volition, nor consciousness.

Na cakshuh-shrotra-ghraana-jihvaa-kaaya-manaamsi.
Neither is there eye, ear, nose, tongue, body or mind.

Na ruupa-shabda-gandha-rasa-sprashtavya-dharmaah.
Neither is there form, sound, smell, taste, touch nor concepts.

Na cakshurdhaatur yaavan na mano-vijnaana-dhaatuh.
Neither is there realm of sight, etc., until we come to the non-existence of realm of consciousness.

Na vidyaa, naavidyaa, na vidyaa-kshayo, naavidyaa-kshayo, yaavan na jaraa-maranam na jaraamarana-kshayo, na duhkha-samudaya-nirodha-maargaa, na jnaanam, na praaptir apraaptitvena.
Neither is there wisdom, nor ignorance, nor extinction of wisdom, nor extinction of ignorance, etc., until we come to the non-existence of old age and death and the non-extinction of old age and death. Neither is there suffering, cause of suffering, extinction of suffering, nor the path leading to extinction of suffering. Neither is there wisdom nor acquisition because there is no grasping.

Bodhisattvasya prajnaapaaramitaam aashritya viharaty acittaavaranah. Cittaavarana-naastitvaad atrasto, viparyaasaatikraanto nishtha-nirvaanah.
Depending on the bodhisattva’s Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom, one dwells without any mental hindrance. Because of the absence of mental hindrance, one is fearless; freed from delusory thoughts, one will reach Nirvana.

Tryadhva-vyavasthitaah sarvabuddhaah prajnaapaaramitaam aashrityaanuttaraam samyaksambodhim abhisambuddhaah.
All Buddhas dwelling in the three periods realize the highest, perfect enlightenment depending on the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom.

Tasmaaj jnaatavyo prajnaapaaramitaa-mahaamantro mahaavidyaa-mantro ‘nuttara-mantro ’samasama-mantrah, sarvadukha-prashamanah, satyam amithyatvaat, prajnaapaaramitaayaam ukto mantrah.
For this reason, know that the Great Mantra of the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom is the Great Wisdom Mantra, the Unsurpassed Mantra, and the Unequaled Mantra. It extinguishes all suffering, and is true and real because it is not false. It is the Mantra proclaimed in the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom.

Tad yathaa gate gate paaragate paarasamgate bodhi svaaha.
Namely, “Gone, gone, gone to the other shore; Gone completely to the other shore. Svaha.”

Iti prajnaapaaramitaa-hridayam samaaptam.
Thus ends the Essence of the Transcendent Wisdom Sutra.

[Here is an English version of The Heart of Transcendent Wisdom Sutra: Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra. See this for a bit more on key concepts of Buddhism.]

Here’s an informative letter from someone who has attended SSRS’s Art of Living course, for the record. The writer wishes to remain anonymous.

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your post – Is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar a Con Man?

I did Art of Living Part I course last October and just the last weekend I did the advanced level course called Divya Samaj Nirman. Overall, my experience has been somewhere between very nice to excellent. I learnt a well packaged yoga, meditation, pranayam schedule that I could follow every day morning. Plus, I got immense motivation to follow the routine on a regular basis. Plus, I got some very good knowledge points that I could apply when life is rough to me. Plus, I got highly motivated, freshened up and free. The experience of the course itself was amazing. It was a very professionally conducted course, I did it in USA so may be that counts. I think it will help me a lot in my life.

On the flip side, I was torn apart by their very very very pushy branding. Not only they sell the organization to me to extreme irritation (which I suppose I should care less), they even made me do the advertising, very forcefully, as part of the course.

Secondly, I certainly sensed that the followers of the organization treat him as God. I was kind of offended. I know couple of enlightened gurus in my family. I would not consider Sri Sri Ravishankar Guruji any different than them. I don’t believe in miracles. I need direction; however I don’t want to make myself handicapped – mentally emotionally and spiritually. They tell me that it’s all about the faith. I understand, but somehow I don’t find associating myself with him as my God. For that matter, I grew up learning from my parents that they would associate with any saint or guru or sage as such, even greats like Ramakrishna Paramhansa. At least, I would like to gently grow into the faith, rather than forcing myself.

And then I read your article, very nicely written. It gave me some relief from my ambiguity. I would still follow teachings of Art of Living, but I would not be part of the cult, if at all it is one.

Regards,
HS

I don’t think I have fully understood what I find so creepy about SSRS. Of course, I am generally against personality cults — which is why I consider Christianity (the Jesus personality cult created by Paul), Islam (the Mohammed personality cult promoted by Mohammed), Scientology (the L Ron Hubbard personality cult created by LRH), Mormonism (the Joseph Smith, Jr personality cult), etc, creepy to the extreme. Perhaps I intuit that SSRS aims to attain divinity through modern marketing techniques.

I am fairly certain from what I have read about him and what I read by him, that he is not himself deluded that he is the Supreme Creator of the Universe (TM). But I think he does not mind it that his worshippers do consider him the SCotU. Indeed, he smiles benignly and indulgently when they bow and scrape in front of him and kiss his feet.

Perhaps it is not him that I find creepy but rather his worshippers that I find creepy. That feeling of mild disgust aggregated over a large number of instances gets associated in my mind with SSRS. The problem is that I think that SSRS is a very useful person. He is a defender of the Indian religions against the onslaught of the crazy intolerant monotheists, and Hinduism desperately needs as many defenders as it can get. It would have been better to have a few of the caliber of Sri Aurobindo or Swami Vivekanand. But one is grateful for small mercies.

I realize that I am too critical of people who peddle vacuous homilies. But then, I also realize that the average person is not too bright and if presented with something substantial will not be able to grasp it. So it could be that the vacuous homilies are calculated to appeal to the masses even though the peddler is capable of something more. Or perhaps that is all they are capable of dishing out and it just happens to resonate with the masses. I know that I could not keep a straight face while mouthing that sort of nonsense. Anyway, I enjoy the spectacle even though it comes at the cost of having to see SSRS’s face plastered all over the place. Creepy.

Reading someone who has lived through events that define our past is a learning experience. Lieutenant General M L Thapan, Param Veer Seva Medal, has just added an important bit to my very limited understanding of India’s recent history. He’s seen most of the last hundred years, being 89 years old. Long before most of us were born, he was fighting wars. Ramanand Sengupta spoke with him, Rediff.com reports:

He fought in two major campaigns in World War II.

After Independence, his division was ‘two-and-a-half km from Sialkot when the ceasefire whistle blew in (the second India-Pakistan war) 1965.’ And in 1971, he faced enemy fire again when he was asked to clear one of the three sectors into which East Pakistan had been marked out by India’s Eastern Command.

Here are some of his words, for the record.

On the 1971 war with Pakistan: “When the country was divided in 1947, the people of East Bengal decided to opt for East Pakistan. That was a decision taken by them, and 25 years later, they found that the authorities in West Pakistan were not favorably disposed towards the east.

“To put it crudely, they should have stewed in their own juice. “

On the spinelessness of Indian leadership: “In 1971, our forces paid with lives to help liberate Bangladesh. In April 2001, New Delhi was seen as passive after 15 BSF men were killed and strung up like animals by the Bangladesh Rifles. What has changed over the years?”

On fragmenting India along secterian lines: “Look what is happening with all this nonsense with the caste and community and things. It is all because of getting votes.

“He said the only answer to this whole business is to abolish caste, say it will not be referred to at all in any form. In which case then we are all Indians.”

The man speaks his mind. And why not? He owes nobody anything. He has laid his life on the line more times that most of us have had hot meals. Listen to him: “[The war with] China, where I was not involved, in 1962, was a disgrace. Again, we can blame our own people. Then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, then defence minister V K Krishna Menon. Menon most of all, Nehru for being naive and ingenuous. These chaps had closed minds.

“I think it was (India’s second President Dr (Sarvepalli) Radhakrishnan, who later made the point that this man [Nehru] was living in a world of his own. And he listened to odd-balls like Krishna Menon.”

I fall down and kiss the feet of the God who oversees the World Wide Web. For our textbooks don’t tell us anything. Finally I am getting an education.

However, my conclusion that SSRS is a “useful” person, just like you and I, did not go down too well with those who are persuaded that SSRS is God Almighty incarnate (whatever “God” is.) So I get nastygrams from these fairly regularly. But once in a while I also get letters from dissatisfied AoL customers. The curious thing is that the nastygrams from SSRS worshippers are pretty incoherent rants; and the dissastisfied customers are generally pissed off but coherent. Because I have published one recent incoherent rant from an SSRS worshipper, I am publishing one from someone who has an opposing point of view. Here it is, for the record.

Atanu,

I wish I had read your Web site, long before my fiancé and I were lured into registering for the Part 1 course of the Art of Living Foundation. We walked out on the last day of the course because we couldn’t stand it any longer. I couldn’t have written or explained the experience better myself. You have beautifully verbalized your opinion of the Art of Living Foundation.

I have lost my money permanently, and I am also, without permission, included as a statistic in the set of AOL “followers” of 20 million or so now, even though I strongly oppose the organization. I have to believe that are many others like me. Only about 30% of the Part 1 course was about breathing and the remainder was ear-splitting, fear-psychosis propaganda (for example, “A question is a hook that tears the brain”, and “Questioning SSRS’s principles and teachings can prove costly”), illogical analogies and anecdotes, and disguised pressure to encourage more people (friends and family) to give their credit card numbers to sign up for the course.

It is a totally for-profit, commercial, very well-marketed product and organization. I do see some token projects here and there in poor and tribal areas of India and around the world, the expenditure on such projects is negligible compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars that the organization earns from a single “US tour” of a “specialist teacher” from India. I have not seen any document showing or even referring to exactly how much money the organization is really spending on building schools or hospitals for the disadvantaged, other charitable projects. Since the organization is so fond of shouting out the numbers of their followers and so fond of promoting themselves as a philanthropic organization, why not reveal how much they are actually spending on these philanthropic and charitable projects? Wouldn’t that make them more credible? Almost everyone that “works” for the organization does so on a voluntary basis. Almost every piece of land that the organization builds something on, is donated by the government or a wealthy but gullible member of the AOLF. So where is all the money that is collected from their members really going to? What is being done with the profits?

During several of our Part 1 propaganda sessions, we were told we would be the “privileged few” whose place would be reserved for the “coveted” Part 2 course, if we signed up right now. The whole six day course looked like a live version of one of those late night paid commercials that we were participating in and listening to. People from the class were picked on, randomly, to come up to the front and dance and sing, “so that all inhibitions would be vaporized and self-confidence would be developed”.

“Jai Gurudev” had to be the greeting instead of “good morning” or “good afternoon”. I cannot think of a better way to humiliate and control masses of gullible people than to make them do what is being commanded of them to do in front of uncontrollably laughing people. What upsets me more than my loss of money, is the sheer number of followers this organization has. When you can control a small class to dance on command, you can use that power to control the entire 20 million. SSRS is gaining popularity around the world, like never before and he loves to paste pictures of himself shaking hands with world leaders, on his Web site. “Wow, if he is shaking hands with world leaders, he must be good”.

He certainly falls in the “useful” category. Who is stopping all this madness?

Regards.
SG

Well, I sympathise with SG’s situation. But I don’t think that “this madness” has to be stopped. You pays your money, you takes your chances. SSRS and his Art of Living courses are products that are sold in an open and free market. Caveat emptor and all that. I am sympathetic towards those who get cheated but the burden has to be on the consumer to exercise proper care before forking out cash for a product.

My position arises from my conviction that free markets are best for all concerned. That is, everyone should be allowed to bring their wares to the marketplace and hawk them. There cannot be restrictions on what can be put out for sale. After all, who can decide if what is on offer is good or not? Surely not some bureaucrat or some self-righteous busy body. The consumer is the sovereign. Let the consumers decide if the product is good for them or not. So if the snake oil salesmen make a killing, so be it. It is part of the risk we take and part of the price we pay for the benefits that a free market delivers.

Which brings me to an entirely different connection. I think learning stuff is one of the greatest joys in life. I have a conjecture why I feel this way. It has something to do with being born in a Bengali family. From a very early age, we are told that we worship Ma Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning and Knowledge. We are told that her worship essentially consists of learning and gaining knowledge. It is therefore unsurprising that we value learning and we literally worship books, as books represent Saraswati. Today, 23rd January, is Saraswati Puja, the day we put our books on the alter and bow our heads in reverence. Paradoxically, we are not expected to study on the day of Saraswati Puja.

Saraswati is also associated with music. In India, music is anyway considered a form of worship but more specifically it is the worship of Mother Saraswati. This point was made very forcefully by Zakir Hussain, the tabla maestro, in a performance at the Savai Gandharv festival with the great sarangi exponent Ustad Sultan Khan. In the middle of the performance, Zakir abruptly stopped and addressed a bunch of photographers who were repeatedly popping up to take flash photographs. Sultan Khan’s sarangi fell silent.

Zakir started off with (I am paraphrasing what he said in Hindi): “I have a simple request for the photographers. I think that you taken a lot of pictures. Besides, we are not really dressed up to be photographed. Perhaps you could use Photoshop on what you have taken already and improve on those images.” He paused for a while and then continued very patiently. “You know we are here engaged in the worship of Mother Saraswati. Music is our worship and that is what we are gathered here for. We are not here to put on a show. We are not here for photos. We are here to meditate through Saraswati’s gift–music. It would be very good of you to let us get on with our puja without interruption. Thank you.” The audience burst out in applause in agreement. The music resumed.

Back to the birthday theme. I may have mentioned this before but pardon the possible repetition. I share my birthday, Nov 3rd, with Amartya Sen. So the first time I met him in Berkeley, I told him that. (BTW, I pretty much disagree with Sen on many substantial matters, even though he is a respected elder with more brains that five of me combined.) Anyway, a couple of years later I saw him again. I went up to him to discuss some points he had made in the lecture. Suddenly he says, “Oh, I thought you would be thrilled to know that Tibor Scitovsky was also born on Nov 3rd. We are in good company!” Yes, I was thrilled to bits because Scitovsky is a big hero of mine. Scitovsky’s popular book, “The Joyless Economy” should be read by anyone who is interested in understanding more comprehensively concepts such as joy, happiness, comfort, satiation, and other such basic abstractions which motivate humans and therefore have a bearing on matters economic.

That’s it for now. With a deep bow to Saraswati, I am out of here.

Postscript: Pranav (see his comment) reminded me that Jan 23rd is also Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s birthday as well.

PLEASE STOP WRITING NONSENSE ABOUT OUR GURUJI SRI SRI RAVISHANKAR JI. HE WILL NOT EVEN GET A SINGLE PENNY OUT OF ART OF LIVING ORGANISATION. HE IS STRUGGLING SO HARD DAY & NIGHT TRAVELLING ALL OVER THE WORLD FOR PEACE AND A SMILE FROM HEART. I GUESS YOUR LIFE MUST BE FULL OF TROUBLES..NO DOUBT ABOUT IT….STOP JUDGING ABOUT GURUJI..YOUR LIFE WILL BE PATHETIC AND IT IS ALREADY PATHETIC…STOP ALL YOUR BULLSHIT AND RUBBISH. ATLEAST JOIN THE BASIC PART 1 COURSE YOU WILL CHANGE. MY LIFE TOTALLY CHANGED BECAUSE OF GURUJI OTHERWISE IT COULD HAVE BEEN MISERABLE. TRUST ME HE IS GOD.. YOU WILL REALISE ONCE YOU DO THE COURSE. I’M NOT HERE TO HURT YOU..PLEASE REALISE GURUJI IS A GOD’S GIFT. HE IS VERY VERY NICE PERSON ON THE EARTH. I CAN NOT REPAY HIM FOR EVER. MY FEE IS NOT AT ALL WORTH…I GIVE MY WHOLE LIFE TO GURUJI..ONCE AGAIN PLEASE STOP ALL YOUR RUBSIH AND REALISE….YOU WILL SEE A BEAUTIFUL WORLD.

JAI GURUDEV

HEMANTH

[Thus wrote Hemanth {previously published email address removed}. I would be embarrassed if I had such worshippers. Sri Sri Ravishankar, please read and weep. To answer your worshipper who asked if I was mad, I assure you that I am merely confused, not mad. I am confused regarding why your worshippers write such emails to me when I have not written a single negative comment about their "Gurudev." Gurudevji, if you are here for the first time, please read my final word on you.]

Next day, the economist buys the paper. Across the front page is splashed: “CHICAGOITE KILLS FAMILY PET!”

[Source: Mises.org]

Milton Friedman, economist, died at the age of 94 on Nov 16th. To note the passing of that intellectual giant of the 20th century, here are a couple of extracts from an address by him titled “ECONOMIC FREEDOM, HUMAN FREEDOM, POLITICAL FREEDOM” delivered on Nov 8th, 2002.

In addition to economic freedom, Hong Kong has a great deal of human freedom. I have visited many times and I have never seen any evidence of suppression of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or any other human freedom that we regard as important.

However, in one respect Hong Kong has no freedom whatsoever. It has no political freedom. The Chinese who fled to Hong Kong were not free people. They were refugees from the communist regime and they themselves had been citizens of a regime that was very far from a free society. They did not choose freedom; it was imposed on them. It was imposed on them by outside forces. Hong Kong was governed by officials of the British Colonial Office, not by selfchosen representatives. In the past couple of years, in trying to persuade the world that Britain has not done a dastardly deed in turning Hong Kong over to the communists, the British administration has tried to institute a legislative council and to give some evidence of political representation. However, in general, over the whole of that period, there has been essentially no direct political representa tion.

That brings out an enormous paradox, the one that as I said caused me to rethink the relationship among different kinds of freedom. The British colonies that were given their political freedom after World War II have for the most part destroyed the other freedoms. Similarly, at the very time officials of the British Colonial Office were imposing economic freedom on Hong Kong, at home in Britain a socialist government was imposing socialism on Britain. Perhaps they sent the backward people out to Hong Kong to get rid of them. It shows how complex the relationship is between economic freedom and political freedom, and human freedom and political freedom. Indeed, it suggests that while economic freedom facilitates political freedom, political freedom, once established, has a tendency to destroy economic freedom.

Consider the example that I believe is most fascinating, India. It was given its political freedom by Britain over forty years ago. It has continued, with rare exceptions, to be a political democracy. It has continued to be a country where people are governed by representatives chosen at the ballot box, but it has had very little economic freedom and very limited human freedom. On the economic side, it has had extensive controls over exports and imports, over foreign exchange, over prices, over wages. There have been some reforms in the past year or so, but until recently you could not establish any kind of enterprise without getting a license from the government. The effect of such centralized control of the economy has been that the standard of life for the great bulk of the Indians is no higher today than it was forty years ago when India was given its political freedom.

The situation is even more extreme if you consider that Hong Kong, which I started with, got zero foreign aid during its growth. India has been a major recipient; it got some $55 billion of foreign aid over the past forty years. It is tempting to say that India failed to grow despite foreign aid. I believe that it was the other way: in part, India failed to grow because of foreign aid. Foreign aid provided the resources that enabled the government to impose the kind of economic policies it did.

What is true for India is true much more broadly. Foreign aid has done far more harm to the countries we have given it to than it has done good. Why? Because in every case, foreign aid has strengthened governments that were already too powerful. Mozambique, Tanzania, and many another African country testify to the same effect as India.

To come back to Hong Kong, the only reason it did not get its political freedom is because the local people did not want political freedom. They knew very well that that meant the Chinese communists would take them over. In a curious way, the existence of the Chinese communist government was the major protection of the economic and human freedoms that Hong Kong enjoyed. Quite a paradoxical situation.

Hong Kong is by no means unique. Wherever the market plays a significant role, whether you have political freedom or not, human freedoms are more widespread and more extensive than where the market does not play any role. The totalitarian countries completely suppressed the market and also had the least human freedom.

[Emphasis added.]

