Opportunity in search of a supreme leader

Opportunity in search of a supreme leader

With the unexpected unravelling and loss of authority of the UPA quite early into its second term in office, an opportunity for the Opposition led NDA exists in 2014, or possibly as early as next year, if the parliamentary logjam persists.

The UPA could be forced to throw in the towel and call for general elections in the face of its mounting inability to govern, particularly in the forthcoming budget session. It is not inconceivable today that there could well be a no-confidence vote from the combined Opposition aided by a sizeable breakaway faction of the ruling combine, as early as the first half of next year.

The Government, on its part, seems confused about how to resolve its problems and persists in trying to drive a wedge between members of the Opposition, while simultaneously exerting considerable pressure on certain of its nominal allies to keep them threatened, involuntarily subdued, and functionally cooperative.

Despite a steady clamour both from the media and the combined Opposition, the UPA Government has done little to clean up its proverbial Augean stables, bedevilled as it is with more scams and evidence of maladministration than has been seen all-at-once in the history of independent India.

Of course, the UPA’s situation is further complicated by the ironic fact that their own designated and dynastic heir apparent is unable to graduate from his long-winded apprenticeship in the political arena. Nor is the young champion of the idea of the aam aadmi able to garner the votes on the strength of his charisma. Or implement his strategies as chief rejuvenator of his party for that matter. And neither is the Government able to bring succour to that very ordinary citizen with spiralling food prices and inflation pressing down on him without respite.

But to mirror the UPA’s hobbled situation for other, pedestrian reasons of power politics in the NDA, is hardly a recipe for success! To be a proper and credible alternative, the Opposition must project a much greater strategic cohesiveness that it does at present, particularly within the upper echelons of the BJP and its ideological backdrop, the RSS.

A clear sticking point for the Opposition combine, even in its four-party residual strength today, is the lack of a clear prime-ministerial candidate from within the BJP or the NDA. And this, quite apart from the urgent need to beef itself up, to use an unorthodox simile, by bringing back lost and new allies into the fold, so that its electoral heft is sufficient to actually capture power.

The situation is so glaring that various spokespersons of the UPA continually smirk at this Opposition disarray and blatantly count on the NDA’s  internal power struggles and lack of clear-cut leadership to perpetuate its own hold on power, however undeserved; not only for the rest of this beleaguered term, but beyond 2014 too.

In a country saddled with such horrific bad governance, the deep rot of corruption, and lack of accountability, the people may yet be presented with no more than a Hobson’s choice. The UPA are, not surprisingly, counting on this to weather every storm.

Meanwhile back in the NDA, there are several possible prime-ministerial contenders, theoretically speaking, from generation next, such as the electorally popular Mr.Nitish Kumar and Mr.Narendra Modi, who may however prefer to continue in their states where they are doing an excellent job. They may well prefer the certainties of experienced state administration with their comfortable majorities, rather than facing the head-winds of coalition government at the centre.  

There are others, more “staff” men and women than “line”, as the distinction goes in management circles; such as the feisty Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Ms. Sushma Swaraj, the urbane and polished Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mr. Arun Jaitley, and leading light from the South Mr. Venkiah Naidu.

They are all well known nationally and used to projecting the overall concerns of the NDA. And then, of course, there is party elder and pater familias Mr.LK Advani and several others from his generation, most notably, Mr. Murli Manohar Joshi. 

There are more accomplished state level satraps like Mr. Shivraj Singh Chauhan from Madhya Pradesh, and erudite and capable people of prime ministerial calibre, with perhaps lesser electoral or administrative credentials, including several who have occupied senior ministerial berths during Prime Minister AB Vajpayee’s terms in office as well as professional people associated with the NDA as MPs and advisers, in addition.

Having said all this, BJP Party President Mr, Nitin Gadkari, party elder Mr. LK Advani as well as RSS chief Mr. Mohan Bhagwat, must collectively acknowledge that the public deserves to have some idea of who will lead the NDA at the centre, should the opportunity arise. The public that votes for the leading Opposition combine, already significantly placed in the states, deserves to think there is a good chance of victory with everyone working together for such an objective rather than undermining the overall effort for byzantine reasons.