It just makes one wonder: it is easier to achieve political freedom than to achieve economic freedom, as is clear in India’s case. Here’s more from Friedman. Note especially that markets can be free, not just private.

In order to understand the paradox that economic freedom produces political freedom but political freedom may destroy economic freedom, it is important to recognize that free private markets have a far broader meaning than the usual restriction to narrowly economic transactions. Literally, a market is simply a place where people meet, where people get together to make deals with one another. Every country has a market. At its most extreme totalitarian stage Russia had a market. But there are different kinds of markets. A private market is one in which the people making deals are making them either on their own behalf or as agents for identifiable individuals rather than as agents of governments. In the Russian market, the market existed and deals were being made all over the lot, but people were dealing with one another not on their own behalf, not as representatives for other identifiable individuals, but supposedly as agents for the government, for the public at large. A private market is very different from a government market. In a strictly private market, all the deals are between individuals acting in their own interest or as agents for other identifiable individuals.

Finally, you can have a private market, but it may or may not be a free market. The question is whether all the deals are strictly voluntary. In a free private market, all the deals are strictly voluntary. Many of the cases of private markets that I cited before were not cases of free private markets. You have a private market in many of the Latin American countries, but they are not free private markets. You have a private market in India, but it is not a free private market because many voluntary deals are not permitted. An individual can deal with anotherto exchange a good or service only if he has the permission of the government. I may say a completely free private market exists nowhere in the world. Hong Kong is perhaps the closest approximation to it. However, almost everywhere what you have, at best, is a partly free, largely hampered, private market.

A free private market is a mechanism for achieving voluntary cooperation among people. It applies to any human activity, not simply to economic transactions. We are speaking a language. Where did that language come from? Did some government entity construct the language and instruct people to use it? Was there some government commission that developed the rules of grammar? No, the language we speak developed through a free private market. People communicated with one another, they wanted to talk with one another, the words they used gradually came to be one thing rather than another, and the grammar came to be one thing rather than another entirely as a result of free voluntary exchange.

Take another example, science. How did we develop the complicated structure of physics, economics, what will you? Again, it was developed and continues to develop as a result of a free private market in which scientists communicate with one another, exchange information with one another, because both parties to any exchange want to benefit.

A characteristic feature of a free private market is that all parties to a transaction believe that they are going to be better off by that transaction. It is not a zero sum game in which some can benefit only at the expense of others. It is a situation in which everybody thinks he is going to be better off.

A free private market is a mechanism for enabling a complex structure of cooperation to arise as an unintended consequence of Adam Smith’s invisible hand, without any deliberate design. A free private market involves the absence of coercion. People deal with one another voluntarily, not because somebody tells them to or forces them to. It does not follow that the people who engage in these deals like one another, or know one another, or have any interest in one another. They may hate one another. Everyone of us, everyday without recognizing it, engages in deals with people all over the world whom we do not know and who do not know us. No super planning agency is telling them to produce something for us. They may be of a different religion, a different color, a different race. The farmer who grows wheat is not interested in whether it is going to be bought by somebody who is black or white, somebody who is Catholic or Protestant; and the person who buys the wheat is not concerned about whether the person who grew it was white or black, Catholic or Protestant. So the essence of a free private market is that it is a situation in which everybody deals with one another because he or she believes he or she will be better off.

The essence of human freedom as of a free private market, is freedom of people to make their own decisions so long as they do not prevent anybody else from doing the same thing. That makes clear, l think, why free private markets are so closely related to human freedom. It is the only mechanism that permits a complex interrelated society to be organized from the bottom up rather than the top down. However, it also makes clear why free societies are so rare. Free societies restrain power. They make it very hard for bad people to do harm, but they also make it very hard for good people to do good. Implicitly or explicitly, most opponents of freedom believe that they know what is good for other people better than other people know for themselves, and they want the power to make people do what is really good for them.

The recent absolutely remarkable phenomenon of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe raises in acute form the issues that we have been discussing. There is much talk in those countries about moving to a free market, but so far very limited success. In the past, free markets have developed in all sorts of ways out of feudalism, out of military juntas, out of autocracy and mostly they have developed by accident rather than by design. It was a pure accident that Hong Kong achieved a free market. Insofar as anyone designed it, it was the colonial officials who were sent there; but it was a pure accident that they were favorable to, or at least not hostile to, a free market. It was an accident that a free market developed in the United States, nothing natural about it. We might very well have gone down a very different road. We started to go down a very different road in the 1830s when there was widespread governmental activity in the building of canals, in the building of toll ways, and the taking over of banks there were state banks in Ohio, Illinois, and so on. What happened is that in the Panic of 1837 they all went broke, and that destroyed people’s belief that the way to run a country was by government. That had a great deal to do with the subsequent widespread belief that small government was the best government.

While free societies have developed by accident in many different ways, there is so far no example of a totalitarian country that has successfully converted to a free society. That is why what is going on in Eastern Europe is so exciting. We are witnessing something that we have not seen before. We know and they know what needs to be done. It is very simple. I tell the people in Eastern Europe when I see them that I can tell them what to do in three words: privatize, privatize, privatize. The problem is to have the political will to do so, and to do so promptly. It is going to be exciting to see whether they can do so.

However, the point that impresses me now and that I want to emphasize is that the problem is not only for them but for us. They have as much to teach us as we have to teach them. What was their problem under communism? Too big, too intrusive, too powerful a government. I ask you, what is our problem in the United States today? We have a relatively free system. This is a great country and has a great deal of freedom, but we are losing our freedom. We are living on our capital in considerable measure. This country was built up during 150 years and more in which government played a very small role. As late as 1929, total government spending in the United States never exceeded about 12% of the national incomeabout the same fraction as in Hong Kong in recent years. Federal government spending was about 3 to 4% of the national income except at the time of the Civil War and World War I. Half of that went for the military and half for everything else. State and local governments spent about twice as much. Again, local governments spent more than state governments. In the period between then and now, the situation has changed drastically. Total government spending, as I said, is 43% of national income, and two-thirds of that is federal.

Moreover, in addition to what government spends directly, it exercises extensive control over the deals that people can make in the private market. It prevents you from buying sugar in the cheapest market; it forces you to pay twice the world price for sugar. It forces enterprises to meet all sorts of requirements about wages, hours, anti-pollution standards, and so on and on. Many of these may be good, but they are government dictation of how the resources shall be used. To put it in one word that should be familiar to us by now, it is socialist.

The United States today is more than 50% socialist in terms of the fraction of our resources that are controlled by the government. Fortunately, socialism is so inefficient that it does not control 50% of our lives. Fortunately, most of that is wasted. People worry about government waste; I don’t. I just shudder at what would happen to freedom in this country if the government were efficient in spending our money. The really fascinating thing is that our private sector has been so effective, so efficient, that it has been able to produce a standard of life that is the envy of the rest of the world on the basis of less than half the resources available to all of us.

The major problems that face this country all derive from too much socialism. If you consider our educational system at the elementary and secondary level, government spending per pupil has more than tripled over the past thirty years in real terms after allowing for inflation, yet test scores keep declining, dropout rates are high, and functional illiteracy is widespread. Why should that be a surprise? Schooling at the elementary and secondary level is the largest socialist enterprise in the United States next to the military. Now why should we be better at socialism than the Russians? In fact, they ought to be better; they have had more practice at it. If you consider medical care, which is another major problem now, total spending on medical care has gone from 4% of the national income to 13%, and more than half of that increase has been in the form of government spending. Costs have multiplied and it is reasonably clear that output has not gone up in anything like the same ratio. Our automobile industry can produce all the cars anybody wants to drive and is prepared to pay for. They do not seem to have any difficulty, but our government cannot produce the roads for us to drive on. The aviation industry can produce the planes, the airlines can get the pilots, but the government somehow cannot provide the landing strips and the air traffic controllers. I challenge anybody to name a major problem in the United States that does not derive from excessive government.

Can we extend the challenge to cover India as well?

Crime has been going up, our prisons are overcrowded, our inner cities are becoming unlivable all as a consequence of good intentions gone awry, the good intentions in this case being to prevent the misuse of drugs. The results: very little if any reduction in the use of drugs but a great many innocent victims. The harm which is being done by that program is far greater than any conceivable good. And the harm is not being done only at home. What business do we have destroying other countries such as Colombia because we cannot enforce our laws?

It is hard to be optimistic about how successful we can be in preserving our relatively free system. The collapse of the communist states in Eastern Europe was the occasion for a great deal of self congratulation on our part. It introduced an element of complacency and smugness. We all said, ” Oh my, how good we are! See, we must be doing everything right.” But we did not learn the lesson that they had to teach us, and that lesson is that government has very real functions, but if it wanders beyond those functions and goes too far, it tends to destroy human and economic freedom.

And here is the most important part that we all need to understand very very clearly.

I am nonetheless a long term optimist. I believe that the United States is a great country and that our problems do not arise from the people as such. They arise from the structure of our government. We are being misgoverned in all these areas but not because of bad motives or bad people. The people who run our government are the same kind of people as the people outside it. We mislead ourselves if we think we are going to correct the situation by electing the right people to government. We will elect the right people and when they get to Washington they will do the wrong things. You and I would; I am not saying that there is anything special about them.

The important point is that we in our private lives and they in their governmental lives are all moved by the same incentive: to promote our own self interest. Armen Alchian once made a very important comment. He said, “You know, there is one thing you can trust everybody to do. You can trust everybody to put his interest above yours.” That goes for those of us in the private sector; that goes for people in the government sector. The difference between the two is not in the people; it is not in the incentives. It is in what it is in the self interest for different people to do. In the private economy, so long as we keep a free private market, one party to a deal can only benefit if the other party also benefits. There is no way in which you can satisfy your needs at the expense of somebody else. In the government market, there is another recourse. If you start a program that is a failure and you are in the private market, the only way you can keep it going is by digging into your own pocket. That is your bottom line. However, if you are in the government, you have another recourse. With perfectly good intentions and good will nobody likes to say “I was wrong”. You can say, “Oh, the only reason it is a failure is because we haven’t done enough. The only reason the drug program is a failure is because we haven’t spent enough money on it.” And it does not have to be your own money. You have a very different bottom line. If you are persuasive enough, or if you have enough control over power, you can increase spending on your program at the expense of the taxpayer. That is why a private project that is a failure is closed down while a government project that is a failure is expanded.

The only way we are really going to change things is by changing the political structure. The most hopeful thing I see on that side is the great public pressure at the moment for term limits. That would be a truly fundamental change.

I want to close on a slightly optimistic note. About 200 years ago, an English newspaper wrote: “There are 775,300,000 people in the World. Of these, arbitrary governments command 741,800,000 and the free ones … Only 33 1/2 million… On the whole, slaves are three and twenty times more numerous than men enjoying, in any tolerable degree, the rights of human nature” [cited in Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1985), p.9]. I know of no such precise estimate for the present, but I made a rough estimate on the basis of the freedom surveys of Freedom House. I estimate that, while slaves still greatly outnumber free people, the ratio has fallen in the past two centuries from 23 to 1 to about 3 to 1. We are still very far from our goal of a completely free world, but, on the scale of historical time, that is amazing progressmore in the past two centuries than in the prior two millennia. Let’s hope and work to make sure that that keeps up. Thank you.

Thank you and goodbye, Prof Milton Friedman.

Last month, while waiting at San Francisco International airport for my flight back to India, I was tickled to see a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 which was named Tubular Belle taxi into the next parking bay. It had Richard Branson’s zany sense of humor written all over it. Mike Oldfield’s album Tubular Bells is one of my old-time favorites and, as it happened, I had it in my MP3 player (a new Creative Vision M, I will have you know). Clever name for a 747, I thought to myself. But I did not know the connection between Virgin and Mike Oldfield until this afternoon when I picked up and read Richard Branson’s book Screw it, Let’s Do It: Lessons in Life. (Virgin Books (C) 2006).

Naturally, I had heard of Branson, the dare devil billionaire. But after reading the book, I realized what a remarkable character he is. The book is just a thumbnail sketch of a crazy Englishman, a man with vision and a passion to live life to its maximum. A successful businessman who is as incredibly lucky as he is hard working and driven. Life is a random draw but how you play the cards that you are dealt makes all the difference. Branson’s life (and it is far from over) has many lessons which are worth learning and I am unabashely endorsing Mr Richard Branson here.

He does not play by the rules as he says in the introduction. “Though I never followed the rules at every step, I have learnt many lessons along the way. My lessons started at home when I was young.” His mother must be remarkable person as well. That is part of the random draw of life. We are shaped by our early care-givers. She encouraged him but did not push him. I see a similarity here in the mother that another of my heroes, Jane Goodall, got. Her mother also encouraged her to explore and learn. From Richard’s book it is clear that his early childhood experiences had a profound effect on who he finally turned out to be. This is strongly suggestive that who we are is influenced by those who are closest to us when we are young and impressionable. If you are looking for yet one more reason why women must be educated, it is this: mothers influence the growth and development of their children.

I was surprised to learn that Branson is dyslexic. Not the first person I know of who is both successful and dyslexic. Charles Schwab is one also. Handicaps can be overcome, is the lesson that is worth learning here. Of course, you can sit and whine about the cards you were dealt. Or you can get off your butt and compensate for the bad cards by skillfully playing the good cards. And that is what Branson did. He memorised stuff to compensate for his dyslexia.

Branson did not get far in formal education. He learnt the basics (reading, writing, arithmetic) and then learnt the rest on this own in the great big classroom of life. And that is another thing that is significant to me: you don’t have to spend 15 years in a classroom and get certificates from the government to become capable of adding value to the world. As long as you have the basics, and have the passion, you can make a difference.

Of course, we make a difference in our own ways. We don’t all have to make fundamental discoveries in particle physics to make a positive difference to the world. Depending on our basic nature, our dharma as we say it in India, we have the opportunity to make a contribution. Branson made a difference by following his passion to do business. He has fun doing business and he takes pain to point out that he is not motivated by the need to make money but rather to have fun. The money, he is convinced, is just a side-effect.

Branson’s book is an easy read. It is more than that, actually. To me it was a delightful find. The friend whose I house I am staying at (homeless in Pune still) showed me his bookshelf. There was Clinton’s autography, “The World is Flat,” “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,” “The Tipping Point,” and some more of the usual fat best sellers that are, in my opinion, emmiently worth passing over. But Branson’s book was a brief 100 pages of large-type pages. I finished the book in one go, only to pause briefly in the middle to call up a friend to say that he has got to read that book.

I confess that I have great difficulty reading the management books that people go ga-ga over. “The World is Flat” is a book that would leave me unmoved. “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” I would be content to leave at the bottom of the pile of books I would read. But a slim book by someone who has been there and done that–I can finish in one-sitting and be inspired by.

Each chapter begins with down to earth advice. Sample these:

• Believe It Can Be Done
• Have Goals
• Live Life to the Full
• Never Give Up
• Prepare Well
• Have Faith in Yourself
• Help Each Other
• Have Fun, Work Hard and Money Will Come
• Don’t Waste Time–Grab Your Chances
• Have a Positive Outlook on Life
• When It’s Not Fun, Move On

He writes: “I didn’t set out to be rich. The fun and challenge in life were what I wanted — and still do. I don’t deny that money is important. . . We live in an era when we must have some money to survive. . . I never went into business to make money — but I have found that, if I have fun, the money will come. I often ask myself, is my work fun and does it make me happy? I believe that the answer to that matters more than fame or fortune. If something stops being fun, I ask why? If I can’t fix it, I stop doing it.”

Branson is not an idiot. He recognizes that life is not always easy. He writes, “Not all of us have the money to start up a business, or the luck, or the chances aren’t there.” He understands the role of luck in the way it works out. So his advice is

• Calculate the Risks and Take Them
• Believe in Yourself
• Chase Your Dreams and Goals
• Have No Regrets
• Be Bold
• Keep Your Word

All those bits of wisdom are not empty; those lessons are illustrated by his own life experiences. Ballooning across the Atlantic or learning to swim at age four to win a bet: it was all part of the lessons he learnt. He constantly challenged himself. He quotes James Ullman, “Challenge is the core and mainspring of all human action. If there’s an ocean, we cross it. If there’s a disease, we cure it. If there’s a wrong, we right it. If there’s a record, we break it. And if there’s a mountain, we climb it.”

What I especially liked about the book was that it was down to earth and unpretentious. His declaration, “I believe in myself. I believe in the hands that work, in the brains that think, and in the hearts that love” is both honest and believeable. The book is interspersed with meditative thoughts.

“In a way,” he writes, “regrets are like wanting the peach you have thrown away. It’s gone, but you are filled with remorse. You wish you hadn’t thrown it away. You want it back. I believe the one thing that helps you capture the moment is to have no regrets. Regrets weigh you down. They hold you back in the past when you should move on.”

Or his conviction (almost Buddhist) that one should live in the moment. “Always living in the future can slow us down as much as always looking behind. Many people are always looking ahead and they seem never content. They look for quick fixes, like winning the lottery. I know that goals are important. Money is important. But the bottom line is money is just a means to an end, not an end in itself. And what is going on now is just as important as what you’re planning for the future. So, even though my diary is full for months ahead, I have learned to live for the moment.”

I am not surprised that Branson’s books chapter titles read like a Buddhist manual: “Be Bold.” “Challenge Yourself.” “Stand on Your Own Two Feet.” “Live the Moment.” “Value Family and Friends.” “Have Respect.” “Do Some Good.” He sounds like a Zen master. In our Indian terminology, he is a Karma Yogi, a person who takes action.

I wondered, as I read the book, how wonderful it would be if it were read by the millions of young adults in India. Would, out of the tens of millions, a few hundreds be inspired to work hard to fulfill their dreams which they must also have? And would a few hundred Richard Bransons not transform India instead of the theiving, unprincipled, corrupt politicians we read about day in and day out in our media? Who are our public heroes? Where are our heroes who create wealth? If all we know about is celluoid fakes, is it any wonder that we are not inspired?

Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells was playing as I wrote this. Many many years ago, it was that hit album that Virgin Music published and made piles of money and launched the entire Virgin empire. That explains the 747 with the lovely name Tubular Belle. The world is connected in magically myriad ways.

Now that the song is over, I will move on to Oldfield’s Ommadawn. I recommend the music as much as I recommend the book.

Speaking of war: I cheered the invasion of Iraq and kept applauding for a long time afterward. I lauded the war effort as glorious and noble — and, on the last day of November 2003, I even likened the U.S. occupation of Iraq to the magnanimity of the Marshall Plan.

And if U.S. troops had been able to kill enough Iraqi troublemakers early enough to quell the resistance, I would have remained an avid booster of the war. There’s no business like war business — that’s why I recycled my clever slogan “Give war a chance” from the 1999 air war on Yugoslavia to the 2001 military assault on Afghanistan.

But I like winning. That’s why I kept praising Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when he looked like a winner, and now I keep deploring him because he looks like a loser.

Overall, I get to boil down the world to metaphors of my own choosing. If I were one of the anti-corporate-globalization people and I used the same kind of simplistic metaphors, I’d be the object of derision and scorn. But I’m not — so get used to it!

Never let it be said that leading U.S. pundit Thomas Friedman has to live with the consequences of his punditry. I think great thoughts, and I’m seriously glib about them, and that should be more than enough if the world is smart enough to grasp the opportunities that are low-hanging fruit of the digital age. I can’t expect everyone to get it, but at the very least they should try.

His sublime music will, of course, live on. I cannot express the hours of joy his rendition of Bhupali Todi has given me.

I have a very deep-seated distaste for personality driven movements, as opposed to idea driven movements. Personalities are people and people are human and therefore fallible. When the core is a person, and the masses follow that person, grave danger lurks. From what little I know of the world, it appears to me that all movements that center around a person invariably end up in disasters. Just to name a few names, in no particular order: Lenin, Marx, Gandhi (the Mahatma first, later Indira, Rajiv, and in a few years Sonia, Rahul, Priyanka, their children, their children’s children), Nehru, Mohammed, Jesus, David Koresh, etc. They degenerate into cults one definition of which is an “obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing.”

I am all for ideas but when the person is elevated above the idea, my bullshit detector meter registers in the red zone. I realized that SSRS is doing useful work and people are willing to pay for it. But even so many years ago, before SSRS was as famous as he is now, I realized that he will be worshipped in a few years. And so it has come to pass: I see the picture of SSRS jostling for space on many a shelf holding images of Shiv, Ganesh, Durga, etc.

I wrote to my brother saying essentially that SSRS is doing good work and therefore belongs to the category I define as “useful” (which includes you and me and billions of others) but I would not put him in the categories I define as “good,” “enlightened,” or “great.” He was disappointed. I later posted it as an article with the title “Is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar a Con Man?” and answered the question saying that SSRS is a good marketer of wholesome Indian wisdom and is running a very useful business. As an economist, I am all for producers producing stuff that consumers want and benefit from and applaud people who provide useful services. SSRS meets a demand and is amply financially rewarded for it.

I have been consistent in my view that SSRS is doing good. Yet, some of his followers are offended that I don’t consider him to be the 11th incarnation of Vishnu, so to speak. This mystifies me: why do they care what I think of SSRS? Is their faith in their Gurudev (as they prefer to call SSRS) so fragile that the opinion of a nobody like me gets their hackles up? I should stress that I don’t believe that all of the millions of SSRS followers are whacky. I think only those who have a very tenuous grasp on reality in general mis-read what I wrote and they write to me angry emails which are more often than not incoherent and misspelled to boot. In all fairness, one should not judge SSRS by these mentally challenged followers of his.

I think ridicule is a great weapon against puffed up pretensions. I think it is appropriate for me to poke fun at an email which gives me unsolicited advice on how I will see the light if only I enrolled in a AOL course. There is nothing privileged about such a communication and contrary to what one commenter wrote in connection with my recent post, there is nothing the least unethical about making publicly available such an email as long as the personal details of the writer are not revealed.

So now it is time to say goodbye to SSRS and his AOL on this blog. It has been fun but one has to move on. Life is short and there are other things and people waiting to be made the object of one’s fascination.

Goodbye, good night, and may your god go with you.

A simple straight forward piece I wrote some years ago (Is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar a Con Man?) does get a lot of attention. I get emails from people, some of which is the average “I agree with you” type. Then there is the “How dare you even suggest that SSRS is not god almighty himself and that the sun does not shine out of his butt? You are an evil person” type. I would like to share part of one such exchange I had today with one SSRS worshipper (initials “AG”).

AG read my article on SSRS and wrote

U r right when u talk about ‘marketing & packaging’. To quote ur example to u, Tell me wud u buy a Pepsi or a coke without their jazzy punchlines and star power? . . . Are u aware that AOL has 20 million+ followers, by any standards. . .

‘SSRS’ does not has to travel anywhere. He can construct any modern state of the art works monument on the most expensive piece of real estate available on planet earth and stay there as long as he wants. Instead he travels more than 290 days a year. So much so that he is 2 time zones on the same day sometimes. And still he gives talks with same compassion, calmness & love. I wonder how much deciet, hidden agendas and money power u need to become like that in today’s world? . . .

I suggest u do 1 course, and then form ur opnion. It won’t take anything out of u, but will give u a lot more than u can possibly think of. And then form ur opnion and add a follow up to this post of urs with ur experience. . .

The presence, the strength, calmness, peace and love from ‘SSRS’ eyes & voice will shake u to d very core of ur being.

Otherwise u can be as closed as u r right now and use ur intelectual knowledge to reject things such as this as illogical, repacked material etc.

It was a long rambling email and I have quoted just a bit to give you an idea of what it was about. I wrote back saying:

Whatever AOL does, it clearly does not teach one how to spell or write coherently. Besides, I did not say even one unkind word about SSRS and yet you have been shrill about how great AOL is. That indicates that you have reading comprehension problems.

PS: The spelling of the pronoun is not “u” but “you.” Get a spelling lesson for SSRS’s sake — otherwise people will think that you are totally illiterate.

AG wrote back. Since it is brief, I quote the entire message.

Thanks for the prompt response Mr. Dey,

As I said U r a typical person who uses his intellect to prove things logically. Well, faith doesn’t works that way. U can’t reason everything untill u have faith, as it’s not an exact science, sir.

Probably in 5 years time when u r mature enuf to understand the scale of work and the mamooth size of comittment AOL has undertaken to make people peaceful and acknowledge and imbibe right values towards other people and towards life in general; around the world, then I shall talk to u again.

BTW are u aware that SSRS has been nominated for Nobel Peace Prize for the second time?

P.S: Please get ur facts straight first and get a clear 360 degree picture. Plus thanks for ur suggestion. My english is gud enuf and I am happy the way it is & if proper english is a MUST for healthy & happy living it will be taught in AOL shortly. U on the other hand r not fit for any AOL program coz ur time has not arrived yet.

Thanks but no thanks for ur grave sympathies.

Nothing personal and no offence meant watsoever.

Jai Gurudev!!

Well, slap me silly! I am so sorry that I lean so heavily on logic. Excuse me, I will try to be illogical and stupid. And how do I get there? Why, by joining an AOL course, of course.

Seriously, isn’t it worth noting that some movements depend on numbers? It is a defining characteristic of a cult: the followers repeat to themselves and others how many of them there are and how fast their numbers are growing. It is as if they are validating their belief by telling themselves and others that they cannot be wrong because there are many others who also share that belief. But delusions don’t stop being delusions when it is widely shared.

I have a theory about this fascination with numbers. In popular perception, a movement is a cult if the delusion is shared by only a small number of people; if there are a large number of followers wallowing in the same delusions, say one billion, then it is no longer a cult and becomes a religion. People involved in the movement want their set of beliefs to be regarded as a religion and not as a cult. So cults try to enlarge their membership constantly. And with time, it becomes second nature to them and thus are born proselytizing movements such as Christianity and Islam — essentially cults but because of their numerical strengths, they command respect.

Cults are personality based. There is one person who is what I call the “god equivalent.” Some examples: Jesus the Christ, Mohammed, Jim Jones, Sai Baba, Satya Sai Baba, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. What the first two have and the rest of the list does not is numbers. If only a few millions share in a set of delusions, it is a cult; if there are hundreds of million, then it is a religion.

The AOL movement is a cult. It is totally benign from what I can tell. It is doing at least one valuable thing: it propagates yogic practice and thought. Yoga is part of the world lexicon and yoga is entirely Indian. (I cannot resist pointing out that Hinduism contributed yoga to the world, and Islam contributed jihad.) SSRS, the charismatic leader of the AOL cult, is doing valuable service by promoting peace and understanding between people.

Yet, I find the worshipping of SSRS distasteful and undignified. But then, that is what the common lot does, doesn’t it?

[Related post: A Letter from a SSRS Worshipper.]

[PS: The last and final post on the subject is here.]

I was changing planes at the new airport in Jakarta the other day, on the way to Stockholm from Vladivostok. Three young Bangladeshi boys sat in the passenger lounge, watching The Power Rangers on satellite TV. Their mother–garbed in the traditional sari–talked to her cousin, a migrant worker who sold German-designed Walkman knockoffs in Hong Kong, on a shiny new Samsung cell phone. Sitting to one side of them was a young Chinese émigré on his way to Toronto to work for a software company, and on the other a business-suited Rastafarian making a connection to Bratislava. Meanwhile, a couple of Tuareg tribesmen sat cross-legged in front of the ticket counter, cooking yams over a flaming mound of ticket stubs.

What’s my point? I don’t actually have one–but opening my columns with strings of clichéd cultural juxtapositions really cuts down my workload. . .

Brilliant stuff from Freetrademan. He concludes with

Anyway, the world out there is changing fast. We have to change with it–whether we are ready or not. But imagine the world as it could be if we finally tore down those walls. We could have a computer in every home, an Internet connection in every classroom, a Big Mac in every stomach, tortured metaphors in every paragraph–and a brilliant, free-trading, celebrity foreign affairs columnist in every newspaper.

Reading the commentaries on Tom Friedman is definitely more entertaining and edifying than reading Tom himself.

The Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) does not prohibit the sharing of civilian nuclear technology with India, contrary to Thomas Friedman’s insinuation.

Here’s a bit more.

In fact, the NPT encourages nuclear technology’s peaceful use, and embracing India in this regard will actually advance the NPT’s objectives.

President Bush’s and Prime Minister Singh’s landmark agreement promotes peaceful use of civilian nuclear technology, while preventing diversion of civilian technology to military use. This explains Nobel laureate Mohammed El-Baradei’s unequivocal support of the U.S.-India civilian nuclear initiative.

For the record, the United States has a civilian nuclear sharing agreement with nuclear-armed China. Mr. Friedman fails to explain why India, with a spotless non-proliferation record and strategic partner of the United States, should be treated less favorably than China. Moreover, unlike Iran or North Korea, India has never violated the NPT. . . .

Tom Friedman flat out wrong? I am shocked and thunderstruck. Shocked, I say, I am SHOCKED. {End sarcasm.}

Post Script: I think there is a law in the universe which maintains a balance between good and bad. How else can one explain the puzzle why Tom Friedman has a column in the NY Times? It must be to balance the sane, thoughtful, incisive analysis of Paul Krugman on the pages of NY Times.

I think it is important to remind ourselves that Bush’s best friend in the neighborhood is the Pakistani military dictator, General Musharraf, whom Bush is visiting to even things out between India and Pakistan. The dictator is a double-dealing bastard (pardon my French). Here is what Frédéric Grare, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has to say in the Foreign Policy portal titled Pakistan’s Double Dealing:

In the aftermath of 9/11, Pakistan understood that terrorism had become, at least temporarily, unacceptable. It joined the war on terror and turned itself, once more, into a “frontline state.” In practice, however, Pakistan drew a distinction between militants active in Kashmir and international terrorists. The latter could be traded for international goodwill, but the former had to be preserved to keep leverage in Kashmir.

…

Pakistan will not change its position on Kashmir, so the United States must change its stance on Pakistan. When asked whether a paradigm shift on Kashmir is possible, Pakistani officials privately assert that nothing more than a cold peace can be expected. Given this environment, it is essential for Bush to understand that the Pakistani army is not the best protection against Islamic extremism but, rather, one of its causes. The fear of an Islamist takeover should stop distorting the administration’s dealings with Pakistan, and Bush should make clear to his host that regional terrorism is no more acceptable than the global variety.

Pakistan is at the hub of terrorism that Bush is claims to be fighting. Read this open letter from B Raman to President Bush. He begins with:

Dear Mr. President,

As you embark on your courageous visit to Pakistan, the adopted homeland of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mulla Mohammed Omar and other brutal killers of hundreds of your fellow-citizens, may I request you to spare a thought for your fellow-citizens and for the nationals of other countries, who continue to die at the hands of international jihadi terrorists given sanctuary in Pakistan?

There is a long laudry list of reasons for why Bush’s buddy is nasty character. Here is a snippet:

Mr. President, you remember the two attempts to kill your buddy in December 2003, at Rawalpindi? Well, the guilty in those incidents have already been got tried by Musharraf, their appeals against their conviction got disposed of and those sentenced to death sent to the gallows. For your buddy, the law did not pose any difficulty in sending them to death for trying to kill him.

10. The same law, according to your buddy, has been standing in the way of the killers of Daniel Pearl being sent to the gallows. Do you know how many times the hearing in the appeal against the conviction filed by Omar Sheikh has been got adjourned by the appellate court? Forty-one times—under some flimsy pretext or the other.

11. It was adjourned for the forty-first time right on the eve of your visit to Pakistan. On February 27, 2006, the Sindh High Court adjourned the hearing once again on the ground that Omar Sheikh has sacked his defence lawyer and that the killer must be given time to find and engage another lawyer.

Bush is being felicitated in India, as he should be as the head of the United States of America, the most powerful hegemonic state the world has ever seen. But there is the unfortunate fact that he is most likely guilty of criminal conspiracy back at home.

Lewis Lapham of Harper’s Magazine make The Case for Impeachment and why the US can no longer afford Bush. He starts off with the Conyers’ resolution:

On December 18 of last year, Congressman John Conyers Jr. (D., Mich.) introduced into the House of Representatives a resolution inviting it to form “a select committee to investigate the Administration’s intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics, and to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.”

He concludes with

The Conyers report doesn’t lack for further instances of the administration’s misconduct, all of them noted in the press over the last three years—misuse of government funds, violation of the Geneva Conventions, holding without trial and subjecting to torture individuals arbitrarily designated as “enemy combatants,” etc.—but conspiracy to commit fraud would seem reason enough to warrant the President’s impeachment. Before reading the report, I wouldn’t have expected to find myself thinking that such a course of action was either likely or possible; after reading the report, I don’t know why we would run the risk of not impeaching the man. We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country’s good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world’s evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation’s wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal—known to be armed and shown to be dangerous. Under the three-strike rule available to the courts in California, judges sentence people to life in jail for having stolen from Wal-Mart a set of golf clubs or a child’s tricycle. Who then calls strikes on President Bush, and how many more does he get before being sent down on waivers to one of the Texas Prison Leagues?

George W Bush is a criminal. That he has not been tried is not extraordinary. The most powerful criminals escape prosecution. Examples abound, both in India and around the world. Those that get caught and punished are the unsuccessful criminals. The really successful ones have their names immortalized as great heroes.

Postscript: I am a big fan of Garrison Keillor. Read why he thinks that Bush should be impeached in the International Herald Tribune.

[Bush's] visit to India comes at a time of the triumph of capitalism over socialism, long the operative ideology in most of the world’s 135 Third World, or developing, countries. It pays homage to the fact that this ancient culture once was among the most robust adherents of the free market – well before Adam Smith invented its modern form. That it veered sharply from homespun capitalism was because of one man, Jawaharlal Nehru, the scion of an aristocratic family who studied at Cambridge University and who eventually came under the influence of Britain’s Fabian socialists and injected an alien ideology into India’s struggle for independence.

Nehru managed, through charisma and oratory, to mesmerize the Indian National Congress, which led the fight against the occupiers of a land that novelist Paul Scott memorably called the “Jewel in the Crown.” And because Nehru was the favored politician of Mohandas Gandhi, the Mahatma, his prescription for a post-independent India’s economic path – socialism – was generally accepted as dogma. But Nehru had a rival, both politically and for the Mahatma’s affections, named Vallabhbhai Patel, the man who, more than anyone, was responsible for lining up India’s 535 maharajahs in support of aligning their territories with secular India, and not theocratic Pakistan, after the Subcontinent was partitioned capriciously by the departing British.

It was Patel who said that India needed to fully open the floodgates of free enterprise in order to sustain economic growth. Under Nehru’s stewardship, and later that of his daughter, the haughty Indira Gandhi – no relation to the Mahatma – India became a case study in bad governance and, even while ostensibly in the non-aligned camp, a fellow traveler of the Soviet Union. The federal bureaucracy mushroomed to more than 10 million (at any given time, no more than 2,500 Britons had administered the vast Subcontinent, which is geographically half the size of continental America). An India that should have become one of the world’s most dynamic economies was instead transformed into a basket case. Vallabhbhai Patel died a broken man, convinced that India would implode on account of Nehru’s errors. {Emphasis added.}

Isn’t it a marvel that India actually has roads, airports, ports, parks, colleges and universities, hospitals, research labs, theatres, governmental programs, non-governmental institutions, monuments, etc etc, all named after those who were primarily responsible for the disaster that is India? It is something that I often find myself puzzling about. Why are Indians so slavish in elevating those who were arguably bad for India? Here is what I mean. Have you heard of Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi? When they named the road, did they even bother with the fact that Aurangzeb was a tyrant and butchered the people of the land? Do you think that the Jews will ever name streets after Adolf Hitler?

Actually, the Indian subcontinent has that amazing ability to elevate as heroes those who screwed them over. See Pakistan, for instance. They actually name their weapons after those whose armies raped their women and their lands centuries ago. Those plunderers are worshipped in the land of the Pure (Pakistan) as their liberators. Take Bangadesh, for another example. The Pakistani army slaughtered anywhere between three and six million East Pakistanis and yet Bangladesh today considers Pakistanis to be their heroes. What is the matter with these idiots?

Deva! Deva!

I see this is going to be the trend. Mr Bush will make stupid incoherent statements and the Indian press will go ga-ga over how amazing his words are. Pundits will analyze his ramblings as if they were the pronouncements of an oracle.

Americans — the non-stupid variety, that is — are smarter than the average Indian journalist. They see Bush to be what he is: a moron. A fine specimen of the American species but a moron nonetheless. So while you prepare to be nauseated by the outpourings of the Indian journalists on Bush’s upcoming visit, here is a video of an American saying it more like it is. Enjoy and remember that Bush’s inability to reason and to even articulate a simple grammatically correct statement has not stood in the way of his becoming the most powerful man on earth, simply because the average American voter is like most Indian journalists a moron.

Subject: Blog on Sri Sri Ravishankar and Deepak Chopra

Dear Mr Atanu dey,

I read your blog on both of them. I have read about both of them and also know the services rendered by Sri Sri Ravishankar.

I don’t know what you do? and also not interested.

I want you to keep your personal view points to yourself and not put it on the net.

You have written history only by reading the website. It is not simple.

They are contributing to the people and to the society and if they have to hire teachers, travel all over the world, give free food, build schools, develope villages, bring knowledge, empower women,
bring a change to prisoners,, they require money. How much is a question which can be answered only by involving oneself into these services. Not by reading website.

They are doing good, that matters.

Please keep your opinions to yourself and let it not float.

raghu

As an intellectual descendant of Diogenes, the cynic, I see the motives of the governments of India to be what they are: the blatantly odious manipulation of the population by pandering to the basest desires of people to gain advantage over others. Vote bank politics taken to absurd extents that destroy the cohesion so necessary for not just economic growth but social development as well.

The latest outrage of the Congress-led UPA government of Sonia Gandhi is its attempt to divide the Indian armed forces along religious lines. I am so livid with rage that I cannot even think straight, leave alone compose a fitting response. So I will have to lean upon Nitin Pai and let him take it from here. He wrote in The Acorn that there is absolutely no reason to politicise the religious composition of India’s armed forces:

One of the most dangerously irresponsible acts of the India’s Congress party-led government is the setting up of a high-level committee to prepare a report on the demography and ’socio-economic situation’ of Muslims in India. The terms of reference are broad on one hand, and go into specific details on the other. Although the government won’t admit it explicitly, the objective of the entire exercise is to pave the way for reservations for Muslims in education and employment. The manner in which the terms of reference have been framed leaves no doubt as to their intended purpose.

…

The Acorn has previously argued that Dr Manmohan Singh’s government will be remembered for having entrenched a culture of entitlement that will undermine India’s economy and deepen the divisions of its society without doing anything better for the supposed beneficiaries of the reservation policies. Vote-bank politics, of course, will receive a boost. Not content with having sliced and diced the myriad castes and communities its Hindu population, the Congress party has turned its attention towards India’s Muslims. And lest you ask, all this is by the way of secularism, of which the Congress party is a staunch supporter.