I say byzantine, because it has been difficult to pinpoint responsibility after the losses suffered by the NDA in the last general election, even as the general public was treated to the spectacle of disunity, veiled criticism and innuendo that is not exactly inspiring.

The other matter is the need to enunciate a more inclusive right-of-centre agenda for governance rather than the bare-faced championing of  majoritarian positions in a crude and unsettling manner for people from other communities. Such people, as also those from the majority community with a more pronounced secular bias, who may not be enamoured of the UPA after all that has happened, but certainly do not want to associate with a combine branded “communal” without seeming to demur.

The existing constituents of the NDA including the crucial JDU from Bihar are discomfited by blatant majoritarian posturing bearing in mind the mixed electorate they have to deal with. And modifying the ideological stance will give the NDA much greater political acceptability amongst those who want to break away from the UPA.

The trouble is, all this has long been known, but just as the UPA can’t seem to control corruption or resist the temptation to cynically pander to the minorities, the NDA seems wedded to a certain rigidity of position on core issues that ends up being exclusive rather than welcoming.

(1,055 words)

23^rd December 2010

Gautam Mukherjee

Transition as Sissy Maid

Roy Lictenstein




Transition as Sissy Maid

True democratisation of a polity gives pelf and power to the underclass. That is its self-evident litmus test however crudely performed. But the inheritors mostly lack the finesse of their predecessors, long used to their exalted status. The new hands at the controls are generally both nouveau and gauche as opposed to old, self-assured and discreet.

Of course, it becomes an unfair comparison: unequal, unlike, apples and oranges from very different orchards. And there can be no honourable contest between such disparate fruit, except in terms of vitality perhaps, till a few generations have gone by, and a number of grafts and hybrids have taken hold.

In Europe, this democratisation came about by default, in the early and middle part of the 20^th century, via the final destruction of monarchy, the agrarian economy, empire, and the near extermination of the land/title/privilege holding aristocracy, speared on the pike of their noblesse oblige.

This was most poignantly demonstrated by the trench warfare in WWI, when officers from the landed classes on both sides led charges with no more than their service revolvers held aloft. It reminds one of the destruction of the Kshatriya hold on power at the end of The Mahabharata, with both the warring sides finished off and sick-at-heart; as if, as “charioteer” Lord Krishna, born Yadava, implies, a little inscrutably, that it was both preordained and for the ultimate good. Were the noble/warring Kshatriyas evil then at the start of The Mahabharata, and more importantly, were they more evil than the other contenders for power? The answer to this, in epic fashion, is probably still playing itself out over the yugas and kalpas.

In colonised America, the British were overthrown first, but the class/racial divides were only sorted to an appreciable degree through the bloodletting of the Civil War and the ongoing Civil Rights Movement. And the Boston Brahmins or the East Coast  patrician Establishment haven’t given up the ghost as yet.

In India, untroubled by such pyramid overturning upheaval, save, late in the day for the freedom struggle, also at the end of WWII, during the radical surgery of Partition. But while that ghastly amputation without anaesthetic divided our people on communal lines, it did nothing for the cause of democratisation as such.

Instead it raised the curtain on our independence at the expense of opening a festering, hateful wound, unhealed to this day either in India or Pakistan, not to mention the other bits of British India cast adrift to fend for themselves, such as Sri Lanka, Burma(Myanmar) and Afghanistan.  

Mahatma Gandhi’s pre-independence focus on his beloved “Harijans”, condescendingly describe them as an idealised, defanged, docile quantity, a species of noble and downtrodden humanity, that should nevertheless reconcile itself to its fate in the caste hierarchy. Gandhi’s favourite Harijans were not erudite and assertive Ambedkars/Mayawatis, but mute, grateful and huddled chamars bowled over by upper class empathy and compassion.

Nevertheless, because of his enormous influence as the father of the nation and chief ahimsa/satyagraha architect of independence, the Mahatma did move the heavy boulders of neglect and oppression from the newly minted independent India’s policy vision. And considering 85% of our populace today are not from the upper castes; not a day too soon.

After the Mahatma, Pandit Nehru and Mrs. Indira Gandhi did their bits towards righting ancient wrongs by political affirmative action and reservation/quota administrations. Nehruvian Socialism and Indira Gandhi’s devastating attack on inherited privilege and the freedom of the private sector had their effect, as did the Congress’ collaborations with the various Communist parties extant. Today, we may not still be an equal society, amongst our SC/ST distinctions and our aam aadmi avowals, but the ladder of under privilege features the more obscure tribals, and not so much the dalits, on its lowest rungs.

But, unleashed,  however imperfectly, the Indian hoi polloi, like the tradesmen oriented tinkers, tailors, butchers, bakers, candlestick makers et al of Europe, glaringly lack sophistication and demonstrate a reduced level of efficiency even when given a chance!

Over the years since the world wars, the Europeans have managed to narrow the gap by dint of exposure and education. The nouveau and gauche have acquired some class along the way. And the remaindered ranks of the originally classy have overlaid themselves with some street credentials for greater relevance. And sometimes, the underclassmen are so astonishingly posh that it is hard to believe where they were even twenty five years ago.

But in India we are still in a tiresome transitionary phase. And like cross-dressing transvestites, also known as “sissy maids”, we haven’t found our metier as yet. Nevertheless, it is as if all classes have plunged into the déclassé third-class unreserved category, also much beloved of Mahatma Gandhi, if the bulk of the media analysis is to be believed.

Without going into the petulance of such perceptions, it might be fair to say that there is too much educated noise about the doings of rapacious underclassmen. It is as if they have no right to be venal and hypocrites. And, there is also a converse soft-pedalling of upper class wrong-doing, as if it were somehow qualitatively better. We Indians, new and old alike, also seem to believe in being above the law in direct proportion to how much pelf and power we manage to accumulate.

In this transition, the formerly privileged are put-out and refuse to self-examine.  They are insecure, shrill and sometimes illogical. The fact is, the underclasses have as much right to be corrupt, inefficient and self-serving as anyone else, and need to make up for lost time. They are, after all, late arrivals to the party.

In terms of corporate India, not only do we not see many of the top twenty players of the first three decades since independence in contention now, but there seems to be a perpetual churning taking place. Even the rulers of the latter three decades are being challenged by ever nouveau and gauche arrivestes.

This may not suit the well ensconced Tatas, Ambanis, Mittals and so on, but it is unlikely to make any difference to the eventual outcomes. Democracy must spread privilege, like fertililizer on a field, in open competition. And if it succeeds in doing so without blood-letting, we will have to put up with the stink and have much to congratulate ourselves for.

(1,054 words)

11^th December 2010

Gautam Mukherjee


Published in Leader Edit slot on Edit Page of The Pioneer on December 16th, 2010 as:Democracy as great leveler. Also appeared simultaneously online at www.dailypioneer.com, is archived there under Columnists, and was featured in the facsimilie version of the day's ePaper.

By George He's Got It!

By George, He’s Got It!

The true geo-politics altering crusading spirit probably died out with the medieval Crusades, and good riddance to it too. It would be much too much Bushism for today’s multi-polar world.

Which is not to say it didn’t generate quite a contest between the Jews, Muslims, sundry Slavs, other inconveniences to the Pope on one side; and the Roman Catholic Christians from the 11^th   12^th and 13^th centuries, on the other. But though the Crusades lasted some two hundred years (1095-1291), they ended, for the most part, with inconclusive results that persist to this day.

The crusading term however entered the lexicon, and the hearts of most evangelists, reformers, would be do-gooders, activists, social workers, and populist politicians. But then, all politicians are required to be populist to a lesser or greater extent, depending on whether they need to conform to the democratic franchise-based model or are exempted from the vote, as in one party and nominated governments of the Left and Right, monarchies and dictatorships. But even those who don’t need to get elected still need a modicum of popular support; and the crusades, the Roman Catholic version of jihad, were designed to focus unified attention on the enemy after all.