What is absolutely unforgivable is the UPA government’s decision to drag in the armed forces into this web of cynical political calculus. The armed forces are the one place where religious and communal divisions are not institutionalised. As Gen J J Singh, the chief of the Indian army says, “it is not the Army’s philosophy to discriminate or maintain such information. We are equal-opportunity employers. We strive to take people on certain standards after which only merit takes them forward. We do not bother about where they are from, their faith or their language”. There is no reason at all to investigate the ethnic and religious composition of the armed forces, let alone to do this with a view to ensure the ‘adequate representation’ one particular religious group. The Indian government has no grounds at all to question how the armed forces select, appoint or place their personnel based on their religious affiliations. As Gen Singh pointed out, collecting and keeping such data is the thin end of the wedge. Putting such data in the hands of a political class hell-bent on creating pockets of entitlement is a recipe for undermining the morale and the espirit de corps without which armies cannot even begin to fight their wars, let alone win them. And then there are those who want to use such data to make the loyalties of Muslim soldiers the subject of innuendo — there can be nothing more unpardonable than this. And lest you ask, all this too is by way of secularism, to which the UPA government is committed.

The UPA government stinks. And that’s putting it very mildly. There can be nothing but contempt for those who are running India to the ground. [Emphasis added]

Is Dr Manmohan Singh so powerless as to agree to such morally depraved and socially dangerous policies?

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe, said Abe Lincoln. Astonishing how much profoundly practical wisdom is packaged into that simple declaration. Time spent in sharpening the tool is time well-spent; so is time spent in thinking through a problem and thoroughly understanding the problem before rushing off to solve it. And in most cases, since there is almost nothing new under the sun, there are already known solutions to many problem. So the most efficient method to solve a problem is to first seek the solution that someone may have figured out already.

The problem of economic development is multifaceted and complex, taken as a whole. But the problem can be effectively partitioned into simpler subunits that are more tractable. Then solutions for these can be sought—right out of the grab-bag of existing solutions or if needed, solved for the first time.

There are important lessons in Singapore’s development experience, if one cares to but observe very carefully. To learn from the person who engineered Singapore’s transformation from a backward poor city-state to a vibrant developed economy is a blessing. It fills my heart with hope that transformation is indeed possible, and it restores my faith in the conviction that powerful individuals are the only agents of deep transformation—both for good as well as ill—of society.

I read Lee Kuan Yew’s address to the 37th Jawaharlal Memorial Lecture on 21st Nov 2005 in New Delhi very carefully and with deep interest. I found that his wide ranging analysis of India’s economy incisively accurate. I annotated his speech in parts (parts one, two, and three) and this one is the concluding summary of what I gather from his talk.

In a sense, I did not find anything that he said even remotely surprising. I had pretty much reached the same conclusions independently. Why, one may wonder, don’t the leaders of India see what LKY so easily sees? Are they merely incapable of clear thought, or is it that they think but are prevented from acting due to circumstances, or is it a combination of both? Surely, one would think, that if the Indian leaders are not competent thinkers, they would at least have the intelligence to hire intelligent advisors to figure out the problems. So what is the problem?

I think the answer lies in what economists call the objective function. Individuals have a certain goal which can be stated as the maximization of a function given a set of constraints. For instance, for someone maximizing the amount of money given the constraints of time and effort may be the objective function; for another it could be to maximize leisure given the constraint of a reasonable income and time; for another, it could be to do social work subject to leisure, time and money constraints.

LKY’s objective function, I believe, was to rapidly develop Singapore. He was not looking to win elections, or to maximize his personal wealth, or to be a mahatma, etc. Given that he is a man of amazing practical genius, he figured out the sequence of interventions and implemented them. Under his autocratic rule, he did what India’s autocrats have been either unwilling or unable to do.

India’s autocrats have had different objective functions. I suspect that to a first approximation, their objective function have been to maximize personal wealth, not the development of the economy, through corruption, nepotism and bribery. Of course there was the matter of elections every so often and funding this costly farce required even more corruption.

Different objective functions lead to different perceptions which in turn lead to different understandings, and so on to different actions and ultimately to different outcomes.

My objective function is to figure out what exactly is wrong and how to solve the problem of India’s economic growth and development. I am not trying to win elections and therefore am not forced to bribe some voting block or the other with hare-brained schemes that ultimately harm not just the economy but even harm those vote blocks. I am not trying to fatten my numbered Swiss bank account and so I don’t have to implement any asinine license-control-quota-permit industrial policy. I am not trying to promote the members of my family as the only enlightened beings on the planet capable of ruling India, and so I don’t have to ruthlessly eliminate any opposition. I am not wedded to any ideology such as monotheism or communism, and so I can advocate the use of any idea as long as it makes sense.

The reason I arrive at similar conclusions as does LKY is that our objective functions are similar, we are sufficiently intelligent, have learnt from others’ experiences, and we have thought sufficiently long about the problem. I am sure that LKY has spent a lot of time polishing the ax before he struck the first blow.

There are differences, of course, between a LKY and me. For instance, I am as lazy as they come and he is a hard-working achiever. But the most significant is this: he is a dispassionate observer of India’s development while I am not. I sincerely care about what happens to India personally; LKY cares to the extent that India’s economic performance has a bearing on Singapore’s welfare, but he does not have a personal stake in India’s successes or failures. If what LKY tells India is just a lot of water off a duck’s back, he would sleep soundly. And that is why I believe that what he says should be taken very seriously. He has no reasons to sugar-coat his conclusions or misrepresent his recommendations.

Dispassionate observers must be trusted more than those who have a stake in the game. I would trust LKY more than I would trust someone like Dr Manmohan Singh when it comes to an honest assessment of India’s strengths, weaknesses, prospects and possibilities. Dr Singh has a boss and various constituencies that he has to please; LKY has to please no one. (The same holds for me: I don’t have to please anyone. I don’t have to please an editor and if the reader does not like what I scribble, it just takes one click and I am history.)

So with that preamble, let me try to summarize what LKY said.

1. India has missed the bus too many times and this time around, it should look sharp and get on the bus.

It could not jump on the bus because it was tied hand and foot by those with different objective functions than economic growth and development. Now we need to unshackle the economy. They call it liberalization. Of course, you can only liberalize a shackled economy. I think it is time to enquire why the economy was chained in the first place. Will this be done? No, because it may turn out the holy cows being worshipped were in fact asses. Best to keep quite and move on. But then of course we run the risk of chanting the same old mantra in worship of the old “holy cows” and end up precisely where we are. Insanity, it is said, is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Let’s stop this insanity.

2. Production precedes distribution. If you don’t produce, even after equitable distribution, you would still be dirt poor.

LKY put is thus: Before distributing a pie, I had to first bake it.

Simple isn’t it? But this simple truth eludes the communists and socialists. They want to distribute first and then perhaps maybe produce some stuff if they feel like it. They have not figured out that poverty is lack of what I call “stuff.” If you don’t have stuff, you are poor. Producing sufficient amounts of stuff is a necessary condition; the sufficient condition is to distribute it equitably.

When production is insufficient, then there is a mad scramble for the limited production. The powerful get hold of this stuff, and the majority of the people have to eat dirt. That is, a very lop-sided economy develops when there is insufficient production of stuff: a few very rich people lording it over hoards of abjectly poor people.

So the lesson is simple: make the production of stuff the first priority. Therefore

3. Manufacturing has to be the base upon which India’s growth must be based.

Which means that all this talk about a service economy is a lot of stuff and nonsense. India is a large economy (in terms of population numbers) and like any other large economy, it has to be largely self-sufficient in that what is consumes, it has to produce itself. Small economies can specialize and import the other stuff they need, but India cannot. In other words, India has to grow its own food (and therefore must have a large agricultural sector), must manufacture its own stuff (and therefore have large manufacturing sector), and provide its own services. “Large” here means production capacity, not necessarily employment capacity.

I am not in favor of employment; I am in favor of producing stuff. If you produce enough stuff, you can give stuff away to “unemployed” people. On the other hand, if the obsession is with employment, and if this employed population produces zilch, then all can be employed and yet all can be dirt poor.

4. To produce stuff, you have to have infrastructure. Build infrastructure first.

You cannot produce much with your bare hands. So you need factories, You need power to run those factories. You have to have roads and ports and airports to bring inputs to the factory and take the output out. Invest in infrastructure.

And you don’t need to bring out the excuse that the government does not have the capacity to fund the infrastructure. The private sector at home and abroad is more than eager to build them, provided the asinine policies blocking this investment were discarded.

5. Learn from you mistakes.

Of course, to do so, one has to admit that one has made mistakes. Flatly denying that would not accomplish much. China learnt from its mistakes and has changed course.

I have my doubts whether we can learn from our mistakes because it is not politically correct to point out that mistakes were made. Goring of holy cows is not taken very lightly by the worshippers of holy cows.

Thank you, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, for speaking to the Indian leaders. I am not sure that you have not wasted your time.

The recent performance of India’s private sector has underlined an important economics lesson, that competitive markets work where too often the command and control system founders. Within your arm’s reach is a device which is a miracle of modern technology—the cell phone. It took the government telecom monopoly 45 years—from 1951 to 1996—to install around 14 million land lines. Between 1996 and 2000, with the liberalization of the telecom sector, India’s installed capacity doubled to around 30 million lines. In the next five years, India’s telephone companies added another 90 million lines (of which 70 million were cell phone lines.)

Imagine if the government had continued to monopolize the sector and had continued the installation of capacity at the pre-1996 rate. It would have taken about 300 years—or till 2300—to reach today’s installed capacity. Astonishing things happen when the government gets out of the business of business, or at least allows the private sector to do its thing without trying to cripple it. Take another sector where the government allowed private firms to compete—the airlines. I recall those days where one was often reduced to begging a government employee at the airlines office for the privilege of being treated rudely by the airline staff on flights that more often than not delayed. Those were the days my friend, we thought would never end.

The license quota permit control regime was instituted with the express purpose of making sure that essential goods and services were affordable and available to the people and thus was the sole prerogative of the government. An admirable socialist goal of reaching the commanding heights of the economy. The outcome should not come as a surprise: shoddy goods and services, affordable and available to only those who had the clout and could bribe the officials. Bajaj scooters had a waiting time of 7 to 10 years! They were prized as dowry; want your homely daughter married soon, promise a scooter to sweeten the deal.

While the Indian economy has done better since the government has started relaxing its chokehold on it, there is much that is left undone. Until the bureaucrats and the politicians let go entirely, the Indian economy has a hard row to hoe. It is imperative that we ask and clearly understand what motivated the policy-makers to hobble the economy for so many decades. Without that frank enquiry, we may never fully understand which mistakes were made and therefore continue to stumble into the same traps.

By now, even the minimally awake observer may conclude that the private sector can do business better than the public sector can. For instance, India’s private sector uses capital very efficiently. Lee Kuan Yew points it out in his lecture (see part 1 here and part 2 here of my commentary):

A factor worth noting: India gets a much better economic return for the investment it makes in its economy because India’s private sector capital efficiency is high. If India opens up fully to FDIs, the results will be profitable for the investor and add considerable employment and added GDP growth for India. With jobs there will be a trickle down of wealth to millions of Indian workers, as there has been in East Asia.

Globally, there is a savings glut which is looking for investment opportunities. India would be the destination of this massive investment but the economy needs liberalization. If I am asked what I thought of the liberalization of the Indian economy, I would echo Gandhi (the home-grown one) and say, “I think it would be a good idea.”

The liberalization so far is too little but I sincerely hope it is not too late. LKY points to some stellar examples—they are miniscule in the context of the Indian economy but they are indicative of what is possible.

What India has achieved since 1991 should not be underrated. There have been many successes. The Delhi Metro is one. Bharat Forge, the largest Indian exporter of auto components and the leading global chassis component manufacturer, is another example in the manufacturing sector. There are others. The question is why there are not many more of them?

Why indeed. The Indian private sector can do much better but can’t. Why? Here is my conjecture on what LKY thinks is the reason: the mendacity, greed and ignorance of Indian politicians. LKY is a shrewd observer, of course. But even dim-witted people have realized that when it comes to greed Indian politicians are a class apart. Exposing that greed, mendacity and ignorance is fast becoming a thriving cottage industry as evidenced by Tehelka and Cobrapost.

Being a scholar and a gentleman, he really could not come right out and tell the politicians to their face that they are the problem. So he used a well-worn technique of deflecting the blow by saying that it is politics that is to blame. More over, he did not present it as his own conclusion but let other well-known Indians speak:

There is no dearth of excellent analyses by Indians about this problem. An entire library could be assembled on the subject. I consulted two books: The Future of India by Bimal Jalan, who was Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 1997 to 2003, Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister and has represented India at the IMF and World Bank; one other book, Governance by Arun Shourie who has held several government portfolios and is a well-known writer. To sum up their arguments for the failings of the system in a single word: politics.

There you have it. The failing of the system are centered around politics. And who engage in politics? Therefore politicians. He said it to their face, however a bit more politely than I would have. He quotes Dr Singh’s interview in which Dr Singh pleads that his inability to govern arises from the coalition that he has clubbed together to do the job. But LKY does not let him off the hook.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave a wide-ranging interview to the McKinsey Quarterly. He rated his own government’s achievement as 6 out of 10, a performance he said was unsatisfactory. He acknowledged the need for better infrastructure, for more FDI, and also the need to move ahead in manufacturing. When asked whether the pace of implementation was fast enough, he replied:

” … economic policy and decision making do not function in a political vacuum. It takes a lot of time for us to take basic decisions. And furthermore, because we are a federal set-up, there are a lot of things that the central government does, but there are many things, like getting land, getting water, getting electricity – in all these matters the state government comes in, the local authority comes in ….. …. I do recognise that at times it gives our system the label that it is slow moving. In a world in which technology is changing at such a fast pace, where demand conditions change very fast, we need to look at a more innovative mechanism to cut down on this rigmarole of many tiers of decision-making processes.”

Prime Minister Singh added, “We are a coalition government and that limits our options in some ways.”

It is a sad sight: the Prime Minister of the country making excuses. Straight talk would be appreciated, instead of the mealy-mouthed equivocation emphasized above. Say, “our system is slow moving” instead of “at times it gives our system the label that it is slow moving.”

LKY responds to that excuse by rejecting it. He also rejects the notion that because India is a “democracy,” it is slow.

Politics is a fact of life in any country. And coalition politics is a fact of Indian political life.

It has been suggested that India’s slow growth is the consequence of its democratic system of government. Almost 40 years ago, Professor Jagdish Bhagwati wrote that India may face a “cruel choice between rapid expansion and democratic processes”.

But democracy should not be made an alibi for inertia. There are many examples of authoritarian governments whose economies have failed. There are as many examples of democratic governments who have achieved superior economic performance. The real issue is whether any country’s political system, irrespective of whether it is democratic or authoritarian, can forge a consensus on the policies needed for the economy to grow and create jobs for all, and can ensure that these basic policies are implemented consistently without large leakage. India’s elite in politics, the media, the academia and think tanks can re-define the issues and recast the political debate. They should, for instance, insist on the provision of a much higher standard of municipal services.

I agree with LKY. Fundamentally, what we finally achieve is what we are willing to settle for. This true at all levels of organization. As individuals, we pretty much end up where we have set our goals. Our achievements reflect to an unusually large extent what we set out to do. At the aggregate level, the society we end up having is determined by what type of society we desire. It is a cultural thing: the obtained level of corruption, poverty, filth etc is determined by how our culture accepts, tolerates, and takes as normal certain levels of corruption, poverty, filth, etc. It is the tolerance of corruption, poverty, filth that allow them to exist to the extent that they do.

So he says that politicians cannot hide behind the excuse that politics is what explains the poor performance.

By way of example, Chinese politics have always been plagued by factionalism. China also has great regional diversity. Like India, China also has powerful vested bureaucratic interests. But Deng Xiaoping forged a basic consensus among all political factions and the bureaucracy on the economic development and the necessary opening up to the outside world to succeed. A similar consensus can be achieved in India.

Next he goes on to point out that we have some great opportunities which must be taken to their logical conclusion instead of half-hearted implementation.

The passage of the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Bill by the Lok Sabha (Lower House of the Indian Parliament) in May this year was an important move. SEZs can finesse some difficult internal issues blocking liberalisation. Singapore has some experience with SEZs in China. If India thinks it useful, we are willing to share our experiences with you, building upon what we have done in the Bangalore International Technology Park. I must conclude with a word of caution. SEZs, once embarked upon, must be made to succeed, which means total and sustained commitment from politicians and bureaucrats at national, state and local levels.

When they succeed, they will have a powerful effect on the whole economy, give a boost of confidence and spark off a healthy competitive dynamic between different states and regions. Successful SEZs also will erode opposition to reforms because their benefits become self-evident, as has happened in China.

He concludes this part of his talk with a wonderful example of the mendacity of the communists. West Bengal, once upon a time the most valuable jewel in the Crown, is a basket case, now more known around the world as the “Gutter” (thanks to the tireless working of the “Saint of the Gutters” who enriched her own organization by show-casing the poverty of Bengal). How did this remarkably sorry transformation take place, you may ask. The secret sauce: communists.

A few months ago, in August, the communist Chief Minister of West Bengal was in Singapore to drum up investments for his state offering market incentives to attract investors. He said: “The lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union and from China is that [India] must reform, perform or perish.” That very same month, members of his own party in Lok Sabha in New Delhi forced a retreat on India’s privatisation programme. This is India’s party politics.

Pondering the imponderables is next on LKY’s mind. He lets Prof Pranab Bardhan speak about the important distinctions which lie at the base of the differential performance of China and India.

There are some imponderables. American commentators believe that China’s political system is too rigid, that it does not have the flexibility of pluralistic politics and democracy with freedom of speech, the media, assembly and respect for human rights. So China will encounter severe problems and setbacks. Professor Pranab Bardhan of University of California, Berkeley, has explained the problem this way:

“China’s authoritarian system of government will likely be a major economic liability in the long run, regardless of its immediate implications for short-run policy decisions.

“But inequalities (particularly rural-urban) have been increasing in China, and those left behind are getting restive.

”With massive layoffs in the rust-belt provinces, arbitrary local levies on farmers, pervasive official corruption, and toxic industrial dumping, many in the countryside are highly agitated.

“China is far behind India in the ability to politically manage conflicts, and this may prove to be China’s Achilles’ Heel.

”Over the last fifty years, India’s extremely heterogeneous society has been riddled with various kinds of conflicts, but the system has by and large managed these conflicts and kept them within moderate bounds. For many centuries, the homogenizing tradition of Chinese high culture, language, and bureaucracy has not given much scope to pluralism and diversity, and a centralizing, authoritarian Communist Party has carried on with this tradition”.

Prof Bardhan’s assessment is that India’s ability to politically manage conflict better than China could be a reason to believe that India holds at least one good card in its hand.

LKY diplomatically states that he believes that China will learn how to manage conflict in time and that it is not realistic to imagine an unchanging Chinese political system. As he says in the conditional below, India will draw ahead in the longer term only if the Chinese make the mistake of not transforming their political structure.

If they are right, India will draw ahead in the longer term.

Such analyses assume that the Chinese political system will remain static. If China’s political structures do not adjust to accommodate the changes in its society resulting from high rates of growth, India will have an advantage because of its more flexible political system in the longer term.

But Bardhan also cautions: “India’s reform has been halting and hesitant. India’s heterogeneous society has been riddled with conflicts, but the system has by and large managed these. There are many severe pitfalls and roadblocks which India and China have to overcome.”

Both India and China are huge countries with vast populations and long histories. They have to evolve standards of governance that is consonant with their cultures and the spirit of their civilisations.

The implicit assumption of that last statement is that Indian and Chinese cultures are different. To me, cultural distinctions explain the varying performance of different groups of people. In some sense, it is a dismal conclusion because it means that to succeed, ultimately one must change a dysfunctional culture, and success is not going to be easy.

At stake is the future of one billion Indians. India must make up for much time lost. There is in fact already a strong political consensus between India’s two major parties that India needs to liberalise its economy and engage with the dynamic economies of the world. The BJP led coalition government of former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee continued and indeed extended the economic liberalisation policies of Manmohan Singh when he was Finance Minister in PM Narashima Rao’s government. India now has a strong, able and experienced team with Manmohan Singh as PM. The time has come for India’s next tryst with destiny.