So it is poignant that in recent memory, most crusaders, nationally and internationally, turn out to have proverbial feet of clay, sundry skeletons in cupboards, and other disappointing integrity issues. In an Indian polity that is presently outdoing itself with new, improved essays in audacious and ever-enlarged corruption, it is disconcerting to see the long somnolent and moribund Environment and Forest Ministry being so hyperactive. But in a manner that produces much thunder and lightning but precious little rain.

It owes its present headline grabbing dynamism to incumbent minister of state with independent charge, since May 2009, Mr. Jairam Ramesh. I am probably not the only one who might be thinking that Mr.Ramesh has been at this particular pulpit for what seems to be considerably longer. But that is not true. He has been a junior minister in Commerce and Industry and the Ministry of Power as well, all since becoming an MP in 2004.

He has also been a Congress Party and Planning Commission adviser, back-room factotum, journalist, author, TV pundit and World Bank economist. But now, Shri Ramesh from Andhra Pradesh has pumped himself up to legendary St. George proportions, out to slay an absolute slew of dragons.

These fire breathing and reptilian monsters Ramesh targets range considerably in variety. There’s the hugely threatened Adarsh Bulding Society in Colaba, Mumbai, in danger of having a beautifully built and almost complete 32 storey building; almost done, that is, with the collusion of large swathes of Mumbai’s power elite.  Ramesh wants to cut it down to six storeys!  Then there is the 25,000 acre Lavasa, the first private sector purpose-built hill-station near Pune. Promoter HCC ( Hindustan Construction Company) must be ruing the day it deviated from the usual large bridges, flyovers and roads it traditionally builds. The esoteric debate is all about whether Lavasa is or isn’t 1000 metres above sea level and thereby under the purview and tender mercies of Environment Ministry clearances.

And also the ubiquitous brinjal, threatened by its GM (genetically modified) counterpart into purgatorial limbo. The GM version that is, while the GM Cotton Boll has pipped passed the post before the advent of  St. George Ramesh.

The SUV brigade is also in the gun-sights of our Environment Minster who has managed to suggest the German ones, surprisingly, are diesel-guzzling, mega pollution-making  inefficiencies, while saying not a lot about the rest, produced by the Indians, the Japanese, the British etc. It is a mystifying critique, but then he wants all of them to pay the full price of subsidised diesel.  Mr. Ramesh may have a particular bee in his bonnet on pollution, because he also wanted India to unilaterally accept all Western ideas of carbon emission cuts when he represented us at the talks for the purpose at Copenhagen in 2009.

Besides, these latest bizarre automobile musings are ripples in the diplomatic waters for the MEA to negotiate, and might induce a few strange sensations in the Petroleum Ministry too. The Environment Ministry under Ramesh apparently sees its role as a supra ombudsman, a kind of an overseer of purity perhaps, a little like JK Rowling’s inspired Ministry of Magic maybe? 

Other targets include Union Roads Minister Mr. Kamal Nath’s highway building and modernising zeal, particularly when it wants to widen roads passing through reserve forests. It is another matter that most of our reserve forests teem with human beings living in large and numerous villages in the deep forest, not to mention cohorts of poachers killing and maiming the animals with reasonable to absolute immunity. And there is hardly a word from Ramesh about all the illegal mining that goes on, quite a lot of it in the South to boot.

And the obstructionist charade is particularly appalling because the activist and (apparently) people’s crusading Environment Ministry is never much interested in nipping anything in the bud. That would be quite unglamorous of course. So why do that when it is so much more attention-grabbing to bring down the temple walls, or at least attempt to do so, once the edifice is built, and about to be commissioned/consecrated? Notice Mr. Ramesh is also not taking any broadsides at the Railway Ministry for their engine drivers mowing down several elephants in similar reserve forest areas. I wonder why?

What is wholly unconvincing, even amongst Mr. Ramesh’s selective targeting, is the sheer scope of works the Environment & Forests Ministry has carved out unto itself, not alas with a desire to remedy matters in this much dirtied and sullied environment of ours, but in a reincarnation of licence-permitism designed to extract obeisance from all that the Ministry wishes to point its laser pointer at.

The purpose of this seeming activism is suspect. As much as that of some people who champion Maoists and Kashmiri separatists while snuggling up to reserve  forests with  houses on the edge of the wilderness. So what if it is found to be an encroachment? Don’t other Page 3 people do it? Don’t the tribals do it? Don’t the villagers do it? Doesn’t the Government and the private sector do it? And isn’t it a graphic way to demonstrate how environment friendly, plant, tree, animal/bird and nature loving one truly is?

Who will watch our watchers? Besides, even St. George, the 3^rd century soldier-saint, slayer of dragons, brought back as legend in the medieval crusades, has morphed into a somewhat feminist sexual position in colloquial parlance.

(1,105 words)

1^st December 2010

Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Leader on the Edit Page of The Pioneer on December 2nd, 2010 entitled "Politician as activist". Also online at www.dailypioneer.com and is archived there under Columnists. It is also featured in the ePaper facsimilie edition of The Pioneer for the 2nd of December 2010.

The Knack

The Knack

It is ironic that the big news on the commercial front from President Obama’s recent state visit was about Indian orders worth USD 10 billion for American goods. And that it translates into 50,000 new jobs in America. This, in a beleaguered US, with unemployment percentages running into double digits, was President Obama’s first message from Indian soil.

Irony is a largely Western concept with no equivalent in Sanskrit; even if its harbinger is a path-breaking African-American President of the US, till recently given to stoking the outsourcing controversy with “Buffalo versus Bangalore” rhetoric.

But then, the charismatic President Obama’s roots, as one of the most Liberal-Left US presidents in recent times, are in local and community politics. And the dire state of the US economy, which he inherited, and has largely rescued from certain ruin with huge government hand-outs and near nationalisation style moves; is certainly not his fault.

But not to miss a beat, our usually mild-mannered Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chimed in on cue by declaring that we Indians are not in the business of “stealing jobs” from anyone.

The fact is, a severe drubbing at the mid-term US Congressional elections held just before his India visit, set President Obama’s perspective to rights. He got little credit for battling to save the economy of the free world from collapse; but scads of brickbats for not putting the nation back to work. Duly chastised, Obama is no longer keen on raising the outsourcing “bogeyman”.

The Republicans, now in control of the US Congress, consider it Luddite folly to refuse to go wherever in the world something can be sourced more cheaply and efficiently. So India, particularly its thriving software industry, can breathe easier, both because President Obama is forced to course-correct now; and because as an economy, we are, in the President’s own estimate, already “emerged”.

In a globalised world, it is indeed seen as unwise, to try and set the clock back, either because of populist reasons; or even by dint of other vexing issues, such as bureaucracy, red-tape, corruption, even bad infrastructure; when the key need is for a thriving manufacturing base and export hub. This particularly when one has a limited, expensive, and ageing workforce, as is the case in most of Europe and Japan, if not also in the US. Even the Chinese workforce, though populous, is ageing, thanks to its one child policy.

Japan, previously sceptical about India despite its potential, tried to grow its economy with China at first. And China took in huge amounts of Japanese investment in the eighties, but to fuel its own will to power. The nationalist Communist Party there were happy to fan anti-Japanese sentiment left over from the war years after their purpose was served.

Japan’s eyes are now opened to India. Long the No.2 economy after the US, though languishing through a two decade-long recession; over a 100 Japanese firms are entering India every year now. They are creating jobs here, in their home country, and around the globe, by investing, without demur, into the Indo-Japanese corridor between Delhi and Mumbai amongst other places. A $ 90 billion commitment, the corridor will, when completed, give the Indo-Japanese collaboration state-of-the-art manufacturing abilities and an exporting base second to none. The Japanese government is also moving finally on other matters like a free-trade agreement, a bilateral defence framework, and even an Indo-Japanese civil nuclear deal.