The first tryst with destiny did not work out as planned, if you pardon the pun. Too much planning can lead to failure of plans. Indian leaders and policymakers have a seemingly hypocritical attitude towards the people. The people are assumed sophisticated enough to figure out who should rule the nation, but they are not smart enough to make simple day to day market decisions; for the latter, they have to have a patronizing government official in charge.

If I were the one making pretty speeches for the next tryst with destiny, I would recommend a few things such as trusting the people a bit more, and trusting the bureaucrats and politicians a bit less.

In the next and final bit I will summarize what I learnt from LKY’s speech.

Reading Lee Kuan Yew’s lecture is edifying at various levels. As an observer, he is incomparable. But he did not merely observe; he hinted at solutions and did so without being rude. You know the Hindi saying, samajhdar ko eshara kafi hota hai (to the intelligent, a mere gesture suffices). Unfortunately, his talk to the Congress and other assorted disciples of Nehru must have been as useful as a bicycle to a fish. Nothing that LKY prescribed for India is surprising or counter-intuitive. Yet it is good to hear it from one who has not only talked the talk but actually walked the walk.

LKY transformed a third-world mosquito infested swamp into a rich developed city state within one generation. An autocrat to the core, he sequenced the changes and orchestrated the development of his city without apologizing for what he had to do. Singapore is one of the least corrupt economies of the world. He made Singaporeans clean up their act, both figuratively and literally. No other dictator has been able to achieve that sort of transformation. It is a random draw from which dictators are drawn. India drew a lousy hand and got saddled with dictators that were incompetent to the core. And staggering from one calamity to another, the country got rid of the dictators and with only a brief break, got a government that is headed by a foreign-born rather reluctantly naturalized citizen of India and supported by a bunch of treasonous communists.

There is sweet irony in LKY delivering the Nehru Memorial Lecture: a successful dictator lecturing the family members of a failed dictator who made a mess of the economy that was so full of promise. Just in case it is not entirely clear, Nehru was a dictator, never mind the fact that there may have been an election. The laws of the universe do not preclude the democratic election of dictators. Adolf Hitler was also elected, and he enjoyed the confidence of the majority just as much as Nehru enjoyed the confidence of the people of the newly minted republic of India. There was no opposition worth its name and Nehru did precisely what he willed.

Based on Nehru’s policy prescriptions, the Indian economy grew at a sorry 2 or 3 percent a year—the aptly named “Nehru rate of growth.” Per capita figures were even more dismal than that because the population grew rapidly. The Nehru dynasty continued to favor policies that kept India locked into the Nehru rate of growth until about 1991. Then economy grew at a more respectable rate but only compared to the Nehru rate of growth. In absolute terms, the “post-reform” growth rate was nothing to write home about. China had been growing for over a decade and at a much faster rate.

Compared to the dismal performance of the Nehruvian socialistic system, anything would look good. But that is not enough. LKY warns that today’s India should stop comparing itself to Nehru’s India. LKY put it thus:

India should benchmark itself not just against its own past, but against the best in Asia. And India can take heart from the achievements and performance of Non-Resident Indians (NRI) in free market economies such as the US, UK and even Singapore, where large numbers of NRIs have assumed high corporate positions in multi-national corporations. {Emphasis added.}

It is important to acknowledge precisely what makes NRIs tick whereas RIs don’t tick. It is a combination of nature (internal) and nurture (external) factors. The successful NRI in the US, for instance, are largely those who are innately intelligent, hardworking, ambitious, well-educated and driven to excel. They were born lucky, worked hard in school, and then ended up in a fine environment which allows and encourages people to do their best and move up. The external – environmental – factors that goes with a market economy is missing in India.

Considered as any large group of humans, Indians are no better or worse than others. There is genetic diversity and variation within the group. A specially selected subset could be constructed with arbitrarily extreme characteristics such as “very successful NRIs.” But the fact that the large group does poorly compared to other large groups is then entirely due to the environment. The environment can be changed but with great determination and foresight, as LKY did to Singapore.

One of the commonest objections I come across is, “Don’t compare Singapore to India. India is very large while Singapore is very small.” First of all, I am not comparing Singapore to India. I am comparing the culture and quality of the governance of Singapore to that of India. The values that are expressed by the leaders of a society are independent of the physical size of the society. Values and standards are thus not like physical goods. The value of not tolerating corruption applies with equal force whether the field is large or small. Just because India is a few hundred times larger than Singapore does not mean that the determination to not tolerate corruption has to be a few hundred times the determination required in Singapore’s case.

LKY then quotes growth statistics which should make Indians hang their head in shame. China is a very large country. So comparing China and India cannot evoke the standard response that is given when Singapore is mentioned in any way with regard to India. Of course, the objection raised is then that India is a democracy while China is not. I have not yet figured out why being a democracy should be a valid explanation for a dysfunctional economic system.

The US, if I have my facts correct, is also a democracy, as are the Western European nations. Their populations do not subsist at the edge of starvation. Of course, all rebuttals to India’s dismal economy cleanly sidesteps the fundamental problem which is that India’s economic policies suck chrome off the bumper of a truck parked a hundred yards away. Open up any newspaper if you dare on any day of the week, and you will see the next asinine brain-dead scheme being proposed by the heirs of Nehru. Yesterday, for example, the government proposes to impose reservations and quotas for private sector jobs. No, not merit or competency—what will matter is if the applicant has the right caste, the appropriate religious affiliation, belongs to the correct vote bank.

Here is a stark demonstration that economic policies matter. LKY reports the differential growth rates of China and India. Were his audience, the honorable head of the Indian government and the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, paying attention?

Both India and China have both done much better than most of the world. In the decade from 1994 to 2004, India’s GDP grew two-fold from US$310 billion to US$661 billion. But during the same period, China’s GDP grew three-fold from US$542 billion to US$1,649 billion. In 1984, India’s GDP was about 30% smaller than China’s. A decade later, it was more than 40% smaller and by 2004 it was about 60% smaller. Such a wide disparity is unnecessary. India can and should narrow the gap by embarking on a new round of reforms.

Wide disparity unnecessary? Almost nothing that the various governments of India have done have been necessary. Futility has been writ large on each hare-brained scheme that the illiterate narrow-minded bigoted bunch of psychopaths have imposed on the economy.

I have been following the shenanigans of the government of India for a few decades. To quote Groucho Marx, “He talks like an idiot, and behaves like an idiot. But don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.” The Indian policymakers behave like idiots, and talk like idiots. Don’t let that fool you. They are actually a bunch of idiots.

Anyway, enough of this rant. Let us go back to LKY. He asks, “Can India keep pace with China’s growth?” and responds, “Yes, if India does more in those sectors where China has done better.”

That statement, ladies and gentlemen, is worth drumming into the heads of India’s movers and shakers. Are you paying attention, Dr Singh?

Where did China do better? Manufacturing. That is where the foundation of a large economy lies. That is where it makes sense to distinguish between a small state like Singapore and a large ones such as India or China. A small economy of only a few million people can get by with only a services sector. But a large country with a billion people needs to have a correspondingly large manufacturing sector. When I say large, I do not mean that it should employ a large percentage of the people. I mean that the value of the production of the sector should be large. Why? Because manufacturing produces goods and it is the availability of goods that make people non-poor. Here’s LKY—

… But India cannot grow into a major economy on services alone . Since the industrial revolution, no country has become a major economy without becoming an industrial power.

Just as China is learning from India to improve its performance in the IT sector, so India must emulate China’s success in attracting FDIs and the jobs they create in manufacturing. It can do this by building infrastructure and educating and raising the skill levels of its workers.

Infrastructure and education. Actually, education is also part of the infrastructure—the supporting foundation upon which one can build an economy. Neglect of primary education rivals the neglect of other infrastructure such as roads, ports, power generation, railways, etc. Many decades have passed since India’s constitution was adopted in which primary education was given priority. Like pretty speeches, it is a non-starter. A very large percentage of Indians cannot read the constitution of India.

Yet—and this is the most baffling puzzle to me—I hear the claim that India is an information superpower endlessly touted by journalists, writers, and even the President of India. Cognitive dissonance on a social level or is it just plain stupidity?

LKY is right in his assessment that a country cannot leap-frog the agriculture and manufacturing stage and go directly to a services economy. He says:

Arvind Panagariya, a professor of Indian political economy at Columbia University, USA, puts the issue clearly. He noted that some have argued that India can focus on IT, grow rapidly in services, skip industrialization, and yet transform itself from a primarily rural and agricultural country into a modern economy. He dismissed such ideas as “hopelessly flawed” and “far-fetched”.

IT is less than 2% of India’s GDP. While services have grown rapidly, the bulk of the growth is from service sectors where wages and productivity are low. Business services, which include software and IT-enabled services, account for only 0.3% of GDP. Only manufacturing can mop up India’s vast pool of unemployed, narrow the urban-rural divide and reduce poverty.

Professor Panagariya concluded:

“The right strategy for India is to walk on two legs: traditional labour intensive industry and modern IT. Both legs need strengthening through further reforms ….”

LKY comes back to the mantra—education and production of stuff. In the manufacturing sector, he notes that reform in labor laws is critical.

India’s relatively young population can be an asset if they are universally well educated. UN forecasts that India’s population will outstrip China’s by 2030. Job creation through faster GDP growth is therefore an urgent necessity. Growth in IT and other services will not create enough jobs. IT-related jobs make up only one quarter of one percent of India’s labour force.

To create jobs the main thrust of reforms must be in manufacturing. That requires a change in labour laws to allow employers to retrench workers when business demand is down , streamlining the judicial processes, reducing the fiscal deficit, loosening up the bureaucracy, and most of all improving infrastructure. Let me focus on the last two as I believe they are crucial and inter-connected.

Industrialisation cannot take off without adequate infrastructure: better roads, and a reliable supply of power and clean water, better ports and airports. By one estimate, economic losses from congestion and poor roads alone are as high as US$4 to 6 billion a year. Another estimate is that the cost of most infrastructure services in India is about 50% to 100% higher than in China. The average cost of electricity for manufacturing in India is about double that in China; railway transport costs in India are three times those in China. China has spent over eight times as much as India on its infrastructure. Three years ago, China’s total capital spending on electricity, construction, transportation, telecommunications and real estate was US$260 billion or more than 20 percent of its GDP as compared to US$31 billion or 8 percent of India’s GDP.

Why do I think that India’s policy makers are incompetent? Because it should be clear to the meanest intelligence that industrialization depends on infrastructure and that that should be a priority. Which part of this simple statement don’t they understand. And if they do, why are they preventing the building of infrastructure? No money to finance the infrastructure? LKY says let the private sector do it.

If there are budgetary constraints , the answer is to privatise these infrastructure projects. There are well established construction companies, Japanese, Korean and others, that have done many such infrastructure projects on franchise terms.

One area where India has done well is its telecommunications infrastructure. This has been a critical factor for India’s IT success. India needs to aggressively privatise infrastructure development and open it to foreign investment. Then FDI flows will increase. And the bureaucracy must not impose onerous conditions that will hamper this privatisation.

Good luck Mr Lee Kuan Yew. Bureaucracy not impose onerous burdens? That is their raison d’etre.

The Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) based in Hong Kong, recently surveyed expatriate businessmen on bureaucracy and red tape in Asia. India was rated worst out of the 12 countries covered. PERC’s conclusion was that:

“The Government would like to liberalise many sectors, and there are plenty of announcements of new initiatives to do so. But when push comes to shove, bureaucratic inertia has been extremely difficult to overcome.”

Asking bureaucrats to stop throwing spanners into the works is like trying to teach a pig to sing: it cannot be done and it annoys the pig.

The World Bank has also done its own study. It found that in India it can take a decade to close a business through insolvency proceedings. It also found, among other things, that official fees amount to almost 13 percent of a property transaction in India as against just over 3 percent in China.

My secretaries asked Singapore businessmen with investments in India what, apart from infrastructure, they found as major constraints. To a man, they replied it was the bureaucracy.

I am sure that there must have been senior bureaucrats in the audience. Did they feel uncomfortable? Or are they too thick-skinned to understand how much damage they inflict on the nation.

Last year I was at a policy makers’ roundtable in Chennai. The topic under consideration was how ICT can enable development. Lots of hot air was generated by impassioned speeches on how the Internet and the PC would enable rural India to leap-frog development. When it was my turn to speak, I started off with, “First we kill all the bureaucrats.” The bureaucrats at the round table were not amused. Perhaps it was because they did not recognize that it was Shakespeare localized for Indian conditions (“First we kill all the lawyers.”) I continued that bureaucracy ruthlessly strangles with hands of gold the Indian economy and no amount of ICT will change India’s fortunes unless the bureaucracy is fixed first.

OK, maybe I was a bit too blunt. LKY is polite and says it like it is:

They believe it is a mindset problem. The average Indian civil servant still sees himself primarily as a regulator and not as a facilitator. The average Indian bureaucrat has not yet accepted that it is not a sin to make profits and become rich . The average Indian bureaucrat has little trust in India’s business community. They view Indian businessmen as money grabbing opportunists who do not have the welfare of the country at heart; and all the more so if they are foreign businessmen. Deng Xiaoping said at the start of China’s open door policy, it was glorious to be rich. The sequel is reported in Forbes Asia, November 14 2005, where it listed over 300 China’s richest, 40 of them with thumbnail CVs in a centre -fold. All are new entrepreneurs creating jobs and spreading wealth. Now, after private enterprise and the free market have generated wealth in the coastal provinces, China’s leaders have concentrated on spreading growth to the inland provinces by building infrastructure and offering generous economic incentives for investments.

One Singapore businessman told me this story. He entertained a former senior Indian civil servant to lunch in Singapore. Some months later when he was in India, the former civil servant reciprocated by hosting a dinner at which several other guests were present. His host made this surprising comment that he was amazed to see that in Singapore, a business could be successful without being dishonest.

India must find some way to reward bureaucrats who facilitate, not hinder investments and enterprise whether Indian or foreign.

India needs reform in various areas. The most critical area is the bureaucracy. Why India got saddled with a dysfunctional bureaucracy is easy to understand: the British were in India to exploit and extract wealth and created the bureaucracy with that objective. When the British left, the bureaucratic infrastructure was not jettisoned because it was the perfect tool for the “command control license permit quota” Raj which began with Nehru and still impedes India’s progress.

I think I will take a break and get back to the rest of LKY’s speech tomorrow. Au revoir until the next time and the case is sol-ved.

[Continue on to Part 3 of LKY on India.]

He starts off with quoting from Nehru’s famous “tryst with destiny” speech of 14th Aug 1947 which he heard as a young student at Cambridge. I suppose it is de rigueur to quote those lines about “Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.”

I must hand it to Nehru—he did make pretty speeches. The problem was not lack of flowery language; it was all about lack of substance behind the form. All talk about stepping out of the old into the new is meaningless if the same structure of bureaucratic control and a meddlesome government is imposed with a vengeance that even the British could not match.

LKY said

The destiny Nehru envisaged was of a modern, industrialised, democratic and secular India that would take its place in the larger historic flows of the second half of the 20th Century.

Nehru never doubted India’s place in the world.

Certainly not. There is little point in doubting the greatness of the country that you feel is your birthright to rule.

LKY

…Nehru’s speeches resonated with me. I shared intellectual and emotional roots with Nehru because I had also experienced discrimination and subjugation under the British Raj and admired Nehru for his vision of a secular multiracial India, a country that does not discriminate between citizens because of their race, language, religion or culture.

Again, Nehru’s vision of a secular country not discriminating among its citizens based on religion conflicts with the reality that he imposed on the country. It was he who set the country on a path where the laws that apply to a person are based on a person’s professed religion, where the privileges you enjoy depends on what your religion is. Want admission in an educational institution? Well, depending on what religion you are, you may or may not get in. If this is non-discrimination, then we are using Orwellian-speech from his novel 1984.

I know that LKY is not ignorant of the real state of discrimination in India. I conclude that he was making a point by highlighting the blatant discrimination in India.

As prime minister, LKY met Nehru twice in India – in 1962 and in 1964. He must have regarded Nehru’s attempt at “scaling the commanding heights of the economy” with bemused contempt. Of course, in his speech he put it rather diplomatically, thus:

Like Nehru, I had been influenced by the ideas of the British Fabian society. But I soon realised that before distributing the pie I had first to bake it. So I departed from welfarism because it sapped a people’s self-reliance and their desire to excel and succeed. I also abandoned the model of industrialisation through import substitution. When most of the Third World was deeply suspicious of exploitation by western MNCs (multinational corporations), Singapore invited them in. They helped us grow, brought in technology and know-how, and raised productivity levels faster than any alternative strategy could.

Import substitution industrialization was stupid and even in those times it was known to be an impractical idea. Many people defend Nehru’s blunder by making the trite observation that he was product of his times and therefore cannot be held accountable for his mistakes. I don’t see what that defense has to do with the price of tea in China. Well, LKY was also a product of his time; he did not give in to the insanity of ISI. I have a theory about why Nehru blundered the way he did, which I have outlined before elsewhere (reference given later.)

LKY then goes on to sugar-coat the pill he administered. He admits that Nehru was all pretty speeches and no substance.

Nehru had a great vision for India and for Asia and his elegant style of writing and speech captivated many young minds in the British empire. He had insights into the causes of India’s problems, but, burdened by too many issues, he left the implementation of his ideas and policies to his ministers and secretaries. Sadly they did not achieve the results India deserved.

Nehru’s ideal of democratic socialism was bureaucratised by Indian officials who were influenced by the Soviet model of central planning . That eventually led to the “Licence Raj”, corruption and slow growth.

Then LKY notes that change was forced on India and that the Congress was dragged kicking and screaming from the clutches of Nehruvian socialism. As a guest, he did his diplomatic best in noting that the first term of Rajiv Gandhi accomplished little.

The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union undercut the strategic premises of India’s external and economic policies. By 1991, with the country on the verge of bankruptcy, India had no choice but to change. Some Indians believe that, had Rajiv Gandhi lived to serve a second term as India’s Prime Minister, he would have pushed for major reform. But he was cut down before he was able to.

Ah, if only Rajiv had another term, surely he would have transformed India. LKY is devastating with faint praise. I bow deep in recognition of the maestro’s skill.

LKY then proceed to list the numerous postponement of India’s “tryst with destiny.”

… In January 1996, I visited New Delhi and spoke to civil servants and businessmen on the changes that Prime Minister Rao and his team were putting into place. I said that India’s ’tryst with destiny’ had been repeatedly postponed.

And the reason for the delay is not hard to figure out. The bureaucrats and the politicians had a wonderful time with the “license control permit quota” raj. With the machinery that Nehru had engineered, they could continue to rob the country with impunity. The racket they had going was –and it still continues to be– too lucrative to give up.

LKY—

When I published the second volume of my Memoirs in 2000, I wrote “India is a nation of unfulfilled greatness. Its potential has lain fallow, under-used.”

I am happy to now revise my view. Nehru’s view of India’s place in the world and of India as a global player is within India’s grasp.

Yes, it is. But the dead hand of Nehru’s socialism has still not released its grip on the economy.

To put the best spin on the numbers about India, LKY as the gracious guest, presents aggregate figures for India and China, not India’s figures alone. For instance he says

… The rise of India and China is changing the global balance. Together they account for about 40 percent of the world’s working age population and 19 percent of the global economy in PPP (purchasing power parity) terms. On present trends, in 20 years, their collective share of the global economy will match their percentage of the global population, which is roughly where they were in the 18th Century, before European colonialism engulfed them.

Reading between the lines, it is clear that India’s figures alone would be too dismal to mention. Then with a caveat, he adds:

… If there are no mishaps by 2050 the US, China, India and Japan will be economic heavyweights , as will Russia if it converts its revenue from oil and gas into long term value in infrastructure and non-oil industries.