America too is treading a similar path with India, with some strategic and geopolitical overlays. Ergo, its intended removal of restrictions on the Indian access to dual-use high technology, closer defence related cooperation, and of course the consummation of the civil nuclear deal.

There is a compelling need for many of the erstwhile dominant Western powers to forge closer ties with India, growing robustly by dint of its domestic demand, and refresh long-held negative attitudes that have outlived their usefulness. Some of them are moving towards the opportunities presented faster than others, but we can expect a cascade effect as the time goes on.

Pundit after financial pundit is proclaiming that the Sensex will be close to 50,000 by 2015, and double that figure by 2020; the figures based on an approximate compounded return of 18% on equity. And this for the next quarter of a century at least, albeit with swells and troughs thrown into the puissant ride.

India’s biggest foreign bank, Standard Chartered declares India will be the world’s fastest growing economy by 2012. In the next two decades India will become the third largest economy in GDP terms, only behind China and the US. Morgan Stanley, on its part, says India will become the fastest growing economy in the world by 2013-15.

At the root of all this happy talk, and even at its branches, is the belief that globalisation provides additional job opportunities at home and abroad in a win-win partnership between participants. It becomes a virtuous cycle of additional capital raising both productivity and know-how for all concerned. The elephant both inside and outside the room is India’s appetite for infrastructure development, which will not be assuaged for years to come.

There was, during the US presidential visit, a low-key announcement of an Indo-US Infrastructure Development Fund with an initial corpus of $ 10 billion. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh however said we need over one trillion dollars for infrastructure development in the next decade alone. There is therefore plenty of room for other comers.

And lastly, as Linnet Mushran, an Englishwoman married to an Indian from the landed classes; the owner and inspiration behind the delectable Bhuira Jams made to legendary Fortnum & Mason quality standards by largely illiterate Himachali women, said: Indian women are very good with pickles and English women with jams. 

The observation is strikingly true. But the magic ingredient in either case is, of course, an indefinable, cultural/ethnic instinct and sensibility for the appropriate that makes for the excellence.

The analogy can be extended to many other things that contribute both to the good life and human progress: Scotch and the Scots, sauces /gravies and the French, automobiles and Germans, software development and Indians, mass-manufacturing and the Chinese, styling and Italians, scale and the Americans, and so on.

The point being that some people are innately, and by virtue of their knack at something, better at doing certain things than others. Also that an intelligent workforce can be taught to perform to high standards.

The Japanese are astounded that we win Alfred Denning prizes for quality manufacturing of auto-components amongst all our chaos. Fact is, they shouldn’t be.

(1,096 words)

16^th November 2010

Gautam Mukherjee


Published in The Pioneer as Leader on the Edit Page as :"Bailing out America" on 17th November 2010 (Eid Al Adha). Also appears online at www.dailypioneer.com, in The Pioneer ePaper facsimile also on the 17th of November 2010. The article is also archived under Guest Columnists at www.dailypioneer.com against the dated listings under Gautam Mukherjee.

Brand-Building & Infrastructure Redux

Brand-Building and Infrastructure Redux

Tata Hall will be the name of a new academic and residential building to come up at Harvard Business School, following on from a $50 million bequest from the Tata Group.

This is the largest ever contribution received by the Harvard Business School from an international donor. The School currently also happens to boast of a Dean Nitin Nohria who is of Indian origin.

This endowment from the Tata Group follows on from $10 million gifted by the Mahindra Group earlier. And coming during one of the worst financial crises the US has faced, these payments are bound to earn both business groups and their country of origin, a great deal of goodwill. Remarkably, both Tata and Mahindra come from the private sector in an emerging economy grappling with its binary demands of poverty and progress.

It is fortuitous indeed therefore, that such a slot was still left open; what with the Saudis, Kuwaitis and other  very well-heeled Arabs looking for diplomatically leverageable investments and causes to endow in America. And that is just as well for us Indians and the two chairmen of Tata and Mahindra who happen to have studied there in times past.

These grants underline that neither business groups are, any longer, merely Indian, with more and more of a global footprint as the time goes on. The Tata Group already generates more than 60% of its business outside India. And a good deal of it is from the high-end of the market, in fields as diverse as hotels, steel, automobiles and tea.

With this foray into the Harvard Business School establishment, it will now be far more difficult for the likes of the luxury Orient Express Hotels brand, to show reluctance regarding “fit”, the next time Tata seeks to buy more substantially into its properties. Of course, that infamous episode was before Tata acquired Corus and Jaguar/Landrover, but was nevertheless sometime after it bought Tetley. And Mahindra may not remain the lesser known new owner of Satyam for long.

Sadly, old post-colonial attitudes to India may have been revised somewhat in Britain, but America, in its pre-eminence, is definitely the more lucrative nut to crack. Doing so via the Ivy League is therefore a very good idea.

Visionary actions like this, by the Tata Chairman, just months before he is due to retire from the day-to-day helmsmanship, albeit to a powerful stewardship of the Tata Trusts, are therefore to be lauded, both for their correctness and boldness. Since the Tata Trusts own over 60% of the businesses overall, hopefully Ratan Tata’s voice will continue to be heard well beyond 2012. Meanwhile, this is a classic example of brand building that will prove, for generations to come, extremely cheap at the price.

But brand-building alone would not be cutting the mustard. The Tatas back their well -targeted philanthropy with massive skill and know-how, represented by the oft repeated “Salt to Software” array of products and services. They are not only at the forefront of our nation building efforts but are proud innovators, epitomised by the Nano motor-car being freely sold at under $3,000 a unit.

Another major Tata Sons shareholder, the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, coincidentally, built the new and improved Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi complete with the biggest membrane roof in the world. It was the glittering, state-of-the art venue of both the opening and closing ceremonies at the recently concluded 19th Commonwealth Games.  Other SP Group companies, such as AFCON, have been building a lot of Delhi’s new infrastructure as well.

But quite apart from matters pertaining to the CWG, it is poor infrastructure that defines our backward image and acts as a retardant to the desired double-digit growth. And our neglect of it over the years, in areas such as electricity, water, transport, roads, ports, and so on, has put us at a nagging competitive disadvantage.

Besides, if the CWG managed to redeem itself from the shameful morass it was bogged down in just days before the event began; the credit must go in equal measure to the athletes who bagged 101 medals in a wide range of sporting events, and the quality of the world-class infrastructure built by India for the occasion.

“Bread and Circuses” was the cynical Roman Empire formula for entertaining the Hoi Polloi designed to render them amenable. A present day equivalent is probably the development of infrastructure, as in all that went into the CWG.

The broader point is that infrastructure, created and revived, even at very high cost, is without doubt the very elixir of growth and aspiration. It also spurs performance in practically any given field of endeavour. It is the very aphrodisiac to progress. But it is not only the infrastructure, but also undeniably better training for our sportsmen and women that has resulted in overall success at this CWG. But this training too is a form of infrastructure, without which the physical facilities would have stayed under utilised.

The Indian performance, particularly in sports where we were unable to win medals in past competitions, makes one realise what is possible with the right inputs. And that as a country, our surprisingly merit-based selection of heroes and heroines from small towns and villages, by such an allegedly corrupt and venal sports administration, is also most heartening. It showed us that poor and middle class India is vitally alive and well. And that it is demonstrably patriotic and sincere. And that it is the unsullied spirit of such men and women that promises good things for our collective future- despite the sickening corruption, cynicism and jadedness displayed by some of our richer and more powerful compatriots.

As for the other physical infrastructure enhancements, Delhi/NCR will be savouring its benefits, that of the metro, the spanking new airport, the spruced up main railway station, the flyovers, over-bridges, underpasses, new hotels, a revived Connaught Place largely rescued from its tawdry and abused degradation, and sundry other improvements, for many years to come.

And we must recognise that infrastructure is our ticket to improved standards, competitiveness and further growth still, in matters well beyond sports. It is both ladder and virtuous circle. It is our release from the taint of backwardness and the only thing holding us back from the beckoning of a glorious and prolific destiny.