India is an intrinsic part of this unfolding new world order. India can no longer be dismissed as a “wounded civilisation”, in the hurtful phrase of a westernised non-resident Indian author (V.S. Naipal). Instead, the western media, market analysts, and the International Financial Institutions now show-case India as a success story and the next big opportunity.

This is a comforting development for the US and the West, that a multi-party India is able to take off and keep pace with single-party China.

I am sure it is comforting the US and the West because India can be a useful counterbalance to China. Being used as an instrument is a relief only in comparison to the alternative of being an inconsequential bit-player in the greater global drama. Again, LKY puts the brightest spin he could manage quoting media reports:

Forbes Asia recently reported that US venture firms will raise US$1 billion for India by the end of this year. India has emerged as a power in IT sector. It is the largest call-centre in the world. Almost half of the largest global corporates now do at least some of their back office work in India. Indian R&D centers of American technology firms are reported to file more patents than Bell Labs. This year, India announced more than 1,300 applications for drug patents, second only to the US and 25 percent more than Germany, way ahead of the UK and Japan.

The US is now courting a nuclear India as a strategic partner. The EU has also launched a strategic partnership with India, and Japan wants a global partnership with India. These are indices of India’s growing weight in the world. Many countries, including Singapore, supported India’s bid to be a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council. Nehru’s vision is within grasp and India’s leaders must realise it in the next few decades.

Sweet vision that Nehru had. I cannot pass on this one without mentioning that India would not have had grovel and be repeatedly humiliated in trying to become a permanent member of the UNSC if way back when Nehru had not in his infinite wisdom turned down the offer when India was asked to join in the first place.

Back to the speech. He compares China and India:

I have always taken a keen interest in both China and India. Like all democratic socialists of the 1950s, I tried to forecast which giant would make the higher grade. I had rather hoped it would be a democratic India. By the 1980s, however, I accepted that each had its strengths and weaknesses and that the final outcome would depend on their economic policies, the execution of those policies, the responsiveness of the government is to the needs of the people, and most of all the nature of the culture of the two civilisations.

… At independence in 1947, two years before the Chinese Communist Party liberated China, India was ahead in many sectors. Both lost steam by adopting the planned economy. But because of its “great leap forward” and “Cultural Revolution”, China suffered more. However Deng Xiaoping was able to acknowledge China’s mistakes and China’s course dramatically change when he returned to power in 1978.

Subtext: China’s leaders learnt from their mistakes and took corrective action. India is still hung up on Nehruvian socialism to make real progress. One should read LKY’s statements very very slowly. They are the words of a person who is not only immensely bright but amazingly perceptive of the nature of the world. Of course I am sure, to the illiterate bunch of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats listening to the man in person, the words carry no meaning. I should mention that the ruling dynasty of India does not have a single university degree among the whole lot of them, starting with the celebrated Nehru whose name graces scores of universities and colleges around the country.

But let’s get on with the China/India comparisons. I read the comparison and wish he would sugar-coat it a bit more; it hurts to be reminded how poorly my country fares compared to China – and recall that China was poorer than India in 1980.

India has a superior private sector companies. China has the more efficient and decisive administrative system.

China has invested heavily in infrastructure. India’s underinvested infrastructure is woefully inadequate. India has a stronger banking system and capital markets than China. India has stronger institutions, in particular, a well developed legal system which should provide a better environment for the creation and protection of Intellectual Property. But a judicial backlog of an estimated 26 million cases drags down the system. One former Indian Chief Justice of India’s Supreme Court has given a legal opinion in a foreign court that India’s judicial system was practically non-functional in settling commercial disputes.

There you have it. Straight from the master’s mouth. A non-functioning judicial system is worthless. It is one of the major reasons for India’s pathetic economy. Economic production and growth depends on the ability to establish and enforce contracts. If contracts cannot be enforced, the cost of trades goes up, welfare losses accumulate, and finally in about 50 years, you have a country with about 300 million people at the edge or below starvation levels.

A poor economy then leads a hand to mouth existence and cannot invest in education. About 400 million Indians cannot even read; about half of Indian children drop out before completing primary school. Here is the comparison:

Both India and China have excellent universities, at the peak of their systems. India’s institutes of technology and management are world class. China is determined to upgrade its top 10 universities to world class status. Overall China’s education system is more comprehensive. China’s illiteracy rate is below 10%, India’s about 40%. India’s narrower band of educated people will be a weakness in the longer term. And although top quality Indian manpower is in high demand, large numbers of engineers and graduates lack the skills required in a changing economy and remain unemployed. However India has a larger English speaking elite than China. But only over half of each Indian cohort completes primary school, a big loss.

After liberalisation, China and India have followed different models of development, maximising their respective strengths. China adopted the standard East Asian model, emphasising export-oriented manufacturing. China has been immensely more successful in attracting FDI. India has focused on IT and knowledge-based services. Job creation is much slower in India and will continue to remain so until India’s infrastructure is brought up to date to attract the many manufacturers who will come to use India’s low cost workers and efficient services.

India’s “low cost workers” is a euphemism for very low average productivity in India. Wage levels reflect average productivity because aggregate wages and aggregate production must approximately balance. Average income therefore reflects average production levels. I shudder every time I hear India’s “low cost workers” trotted out as a badge of honor.

Well it’s time to do the numbers:

China’s GDP for manufacturing is 52%, India’s 27%; in agriculture China’s is 15%, India’s 22%; for services China’s 33%, India’s 51%. Over the last decade, in the service sector India has averaged 7.6% annual growth, China 8.8%, in manufacturing India’s growth is 5.7%, China’s 12.8%.

I see that I have only about half way through the lecture. I think I will stop here and put the rest in a follow up post.

{Go to Lee Kuan Yew on India — Part II.}

When confronted by a human being who impresses us as truly great, should we not be moved rather than chilled by the knowledge that he might have attained his greatness only through his frailties?
— Lou Andreas-Salome – Biographer of Freud

The notion that one’s weaknesses could be the fountainhead of one’s accomplishments is certainly intriguing and counter-intuitive. At least on one occasion I have seen that up close and personal. A certain friend of mine was driven to become an over-achiever because at a deeper level he suffered from an inferiority complex.

Someone once remarked (I don’t recall who and I am too lazy to Google right now) that the greatest strength of a country is also its greatest weakness. After pondering about that for a bit, not only did I convinced myself of truth of that claim, I realized also that it is true about individuals. In the case of individuals, it was fear of one extreme that pushed one to the other extreme. And like in a circle, if one moves far enough from one’s starting point, one finds oneself back to where one began. Virtue, taken to an extreme, becomes a vice.

One of the many reasons I admire Gautama, the Buddha, was that he realized the importance of moderation, of avoiding extremes. He preached and practiced what is called the “Middle-wayed Way.” That is pure and simple genius. It is a pity that Mahatma Gandhi, the most well-known of modern Indians, never bothered to learn the lessons the Buddha had taught about 2,500 years ago. If he had, he probably would not have been the extremist he ended up being and for which India has paid a very heavy price and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

For example, Gandhi’s insistence on self-sufficiency is contrary to the basic nature of the universe. Last year, I wrote about Gandhian self-sufficiency and why I oppose it. Of course, I got some hate-mail basically saying “how dare you!” Some take idol-worshipping to an extreme. So I followed up with a post on idol-worshipping gone haywire.

I have a tentative theory why Indians appear to be so susceptible to idol-worshipping. It has to do with Hinduism. Hinduism employs idols as symbolic representation of divine ideals. But the unwashed masses end up confusing the symbol for the real thing. So instead of worshipping the ideal, they end up worshipping the idol. It is a short step from there to worshipping their political leaders. Of course, I should hasten to add that Hindu unwashed masses are not unique in this respect. Unwashed masses of all faiths worship idols, whether in the form of a black meteoritic rock or a cross. Even Buddhist u. m. worship statues of the Buddha even though he expressly denied the existence of a god and thus naturally could not be one himself. But Hindus take that to an extreme and anything from cows to rocks to corrupt politicians are fair game when it comes to idol-worshipping. Case in point, you ask? After the last general elections, a few of the unwashed masses insisted that they would commit suicide if one particular idol declined to become the prime minister of India. Would have been better if they had carried out their threat but unfortunately they chickened out in the end.

Well, that is about it for now.

I think that there is a deep mystery and the solution of that mystery may have profound implications in our understanding of our own history. Only recently I have started to learn something of the issue and I wrote about it last month. Desh Kapoor recently pointed me to a site that could serve as the starting point for educating ourselves about who Bose was and the mystery surrounding his disappearance: Mission Netaji: Missing in Action Since 1945.

There are lessons by the score that one can learn from the Singapore experiment; lessons that could be arrived at through simple logical reasoning in the abstract but made all the more compelling to see it actually work out in practice. The fundamental lesson to my mind is this: policies — well thought out, rigorously implemented, and single-mindedly enforced — have the power to transform.

Where can these well thought out policies come from? From at least two sources at the opposite ends of a spectrum: the mind of a single intelligent person, or the collective wisdom of an enlightened majority of the population. The latter is possible in theory of course just as it is possible that all the atoms of your body will simultaneously jump two feet vertically in unison (physics does not disallow this) so that you spontaneously levitate momentarily but it is so unlikely as to be dismissed unconditionally. An enlightened majority is in the realm of the possible but not in the realm of the probable.

The other extreme — a single person or a small set of people evolving rational policy — is imaginable. Even given the short history of civilization, some examples of this type exist. The founding fathers of the United States, a small group of people, wrote a constitution that lays the foundation for enlightened policy. More recently, it was one person who formulated rational policies and implemented them with single-minded dictatorial vigor. His name is Lee Kuan Yew.

Lee Kuan Yew is one of the most intelligent leaders in contemporary history. The man is a practical genius. The people of Singapore got lucky when in the random draw from which dictators are drawn, they drew Lee Kuan Yew. India, I cannot but note with sadness and grief, drew from the same random draw and came up with Jawaharlal Nehru. Both dictatorial but one a practical genius and the other . . . well, the less said the better.

There are deep contrasts between India and Singapore. Take for instance the degree of corruption that permeates both public and private sectors. According to Transparency International, India ranks 90th (in the company of such nations as Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Russia, and Tanzania) while Singapore ranks 5th (led by Finland, New Zealand, Demark, and Iceland) least corrupt country.

The corrosive impact of corruption on economic development and growth is not a mystery, nor was it unknown fifty years ago. Lee Kuan Yew decided on a zero-tolerance policy on corruption. Corruption at all levels of society had to go. The task was to re-invent the whole culture so that corruption had no place in it. That was the first bit: deciding that corruption was history. The next bit is implementation and enforcement.

To root out corruption you can use all sorts of means. You can lecture school children to take an oath to eschew corruption (as in here), you can prosecute a poor milkman for diluting milk (as in here) — that is, basically you can start at the bottom and implement an idiotic policy of targeting marginal players while shielding the really corrupt. Or you can do it by catching the big fish and handing out exemplary punishments and — this is the important point — publicizing it so that anyone who is even minimally aware understands that corruption is not tolerated by the society no matter how powerful the person is.

This is what I heard. A certain minister, very close to Lee Kuan Yew, in charge of housing (or some such) was involved in some kick-backs. The word went around that the guy will surely get off easy since he was in the inside circle. Lee asked the minister to see him. The meeting was brief. Two days later the minister blew his brains out. The message was clear: zero tolerance.

In India we hear of some high-level bureaucrat or politician robbing the public purse blind with sickening regularity. But we have never heard of even one high-ranking corrupt public official or politician ever being punished for his misdeeds. We have a free press of sorts and people get to know about how the most corrupt get away with murder. The notion that it is OK to be corrupt is internalized and soon enough we justify our own petty corruption by referring it back to those high and mighty whose corruption is legendary and who are never punished. We grow cynical and the society suffers as a whole. Our culture erodes and standards of probity and justice fall until we are a nation of petty thieves ruled by mega-robbers.

To re-iterate once again (as they say in the Department of Redundancy Department), you have to have intelligent policy, rigorous implementation and no-exception enforcement to bring about a radical change. Most policies in India don’t meet the intelligence criterion, and those that do suffer from indifferent implementation and half-hearted enforcement.

Crimes other than corruption are also a brake on economic growth. Singapore controls these without a too visible police force. I only saw a couple of cops during my three-day visit. One of the most impressive people I met while in Singapore (who is an alien in Singapore but runs a very successful business) told me of his informal theory about how they keep crime low. He said that he imagines that in the police headquarters they have a huge wall chart where each crime has a schedule of enforcement. So, for instance, “vandalism” may be scheduled for the week of 15th of August. That week they go out and catch a vandal, prosecute him to the utmost, and plaster his picture on the papers and in the write-up use the word “shame” a dozen times.

Prospective vandals, however irregular they may be in keeping up with current affairs, get to learn about the punishment and decide to curb their impulses. But public memory fades with time. So after a suitable span of time, the police will once again catch a vandal and make an example of him. They repeat this same formula with other routine crimes.

The important bit is that you don’t have to have zillions of cops watching every corner for vandal all round the year. You just catch the one every now and then to put the fear of god into the others and thus prevent vandalism from happening in the first place.

Lee Kuan Yew (I like using his full name because there is a certain something, a rhythm to it) must be a remarkable man. My meeting with him did not happen. I am kidding you, of course. But he is someone I would have liked to meet him and bow deep as a sign of my respect for what he did for Singapore.

Apparently little things, things that one may not consider very important or significant in the grand scheme of things, they too have a transformational impact on the society. Litter and garbage on the streets depresses the spirit and instills a sense of hopelessness and helplessness in the society. Lee Kuan Yew fined people who littered so vigorously that Singapore became clean but earned the reputation of being a “Fine City.”

Of course, the litterbug loses significant freedom in the society. He cannot litter to his heart’s content. But if there is a negative externality of following your heart’s dictates, then you have to be made to stop. Not just littering, but religion as well. They have what I call the “Freedom to use, but not the freedom to abuse.”

Freedom of religion is guaranteed in Singapore but freedom to proselytize is not. Proselytizing essentially says that my religion is better than your religion and that if you don’t accept my god as the One True Savior(TM), you will rot in hell that my god has specially prepared for you. This sows seeds of discord in society and soon the newly converted start asking for special treatment and handouts and in the limiting case, when the bunch grows sufficiently large, ask for a separate state of their own because they cannot bear to live with the other people who are destined to go to hell.

So Singapore is strict about proselytizing. In keeping with their policy of discouraging that anti-social behavior, they caught a meek little Catholic lady who was going door to door peddling her religion and threw her into jail after she was found guilty by the courts. Then they publicized the event. This sent the message to all religious bigots who follow the dictates of their own hearts that bigotry is not ok.

They took care of the mullahs as well. Got them together and told them that if they even make a peep in their weekly religious sermons promoting killing and terrorism, they will have their butts in the sling. Live and let live was the message they got and as rational humans, the mullahs got in line. The last time they had communal unrest was sometime in the late 1960s.

No such luck in India, of course. We have Christian missionaries from all over the world having a grand old time converting heathens and soon enough you have the neo-converts pissing on Ganesh idols to show their new-found faith. News gets around and finally out of desperation and plain old brutality, a few missionaries get roasted and this gives the country an ill-deserved reputation of being intolerant. Madrassas funded by Saudi money flourish by the thousands where apparently the mullahs teach the young that killing kuffars is a pretty practical way of arranging society.

In reaction to this ocassionally, a few of the normally tolerant Hindus band together and retaliate. This hits the international press and India is tarred as a society full of murdering morons.

As I was saying, Singapore does not have those problems because they have the enlightened policy of making proselytizing a crime and then enforce it. Lacking the essential bit that leads to religious disharmony, they avoid the entire series of unwelcome consequences.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The essential important faculty that gives rise to good policy — which our leaders lack — is imagination.

Humans, I imagine, are different cognitively from other things in the universe in their capacity to imagine. We can ask “What if” and think through the consequences of a set of actions that are not yet set into motion. We have to be able to foresee the consequence of our present actions to reach a desired future state. Or by backward induction, we can start at a future desired state and work our way back to what we should be doing today to obtain the future state.

Every chronic persistent shortage you see around you in India is the result of a failure of imagination. (I think that this statement should be elevated to the status of a principle. Here is the one of the first axioms, then.)

In Pune, we have power cuts for about 4 hours a day on average. Pune is a city with a population the size of New Zealand’s population — four million people. It is certainly not an obscure little village in the middle of some god-forsaken forest. Power is not a new-fangled fad whose demand could not be foreseen. The growth of the size of the city and the consequent demand for power could have been easily foreseen and actions taken. Power generation is not an esoteric undertaking which the private sector is incapable of doing. Yet there is a shortage and the economy suffers because some idiot in charge did not have the imagination to realize that more power is needed.

Not so the Singaporeans under Lee Kuan Yew. They learnt to use their imagination. They build capacity before they hit shortage. I hear that they have started building the third terminal at the airport even though the second one is not even up to full capacity.

Compare that to India. First a road gets choked with 10 times the number of vehicles than it was designed to handle. Then the realization dawns on people that the capacity has to be increased. On an already congested road, they start making some changes — for instance a bridge. This take about four years to complete (whereas the same work in a different place would have taken four months). By the time the capacity is in place, the traffic has also increased so that once again it is 10 times what the road can handle.

This reminds me of my email inbox. For the last year or so, I am constantly falling behind — the number of messages sitting there increases monotonically. I am forever trying to catch up.

But enough of my woes. I was going on about how smart Lee Kuan Yew was. He has the best imagination of them all, I guess. Take for example his insistence on air-conditioning. Singapore is a hot and extremely humid place around the year. Without AC, you are bound to be less productive than with it. Air-conditioning makes sense if the cost is lower than the increased income from a more productive workforce. He saw the benefits of AC and implemented it.

I don’t know why but some people just draw good cards from the random draw that is life. Singaporeans are lucky. I am sure there are those who will immediately retort that the Singaporeans don’t have the freedoms that are normally associated with a liberal democracy. And I am also sure that the person making that statement is sitting comfortably well-fed in his nice office or home accessing the world wide web for knowledge and entertainment. For the average schmuck in a third world country, he would any day trade in his imaginary freedoms for a decent shot at a full stomach, a roof over his head, and a chance to get his children educated. After the average schmuck has achieved those basic necessities, he would ask for all sorts of goodies that a liberal democracy provides. And that is when the society should become a liberal democracy.

The sequence is important.

{More about Mr Lee Kuan Yew here.}

The winners write history, naturally. In the struggle for Indian independence, the winners were the Gandhi-Nehru group and this win led to the Nehru-Gandhi hold on the country. The losers were an assorted bunch who were relegated to the dustbin of history. One such was the proud son of Bengal who was called “Netaji” (respected leader.)

To Bengalis (even non-resident Bengalis like yours truly), he was a hero. Of course, given my ignorance of history in general, I did not know precisely what Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had done but I had a vague notion that he was somehow a player in the freedom struggle and that his contribution was downplayed for motives unknown.

If one lives long enough, and if one is somewhat curious, one learns slowly but surely that all that there is more to the story than meets the eye. Or should I say that given sufficient time, a carefully constructed history can come apart. The ancient Indian declaration says Satyameva Jayate — Truth Alone Prevails. I suppose it is understood that that means “truth alone prevails” EVENTUALLY. You know that bit: you can fool some of the people some of the time, and some people for all time, but not all the people for all the time.

So the carefully constructed “reality” of who Netaji Bose was, what he lived for and how he died is slowly coming apart. Why was his image air-brushed from the pages of Indian freedom struggle? Who gained from his removal from the scene? Why were the winners of the freedom struggle (the Indian National Congrees of Gandhi and Nehru) so brave against the British so afraid of Bose?

Arzan Sam Wadia blogged recently on Who Killed Netaji and pointed to an NDTV report claims that documents reveal a British plan to kill Netaji.

Where, when, andhow did Netaji die are interesting questions, the answers to which may have something to do with what his role was in India’s independence. I think this article by N. S. Rajaram titled Netaji’s Ghost: The Freedom Struggle has some light on the matter.

I strongly recommend the article by Rajaram. Here, for the record, are a few excerpts.

Probably the most distinguished historian to highlight Bose’s real contribution was the late R.C. Majumdar. In his monumental, three-volume History of the Freedom Movement in India (which the Congress-led by Maulana Azad tried to suppress), Majumdar provided the following extraordinary information:

“It seldom falls to the lot of a historian to have his views, differing radically from those generally accepted without demur, confirmed by such an unimpeachable authority. As far back as 1948 I wrote in an article that the contribution made by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose towards the achievement of freedom in 1947 was no less, and perhaps, far more important than that of Mahatma Gandhi…” The ‘unimpeachable authority’ he cited happens to be Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister of Britain at the time of India’s Independence. As this is of fundamental importance, and Majumdar’s conclusion so greatly at variance with conventional history, it is worth placing it on record. (See Volume III, pp. 609-10). When B.P. Chakravarti was acting as Governor of West Bengal, Lord Attlee visited India and stayed as his guest for three days at the Raj Bhavan. Chakravarti asked Attlee about the real grounds for granting Independence to India. Specifically, his question was, when the Quit India movement lay in ruins years before 1947, what was the need for the British to leave in such a hurry. Attlee’s response is most illuminating and important for history. Here is the Governor’s account of what Attlee told him:

“In reply Attlee cited several reasons, the most important were the activities of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose which weakened the very foundation of the attachment of the Indian land and naval forces to the British Government. Towards the end, I asked Lord Attlee about the extent to which the British decision to quit India was influenced by Gandhi’s activities. On hearing this question Attlee’s lips widened in a smile of disdain and he uttered, slowly, putting emphasis on each single letter mi-ni-mal.”

This ‘unimpeachable’ truth will come as a shock to most Indians brought up to believe that the Congress movement driven by the ’spiritual force’ of Mahatma Gandhi forced the British to leave India. But both the evidence and the logic of history are against this beautiful but childish fantasy; it was the fear of mutiny by the Indian armed forces-and not any ’spiritual force’- that forced the issue of freedom. The British saw that the sooner they left India the better for themselves, for, at the end of the war, India had some three million men under arms. Majumdar had reached the same conclusion years earlier, as far back as 1948 as he records. The most dramatic event after the end of World War II was the INA Trials at the Red Fort—not any movement by Gandhi or Nehru. This led directly to the mutiny of the naval ratings, which, more than anything, helped the British make up their minds to leave India in a hurry. They sensed that it was only a matter of time before the spirit spread to other sections of the armed forces and the rest of the Government. None of this would have happened without Subhas Bose and the INA.

The crucial point to note is that thanks to Subhas Bose’s activities and the INA, the Armed Forces began to see themselves as defenders of India rather than upholders of the British Empire. This, more than anything else, was what led to India’s freedom. This is also the reason why the British Empire disappeared from the face of the earth within an astonishingly short space of twenty years. Indian soldiers, who were the main prop of the Empire, were no longer willing to fight to hold the Empire together.

And he concludes his article with:

All this raises a fundamental question: did Nehru commit these colossal policy blunders because of his idealism, or was he influenced by the knowledge that China’s ally Soviet Union still held Subhas Bose in captivity who may be released any time? As Sandhya Jain puts it: “Since it is nobody’s case that the Congress would have suffered Nehru if Netaji were still alive, the former would logically have had to pay a price for such stupendous assistance. We will have to look very closely at the long road from August 15, 1947 as we seek the answers to these questions”. In other words, was India being made to pay for Nehru’s ambition to be Prime Minister, which was only possible as long as Subhas Bose was away from the scene?

Finding answers to these questions calls for full access to the records of the period. Scholars have found that important records in the Nehru Library and even the National Archives are not available to them without the permission of the ‘dynasty’, which means they are unavailable. As long as this situation prevails, with information coming in bits and pieces, there will be no end to conspiracy theories. These are state papers–not family property. The Government should help clear the air by releasing the Nehru papers to the public. It is also in the interests of the members of the dynasty.

Susan Shields, formerly a senior nun with the order, recalled that one year there was roughly $50m in the bank account held by the New York office alone. Much of the money, she complained, sat in banks while workers in the homes were obliged to reuse blunt needles. The order has stopped reusing needles, but the poor care remains pervasive. One nurse told me of a case earlier this year where staff knew a patient had typhoid but made no effort to protect volunteers or other patients. “The sense was that God will provide and if the worst happens – it is God’s will.”

The Kolkata police force and the city’s social welfare department have promised to investigate the incidents in the Daya Dan home when they have seen and verified the distressing footage we secretly filmed. Dr Aroup Chatterjee, a London-based Kolkata-born doctor, believes that if Daya Dan were any other care home in India, “the authorities would close it down. The Indian government is in thrall to the legacy of Mother Teresa and is terrified of her reputation and status. There are many better homes than this in Kolkata,” he told us.

Nearly eight years after her death, Mother Teresa is fast on the way to sainthood. The great aura of myth that surrounds her is built on her great deeds helping the poor and the destitute of Kolkata, birthplace of her order, the Missionaries of Charity. Rarely has one individual so convinced public opinion of the holiness of her cause. Her reward is accelerated canonisation.

But her homes are a disgrace to so-called Christian care and, indeed, civilised values of any kind. I witnessed barbaric treatment of the most vulnerable.

Actually, it’s boasting to say that I “discovered” any of this. It was all there in plain sight for anyone to notice. But in the age of celebrity, nobody had troubled to ask if such a global reputation was truly earned or was simply the result of brilliant public relations.

“Wait a minute,” said a TV host in Washington a few nights ago, when I debated all this with Mr John Donahue of the Catholic Defence League. “She built hospitals.” No, sir, you wait a minute.

Mother Teresa was given, to our certain knowledge, many tens of millions of pounds. But she never built any hospitals. She claimed to have built almost 150 convents, for nuns joining her own order, in several countries. Was this where ordinary donors thought their money was going?

Furthermore, she received some of this money from the Duvaliers, and from Mr Charles Keating of the notorious Lincoln Savings and Loan of California, and both these sources had acquired the money by – how shall I put it? – borrowing money from the poor and failing to give it back.

How could this possibly be true? Doesn’t everyone know that she spent her time kissing the sores of lepers and healing the sick? Ah, but what everyone knows isn’t always true. You were more likely to run into Mother Teresa being photographed with Nancy Reagan, or posing with Princess Diana, or in the first-class cabin of Air India (where she had a permanent reservation).

You could see her in Ireland, campaigning against a law which would permit civil divorce and remarriage (though she publicly defended Princess Diana’s right to be divorced).

You could encounter her on the podium in Stockholm, accepting yet another huge cheque and telling the Nobel audience that the greatest threat to world peace was… abortion. (Since she added that contraception was morally as bad as abortion, she essentially held the view that condoms and coils were a deadly threat to world peace. The Church does not insist on that degree of fundamentalism.)

And when she got sick, she would check herself into the Mayo Clinic or some other temple of American medicine. As one who has visited her primitive “hospice” for the dying in Calcutta, I should call that a wise decision. Nobody would go there except to check out, in one way or another.

“Give a man a reputation as an early riser,” said Mark Twain “and that man can sleep till noon.” Give a woman a reputation for holiness and compassion and apparently nothing she does can cause her to lose it.

I have been a severe critic of Mother Teresa ever since I came to know of what her mission was all about. Christopher Hitchens was one of the first to provide a devastating critique of her. The Ghoul of Calcutta, as he called his piece on her, is as honest an appraisal of her as anyone has ever done. His book The Missionary Position was a welcome counterbalance to the hagiography that was built around her myth. I started a small collection of critical pieces about M. Teresa some years ago. Through my interest in her, around 1997 I came to meet Hitchens when he was visiting Berkeley for a conversation with Gore Vidal. Last year I met Chatterjee in London, again in connection with a review of his book that I had written on my blog.

What exactly is my main grouse with M. Teresa? I think that she was evil. She manipulated others and cheated them, and she did so on the backs of Kolkata’s miserable. She was the most famous “beggar lord” – a person who makes a living by taking the money that people give to beggars and using that money for some other purpose. In her case, it is suspected that the money is funneled to the Vatican so that she would get on the fast tract to being canonized.

But siphoning money to the Vatican does not immediately brand her as evil, in my book. Hitler also supported the Vatican and that was not his most egregious fault. No, M. Teresa did far worse than just steal from the poor to enrich the fabulously wealthy. She compounded the problem that is the root cause of many of the world’s miseries. She cynically campaigned against birth control and contraceptives and did everything that she could to make the population problem more acute. The more born in misery and hopelessness, the more souls she would be able to save and more the brownie points that she would have to win the prize in heaven (sit next to Jesus Christ) and on earth (made into a saint by the bishop of Rome.)

My hope is that one of these days soon the Indians at least will wake out of their deep slumber of ignorance to realize that she has done incalculable harm to India, both in terms of the image that she advertised to the world about India, but even more tragically by catalyzing tens of millions of excess births that will result in decades of needless suffering and pain.

Too bad I don’t believe in hell and in a just power governing the universe. Otherwise I would have consoled myself with the thought that she would definitely end up in hell and suffer for all of eternity what she imposed on others.

Update: (Oct 26th, 2005) Here are two more articles, both by Christopher Hitchens, on Mother Teresa. In Oct 2003, Hitchens wrote The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.

One of the curses of India, as of other poor countries, is the quack medicine man, who fleeces the sufferer by promises of miraculous healing. Sunday was a great day for these parasites, who saw their crummy methods endorsed by his holiness and given a more or less free ride in the international press. Forgotten were the elementary rules of logic, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. More than that, we witnessed the elevation and consecration of extreme dogmatism, blinkered faith, and the cult of a mediocre human personality. Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions.

Earlier that year, he had argued why teresa should not be a saint in the Mirror (UK):

“Wait a minute,” said a TV host in Washington a few nights ago, when I debated all this with Mr John Donahue of the Catholic Defence League. “She built hospitals.” No, sir, you wait a minute.

Mother Teresa was given, to our certain knowledge, many tens of millions of pounds. But she never built any hospitals. She claimed to have built almost 150 convents, for nuns joining her own order, in several countries. Was this where ordinary donors thought their money was going?

Furthermore, she received some of this money from the Duvaliers, and from Mr Charles Keating of the notorious Lincoln Savings and Loan of California, and both these sources had acquired the money by – how shall I put it? – borrowing money from the poor and failing to give it back.

How could this possibly be true? Doesn’t everyone know that she spent her time kissing the sores of lepers and healing the sick? Ah, but what everyone knows isn’t always true. You were more likely to run into Mother Teresa being photographed with Nancy Reagan, or posing with Princess Diana, or in the first-class cabin of Air India (where she had a permanent reservation).

To recap: Friedman, imagining himself Columbus, journeys toward India. Columbus, he notes, traveled in three ships; Friedman “had Lufthansa business class.” When he reaches India—Bangalore to be specific—he immediately plays golf. His caddy, he notes with interest, wears a cap with the 3M logo. Surrounding the golf course are billboards for Texas Instruments and Pizza Hut. The Pizza Hut billboard reads: “Gigabites of Taste.” Because he sees a Pizza Hut ad on the way to a golf course, something that could never happen in America, Friedman concludes: “No, this definitely wasn’t Kansas.”

After golf, he meets Nilekani, who casually mentions that the playing field is level. A nothing phrase, but Friedman has traveled all the way around the world to hear it. Man travels to India, plays golf, sees Pizza Hut billboard, listens to Indian CEO mutter small talk, writes 470-page book reversing the course of 2000 years of human thought. That he misattributes his thesis to Nilekani is perfect: Friedman is a person who not only speaks in malapropisms, he also hears malapropisms. Told level; heard flat. This is the intellectual version of Far Out Space Nuts, when NASA repairman Bob Denver sets a whole sitcom in motion by pressing “launch” instead of “lunch” in a space capsule. And once he hits that button, the rocket takes off.

Read the entire article but be warned: it is funny. Thanks Prashant. It is the wonders of internet that gives one access to the writings of far off people from the comforts of one’s home.

I grant you that Friedman writes bestsellers and some of my best friends are huge fans of his. And I think that globalization—the integration of the world’s markets—is not merely a good thing overall but is inevitable and monotonic. In any market integration, there are winners and losers, be it labor market integration or the market for lemons. Be that as it may, what I want to do someday is to write a book called The World is Mad.

“What!?” you would exclaim upon reading the title, “I thought the world was sane. Thanks Atanu, you are a bloody genius.” And then you would proceed to read the book and figure out that indeed the world is mad and that I do not fall into the hasty generalization trap unlike some others I could mention.

Madness suffuses the world around us. Why don’t we perceive it? Because physiologically we have evolved to tune out any background information. We stop taking notice of something that is all-pervasive. The madness I am talking about is so commonplace so as to be taken as normal.

The globalization of madness, like the globalization of trade and stuff, did not begin recently. It has been going on for a bit. I am talking about the 800-pound gorilla in the room which practically everyone is ignoring: the Weapons of Mass Destruction Industry.

The US leads in the globalization of madness just as it leads on practically all other bits of globalization. Check out Ben (of Ben and Jerry’s) on the US nuclear stockpile. It costs $17.6 billion every year to merely maintain it. Let me spell that out: $17,600,000,000. And that is just to keep the stock in readiness. The stockpile of 53,000 nuclear weapons costs much more to build.

Thousands of billions of dollars to build the whole military apparatus, all with the one single objective: kill people. What is worse, this military apparatus kills people whether these weapons are used or not. How? They export part of their obsolete weapons of mass destruction to Third World countries which pay billions of dollars to acquire them. These Third World countries starve their people in order to extract sufficient resources to pay for the weapons. And the madness is so acute that some people in the Third World countries actually rejoice that their governments are acquiring these weapons. I regularly keep getting emails congratulating me that the Indian government is almost surely going to finally get a huge batch of F-16s from the US! To me that is depressing beyond words. It is like someone happily reporting the thrilling news, “Congratulations! Your country will continue to see millions of deaths through starvation and disease over the next 10 years—guaranteed.”

Just because it is all-pervasive madness does not make it sanity. We continue to go about our daily business without paying much attention to this madness. We are in the business of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic even as the ship is sinking. I have to remind myself that we don’t necessarily have to be smart; we just have to stop being so stupid. There is one thing that India needs to do if it wants to develop and it has nothing to do with IT this or internet kiosk that: it has to stop spending money on weapons of mass destruction. And that goes with equal force on the other impoverished overpopulated illiterate countries around India.

PS: There is a followup to this post here.

It is interesting to note that the arguments against my view of Nehru and his failed economic policies are generic. I will repeat them and my counter-arguments here.

My argument. Economic policies matter. If you have sound economic policies, you get commensurate economic performance. India’s economic performance sucks. It performs dismally in any sort of ranking of human development and economic performance tests. Half the illiterates of the world call India their home. A third of all global poverty is in India. All things considered, India has been a colossal failure so far.

Why has India been a failure? Are Indians collectively stupid? Unlikely.

Did GOD decree it? I asked him and he categorically denied it.

Did nations around the world gang up and rape India for the last 60 years? Not that I know of.

I am left with the hypothesis that perhaps India’s economic policies sucked chrome off a bumper of a pickup truck parked at 400 yards.

Who makes economic policies? You? I? No, economic policy is made by the so-called leaders and visionaries of this sainted land. Who were the most powerful leaders of this land since its independence from Britain? Nehru and his descendants. He dictated policy—economic, foreign, domestic, you name it. The most charitable way of putting the matter is to say that Nehru was clueless.

He wasn’t just clueless about this or that. His cluelessness was all encompassing. He was clueless about foreign policy, military strategy, domestic development — you name it and he is the greatest screw-up that India has ever produced.

Then come the rebuttals which often start with the admission that Nehru was clueless but . . .

. . . but during his time, many others–including a few people one cannot dismiss as being clueless thought that Central planning was beneficial for countries like India. These included Nobel winner Gunnar Myrdal (Asian Drama, an Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations) and Mahalanobis.

The argument above says that it wasn’t the man, it was the circumstances. By that logic, everything is justifiable. Every crime can be explained away as the result of compelling circumstances and hence there can be no accountability.

Take, for instance, the WorldCom and Enron cases where executives committed theft on unprecedented and unimaginable scale. One could point to the fact that other companies were also doing shady accounting, that the internet boom was going strong, that the economy was very strong, that the GAAP was being followed. All those explanations would also paper over the fact that the crime arose out of the greed of the perpetrator. Given all the circumstances but absent the greed of the executives, the grand theft would not have taken place.

Now back to Nehru: even if one were to grant all the circumstances that you cite above (but only for the sake of argument), the fact remains that central planning was personally very convenient for the Cha-cha.

The children of Imperialism are not weaned on the milk of humility; they are brought up on heady diet of hubris. Nehru was an imperialist who believed that his destiny was to rule the brown masses and he continually rejected sane advice. Look deeply into any problem that India faces and you will see Nehru’s finger-prints all over it.

Take Kashmir. Who was it who let the matter get out of hand? Nehru with his idiotic insistence that the UN be called to mediate the dispute. Talking of the UN, who was it who rejected the proposal that India take a seat in the permanent security council? Nehru. There is not enough space here to go into all the horrendous mistakes.

Then there is the argument that says, “Don’t blame Nehru for the screw-up that India is. We, Indians, are to blame.” That line is similar to the one Niket made in the comments in the last post.

Yes, in fact, we are to blame. Indians are basically collectively a bunch of clueless retards. They collectively elect leaders who are clueless retards and these clueless retards choose policies that keep the country of hundreds of millions of people in abject poverty. No argument there. A country deserves the leaders it gets, especially so in a so-called democracy. I agree that Bihar deserves and gets Rabri Devi and Laloo Prasad Yadav.

So if the collective is to blame, why is Nehru elevated to the position of a demi-god? Not just that, anyone associated with his family is elevated as well. With very rare exceptions, everything in India which has a personal name associated with it is named after the Nehru-Gandhi family. The Borivali National Park close to my abode is named “Sanjay Gandhi National Park”. All sorts of educational institutions are named after the members of a family that collectively have fewer educational achievements than yours truly.

Allow me to repeat that: The entire Nehru-Gandhi family — Cha-chaji, Indira, Rajiv, Sonia, Sanjay, Rahul, Prianka – collectively haver fewer educational qualifications than I (an average person) do. If I am not mistaken, they don’t have one solitary single college degree among the whole lot of them.

{To be continued.}

Before 9/11 gave him his big break – the neo-cons’ Pearl Harbor – Bush was written off as an amiable idiot, certain to serve only one term. An idiot he may be, but he is also sly, mendacious and vindictive; and the thuggish ideologues who surround him are dangerous. 9/11 gave America a free gift of goodwill, and it poured in from all around the world. Bush took it as a free gift to the warmongers of his party, a licence to attack an irrelevant country which, however nasty its dictator, had no connection with 9/11. The consequence is that all the worldwide goodwill has vanished. Bush’s America is on the way to becoming a pariah state. And Bush’s Iraq has become a beacon for terrorists.

In the service of his long-planned war (with its catastrophically unplanned aftermath), Bush not only lied about Iraq being the “enemy” who had attacked the twin towers. With the connivance of the toadying Tony Blair and the spineless Colin Powell, he lied to Congress and the world about weapons of mass destruction. He is now brazenly lying to the American electorate about how “well” things are going under the puppet government. By comparison with this cynical mendacity, the worst that can be said about John Kerry is that he sometimes changes his mind. Well, wouldn’t you change your mind if you discovered that the major premise on which you had been persuaded to vote for war was a big fat lie?

I fully agree with Dawkins that Bush is a sly, mendacious, vindictive idiot. It is not a crime to be a SMVI. You would not choose to invite a SMVI over for dinner. As long as SMVIs do not bother you, you would leave them alone and go about your business. But it is a matter of grave concern when a SMVI is the President of the US, arguably the most influential man in the world. But can you blame the SMVI for being the president? Not really. He is just a SMVI. It is the collective idiocy of a sufficiently large number of ignorant gullible myopic retarded Americans that is responsible for elevating a SMVI to the highest office in the land. Bush is a consequence — a mere reflection — of the IGMR Americans who chose him over Al Gore.

It is important to remember that the leaders of a society are a reflection of the society, and it is more so when it is a representative democratic process which determines the leader. In the case of India, the blame for having an Italian woman as the head of the Indian government cannot be but placed on those IIGMR (illiterate ignorant gullible myopic retarded) Indians who voted for her. Bihar chooses TSMVIs with sickening regularity (thieving sly mendacious vindictive idiots) because Bihar’s electorate is over-represented by IIGMRs.

Come to think of it, ignorant gullible myopic retards are a universal phenomenon. In India, they have the additional qualification of being largely illiterate. Outside of India, they are literate but a large number of them are IGMR. For instance, take the Americans of Indian origin. The Economic Times (Mumbai) in their Oct 28th edition report that “outsourcing row tilts Indians towards Bush.” One worthy is quoted as saying, “With respect to John Kerry’s victory, I am concerned that his tax proposals to curb outsourcing will have a greater impact on Indian businesses, as well as Indian American business that have established off-shoring companies …”

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, a perfect example of ignorance, gullibility, myopia, and retardedness. Allow me to elaborate. Bush has been arming Pakistan with billions of dollars worth of weapons. Pakistan is the epicenter of global terrorism and a significant portion of what it receives from the US, it uses against India in shocking acts of terrorism and in wars, both covert and otherwise. A vote for Bush by a person of Indian origin implies gross ignorance of what an additional four years of Bush presidency would do to India.

Kerry has expressed his deep concern about the loss of American jobs to global outsourcing. He is an American and he is rightly concerned that Americans are losing jobs. If he is elected president, he would do what is best for the US. Will he take protectionist measures? Don’t know. Maybe it is just election time posturing, maybe it is sincere. Believing that Kerry will shut down outsourcing (and thus cripple American businesses worldwide) is sheer gullibility.

Now for the myopic bit. India is a large country and a fairly large economy. If India is to become a developed economy, its domestic market has to increase. That is, its domestic production and consumption has to be sufficiently large to reflect its population (which in my opinion should really be a tenth of what it is.) If people believe that income from outsourcing will do anything other than make marginal differences, they are sadly mistaken. Worse than being mistaken, if energies are directed towards outsourcing activities, it could lead to neglect of other more vital sectors of the Indian economy which would ensure that India continues to be abjectly poor.

Bush has made the world a very dangerous place in the four years he had been in office. It is important to remember, however, that he has been on “best behavior” because he knew that he would run for re-election. If he wins this time around, he will not have to be on his best behavior for the next four years. Can you imagine what he would be like in the years to come when he can be on his “worst behavior”? Not being able to imagine that is being retarded. Those Indian Americans who would vote for Bush are therefore IGMR. QED.

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

It is said that he sometimes walked around with a lamp even in broad daylight. When asked why, he replied, “I am looking for an honest man.” A cynic to the core.

He lived an austere life, and claimed (correctly, I believe) that man’s needs are basically simple. He had few possessions and lived in a tub, and I suppose lived on handouts and charity. He must have been like the bhikshus that hung around the Buddha who, one must remember, lived a century before Diogenes.

During a sea voyage in his old age, he was captured by pirates and brought to a market in Crete to be sold. When asked for what he was capable of, he answered, “I can govern men; so sell me to someone who wants a master.” Xeniades, a rich man of Corinth, heard this and bought Diogenes and gave him his freedom. Diogenes was in Corinth when Alexander the Great sent word through a messenger asking Diogenes to come see him in Macedonia.

What would you do if Bill Gates sent word that he would like to meet you since he has heard so much about you?

Diogenes told the messenger, “Go tell your emperor that Corinth is as far from Macedonia as Macedonia is from Corinth. So if your emperor wants to see me, he can come and find me here.” Irrefutable logic and infinite self-assurance. The last bit can only come from someone who really does not need anything from anyone however high and mighty.

Alexander surely was not used to being turned down. I suppose being a warrior, he admired courage. So he went to Corinth to meet Diogenes. Diogenes was sitting in his tub and enjoying the morning sun when Alexander showed up on his high horse with a whole bunch of soldiers.

After a brief introduction, Alexander proudly offered to give Diogenes anything that he needed. “Is there anything I can do for you, Sir?” asked Alexander. Diogenes replied, “Yes, you could. You are blocking the sun. Please stand aside.”

Alexander was a megalomaniac — you had to be if you wanted to (and indeed did) conquer a massive part of the world. So impressed he was with Diogenes that he later remarked, “If I had not been Alexander, I would have liked to be Diogenes.”

Dear Chief Minister of West Bengal Mr. Buddhadev Bhattacharya:

I have come to learn that there is some possibility of renaming Park Street as Mother Teresa street and erecting her statue.

I think this is a very bad idea. The image of Kolkata has been forever tarnished as a result of Mother Teresa’s activities. For greater details on why this is so, I would urge you to read what some neutral observers have to say about the lady. I have a few articles on the subject and I recommend a book by a son of Kolkata — Dr Aroup Chatterjee’s “Mother Teresa: The Final Verdict” which I have reviewed here.

We in India are totally brainwashed to accept uncritically anything that is Western and white. Mother Teresa, motivated by missionary zeal, used the poverty of the poor of Kolkata to enrich her mission. While I do not deny that India has abject poverty, she used that poverty and showcased it around the world not to solve the problem but to evoke pity from affluent people so that they would contribute to the welfare of her mission, not for the welfare of the people she so ruthlessly used.

I urge you to carefully review the evidence and reconsider.

Sincerely,
Atanu Dey

I have followed the Mother Teresa phenomenon with a sick feeling in my stomach because of a number of reasons. The primary reason for me is that she epitomizes what is the fundamental flaw that led to what we see in India around us today. The flaw is in not thinking through things, of busying ourselves with the symptoms of an ailment rather than eradicating the cause.

Mother Teresa ceaselessly championed for uncontrolled breeding. She did her best to derail any serious attempt at addressing one of the primary causes of poverty in the developing countries, namely, the growth of human populations way beyond that which can be sustained at a humane level. All she wanted was that there be sufficiently large number of abjectly poor in a place so she could gather brownie points to assure her place amongst the sainted. As she honestly put it, if there were no poor, there would not be any reason for hermission to exist. The poor, she held, were blessed because they suffer.

I feel that she should be called Teresa, the Merciless. Millions will be forced lead miserable lives because of what she has done and the institutions she supported (the Vatican, primarily) and the institutions she has created.

I expect hate mail as a result of this post. But I hope that the writer of hate mail at least read some of the articles which I have provided the links to above. My request is that you send me hate mail only after you have honestly read the articles.

It is more than a bit unfortunate that we have a tendency to immediately label any criticism of any person as a sign of disrespect. Any person whose image cannot withstand the harsh glare of honest criticism says something about the fragility of that image. The image takes on a aura of such holiness and awe that any hint of possible flaws is taken as sacrilegious. Taken to an extreme, this sort of idol-worshipping ends up with the worshippers lynching anyone daring to profane the sacred image.

For the record, I do believe that Gandhi was a giant of a man. But for all his greatness, he was still cut from the same cloth as you and I. The same human frailties, the same hopes and ambitions and fears. The difference between a Gandhi and one of us is one of size, not of substance. If we keep that in mind — not just about Gandhi but everyone — I do believe that we would have a useful working hypothesis. Those great big people are magnified images of ourselves. And that which magnifies the virtues, magnifies the flaws as well. An old Chinese saying says that the bigger the front-side, the larger the back-side.

I heard that Chinese saying on the radio (I think it was Fresh Air with Terry Gross.) The program was about the late Joseph Campbell. Campbell was a great big man whose work on the power of myths is legendary. I have enormous respect for the man. So I was fairly shocked to learn on that radio discussion that he was an anti-semite. The mind reeled. How could that be! A man with so much obvious humanity stooping so low? Then one of the discussants mentioned that Chinese saying and I had a sort of epiphany.

The epiphany was of the type that accompanies growing up, of maturing. I realized that all my heroes have pretty large backsides, just as much as they have front-sides. The two men I admired the most, the Buddha and Einstein, too had large backsides. That realization deepened my understanding of who they were and why I respect them. Knowing that they too have their faults did not imply that I stopped considering them worthy of respect, but only that they were more like me than I would have suspected. That is what happens, I suspect, in the case of parents and children. As children we grow up adulating our parents. At some point in our lives, we do realize that they too have their faults. Rarely do children end up losing their love and respect for the parents.

All I am trying to do here is to explain that my criticism of Gandhi does not imply that I don’t consider him worthy of respect. I do not consider anyone above criticism and that goes with a greater force for someone placed on so high a pedestal as he. Idol-worshipping, it would appear, is not limited to the religious sphere in India; it creeps into the political sphere as well. That is not to say that all other peoples are not guilty of idol-worshipping as well. Only that in India it has been taken to stratospheric levels. Mention the name “Gandhi” and people are willing to believe and do anything. A recent display of that sort of insanity was when a bunch threatened to commit suicide unless a certain Gandhi became the prime minister of India.

Here is what my position is with regards to Gandhi and Nehru. Gandhi is widely acknowledged to be the Father of the nation. OK, I am willing to grant that. Then I look around and see the nation and find it less than desirable. Therefore, I conclude that there must have been something the matter with the father if the child (the nation) is so pathetic. I am merely taking the argument to its logical conclusion. Gandhi was great; he was the father of the nation; the nation is pathetic; ergo, the father was not perfect. Now some would argue that Gandhi was great and he is the father of the nation, but it is not his fault that the nation is pathetic. My objection to that would be that you cannot have it both ways: if he was the father, then both the praise and the blame for his progeny rest at his feet. You cannot simultaneously claim that he was the father and yet assign no responsibility for the way things turned out. It is logically consistent to say that he was a great man but the nation did not follow what he preached. In that case, he was not the father of the nation.

The same goes with Nehru. It is silly to praise Nehru for all sorts of supposedly good stuff he is responsible for and to adorn each and every public institution with his or his progeny’s name and turn a blind eye to the disasters that he and his progeny have inflicted on an adoring nation. I find it bitterly ironic that educational institutions carry Indira Gandhi’s name when she was strictly opposed to education for the masses. Every time I come across the name of the Indira Gandhi National Open University, I can only marvel at the blinkered pig-ignorance that motivates the naming of educational institutions after her. I don’t think that there will ever be an institute called the “Adolf Hitler Institute for Jewish Advancement”.

My basic concern is to figure out what is the reason for what India is today. How did it get here? Is there something wrong with our national character? Is it that external forces have ruined us? Where did we go wrong? Were our policies good and if so, what explains the state of India today? If our policies were bad, who was responsible? What can we do so as to correct our mistakes? What were the mistakes and why were they made?

One cannot hope to answer those questions if there are some people and some policies that are not to be questioned. I think that unless we can critically look at the past, we may end up repeating the mistakes that were made. I suspect that most of us are fairly well off and we don’t really believe that India is badly off at all. So we are comfortably numb to the real state of affairs, because acknowledging otherwise would be to burden oneself with the unpleasant task of doing something about it. We pretend that there are no hard problems and therefore no real hard work needs to be done. And if someone turns up with bad news, we heap abuse on the messenger and when he goes away, we will continue to live happily ever after.

This messenger is here to stay for a bit longer.

Occupying moral high ground is well and good if that is one’s objective. But one could be very dead at the end of the day — on high ground but still dead.

Those tools elevate the user in the user’s estimation at least. But the sad fact of this world is that it does not work in those cases where you most desperately want it to work. One needs an effective tool against mass murderers more urgently than against robbers. The former could not care less whether you have an elevated opinion of your own moral standing. Hitler, for instance, would have slaughtered without compunction those who responded to his aggression with non-violence; it would have eased the realization of his megalomanical dreams of world domination.

I must hasten to add that satyagraha and non-violence is a “first-best” tool. And that is precisely the trouble, ironically. First-best tools work in “first-best” worlds. A bit of reflection will convince most people that the world we live in is a “second-best” world.

Second best worlds are not perfect and indeed have multiple distortions. Employing tools that are meant for first best worlds could lead one to make a situation worse. And that is what most well-meaning but misguided moral busybodies end up doing — making a bad situation worse. Their enthusiasm to do good often outstrips their ability to comprehend the nature of the world. “Let me save you from drowning,” said the monkey to the fish, as he put the fish up on a tree.

Mere good intentions are not sufficient; often they pave the road to hell. In my considered opinion, it was Gandhi’s good intentions that have paved the way India’s descent into hell. My contention is that the ‘Gandhian Revolution’ is what has condemned hundreds of millions (if not more than a billion) people to lead inhuman lives.

By ‘Gandhian revolution’ I mean the notion of ‘Gandhian self-sufficiency’ and Gandhian economics. And here in a nutshell is the problem: in a world that is mutually interdependent, it is insanity to insist upon self-sufficiency at any level — whether it is the level of the nation, the city, the village, the family, or the individual. Mutual dependencies exist at all levels down to the gut level where we depend on bacteria for our lives.

A goal that seeks self-sufficiency (at any level of analysis) is a prescription for poverty — not just of the body but also of the mind. We are deeply and inalienably connected with all others, however one defines the ‘other.’

My criticism of Gandhi is that he did not comprehend the interconnectedness of the world we live in. But that is not surprising considering that he was perhaps one of the world’s greatest egotists. His ego was sufficiently large that he sometimes eschewed the use of reasoned argument for persuading others and instead blackmailed others into complying with his demands by threatening to starve himself to death. The public, like doting parents scared stiff that the child may indeed hold his breath till he turns blue, gave in to blackmail repeatedly. But that is par for the course for the unreasoning masses of India — they go for this kind of pathetic uncritical hero-worship. However noble the cause, blackmail is blackmail. And the larger the canvas upon which the ransom note is written, the more egregious the crime committed.

I claim that he was the greatest egotist around because to him, only his wishes counted. Sure, it was all dressed up in saintly rhetoric but in the end it was what he wanted that mattered. He wanted to be celibate; so the heck with Kasturba. He could make do with little if needed; therefore every Indian must make do with little. His needs could be satisfied with simple handmade goods, so every person must also aim for that. The spinning wheel and self-sufficient village economy and small scale enterprises were prescribed. He failed to see that in a world which is second-best, he was using a prescription that suited him best. Being an egotist, he could not comprehend that others’ preferences may be different.

Being an egotist is not against any laws, however. At worst, in the case of the average human, it is a handicap not much worse than extreme body odor. But it does have the unfortunate consequence of the person feeling a sense of being above others, not really connected to others. In the case of a ‘mahatma’, that sense of self-reliance translates into xenophobic isolation for the entire nation.

That is the Gandhian revolution that I am against.

The Gandhian revolution has been an unmitigated disaster. It ranks up there with communism as ideologies that have wreaked havoc on human societies. The Chinese suffered under communism and only in the past few years have they started up the road to development once they realized their mistake.

India has to look very critically at the burden we bear of the legacy of Gandhi. We must choose to free ourselves from a blind uncritical acceptance of a defunct ideology. Until we do that, I am afraid that we are condemning large masses of humans to needless misery.

Communism fails because it is a first-best recommendation (behave like saints) in a second-best world (where people are selfish and there is not enough to go around.) Similarly for the Gandhian revolution; it would have ushered in a heaven on earth had the nation been a collection of selfless ascetics. Instead Indians are average humans and therefore the same prescription has given the majority of us a living hell.

“It must remain to the wise to undo the damage that is done by the merely good.”

It was to be one of the modern and more welcome triumphs of capitalist attitude and achievement to diminish this acquisitive need for more land. In the highly prosperous city-states of Singapore and Hong Kong, land has been shown to be wholly irrelevant. And in the larger world it came eventually to be realized that colonial territory was only marginally relevant to economic progress, if it was relevant at all. The dissidence and revolt of the colonial peoples and a more civilized attitude by the colonial powers are often credited with bringing the colonial era to end. More attention might well be accorded to the rather simple but persuasive fact that colonies had become no longer economically worthwhile. Territory was not the thing.
(Pg 13)

The next quote rings too awfully true to me in the context of India and its leadership, both past and present.

Ignorance, stupidity, in great affairs of state is not something that is commonly cited. A certain political and historical correctness requires us to assign some measure of purpose, of rationality even where, all too obviously, it does not exist. Nonetheless one cannot look with detachment on the Great War (and also its aftermath) without thought as to the mental insularity and defectiveness of those involved and responsible.

I note in passing that Galbraith was the US ambassador to India when Nehru was the Prime Minister.

{See also Happy Birthday JK.}

How did India, in 15 years, go from being a synonym for massive poverty to the brainy country that is going to
take all our best jobs? Answer: good timing, hard work, talent and luck.

I would have asked a slightly different question:

How did India, in 15 years, go from being perceived as a country of massive poverty to being perceived as the brainy country that is going to take all our best jobs? Answer: Spin, racist zenophobia, and ignorance.

Let’s take the last one: ignorance. People are generally ignorant of the fact that there are two distinct Indias. Sharad Joshi distinguised them by calling the urban, rich, educated one India and the rural, poor, uneducated one Bharat. I will borrow that nomenclature. India is small, say about 100 million people at most. India has programmers and BPO call centers and cars and Baristas and McDonalds. Indians get educated at IITs and IIMs and travel abroad and talk to each other in Hindi sentences such as, “mera sleep bahut disturbed ho raha hai these days.”

In contrast to that, Bharat is a huge country of about 900 million, most of whom live in rural areas. They are largely illiterate, poor, have little education, don’t speak in English, do manual labor in farms, wouldn’t know what to do with a computer even if one came and bit them on their skinny behinds, have no illusions about anything shining and are generally ignorant about feeling good.

Ignorance about the existence of Bharat is widespread in India. Examine any magazine published in India and you would learn that the most pressing problems in India include what to do about a waist-line, which car to buy, where the hottest shopping spots are in the world, which movie star is sleeping with whom, and how India is shining.

How foreigners perceive India depends on what they have been fed by the news media. Sometimes the news media concentrates on Bharat and the focus is therefore on poverty and hunger. Then for some reason, Bharat is ignored and India comes into the limelight. The focus is then on the IT industry and all BPO and call center and job loss to brainy Indians. The reality is pretty much what it was before.

The other two factors — spin and racist zenophobia — I may take up later or leave it as an exercise for the interested reader.

A nice chatty piece as usual from Tom. He argues against putting up protectionist walls with folk wisdom as his major tool. The bit of folk wisdom which goes what goes around, comes around. It boils down to argument by anecdotes, really.

Argument by anecdotes is great expect for the fact that your adversary could also use the same tactics and then it can only end in a shouting match with the winner being the one who can shout the loudest. Demagogues — that tribe which Tom has a special disdain for — use anecdotes all the time.

I am not saying that Friedman should have written an academic paper citing published sources on the costs and benefits of outsourcing for the US economy. It is just that he starts off by admitting that the matter of outsourcing is a complex issue and that it requires reference to reality for one to comprehend it. Then he descends into a trap that he himself cautions others about. My gripe is that his reference to reality is too selective, the sample size too small for the conclusion that he wishes to support.

For instance, many other commentators stand on the other side of the issue and support their position by re-telling heart-wrenching tales of yuppy programmers in the Silicon Valley being unable to make their SUV payments because their jobs have been stolen by Indian programmers making less than $3 an hour.

Folk wisdom: one swallow does not a summer make. Or as we sophisticated people like to call it: the logical fallacy of the hasty generalization.