(1,049 words)

Mahaashtami, October 15^th, 2010

Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Leader Edit in The Pioneer on November 3rd, 2010 as "Home and abroad". Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com and The Pioneer ePaper. Archived under Columnists at www.dailypioneer.com

Flowing Water & The Very Indian Concept Of Upaya

The River- Roy Lichtenstein

Flowing Water & The Very Indian Concept of Upaya

If you sit by the river long enough, you will see the body of your enemy floating by… Japanese Proverb

Image management professionals rely on, and media men know, the axiomatic truth that every headline, however elating or distressing, is the successor to yet another headline. There is a riverine quality about the flow of news, and patience, for that matter, that allows the aggrieved, anguished or outraged to hope for justice. Also, “with a little bit of luck”, as in Eliza Doolittle’s father’s roguish expectation in My Fair Lady; today’s imperative can well become tomorrow’s irrelevancy.

So, hang in there, you who may be squirming uncomfortably in the eye of the storm. Minimise the damage as best as you can, and be sure you will slip off that front page and TV screen, into that dark and comforting oblivion you long for, probably much sooner than you think. All things do pass, including glory and ignominy, to be replaced by further glory and ignominy, but not necessarily your own. This may be banal as an observation, but that doesn’t seem to affect its home-truth quotient.

Besides, there is that other matter of coincidental juxtaposition- of inevitable good news and bad following on, that also manages to cast its own moderating/eclipsing influence.

Thus, for example, you have the monumental corruption, incompetence and unhygienic squalor on display in the run up to the CWG, memorably bracketed within a OC meditation in excellent East is East fashion, under the full gaze of international TV, on “our standards and their standards,” with more than a grain or two of truth in it. But, after making suitable amends with a war-footing clean-up: of dirt, snakes, dogs and pestilential mosquitoes: and the posting of Langurs to deter Rhesus monkeys from venues; we find such typically colourful and exotic issues segueing seamlessly into the glamour and hoopla of the all-is-forgiven high-tech Opening Ceremony.

And juxtaposed with the natural pride we all feel in witnessing this razmatazzy extravaganza, complete with prince, president, players and pageant; and on to the actual competition and the glint of medals, is the other insistent news of the Sensex striking out towards all-time highs, even as the GDP growth rate competes ironically with the food inflation figures.

And then, if that wasn’t enough to grant the government: its politicians, functionaries and bureaucracy a reprieve from their  bad publicity; you have a most sagacious  three-judge bench verdict from the High Court of Uttar Pradesh on the highly symbolic Ayodhya imbroglio. A verdict, long decades in its coming; one representative of no less than the vitality and resilience of our social fabric as a country. And this verdict has been received, not with discontent and public protest, but in a spirit of statesmanship and communal harmony nationwide. There is profundity and pride in this outcome, given the fractious history of this matter, not easily matchable, now or in the future, by any other nation on earth, no matter how apparently integrated and homogenous.  

Surely then, any future nasty shocks notwithstanding, two rights or is it two and a half depending on one’s perspective, of  varying import and relative stature, eclipse the remaining half. A half that is undeniably rotten, as it may continue to seem to those, both here and abroad, who prefer to make freer with criticism than praise. But of course this assessment too depends on the scales one uses to measure the abstractions underlying such weighty news flow.

And willy-nilly, the people of India are thrust into a new position of maturity. We make a mess of the Commonwealth Games preparations and yet redeem our pride, yes, Monsoon Wedding fashion, as hazarded by our Sports Minister MS Gill.

Our standards, of much more than hygiene and maintenance, on the other hand, are, without a doubt, quite deplorable. And it may be years, mysterious as the causes may seem, before we are able to get a fix on this sub-standard mind-set. Meanwhile, we will have to endure international slurs and ridicule, and pay for our sloppiness and unreliability in lost business, cost overruns, missed deadlines, faulty execution, diminished diplomatic stature and credibility.

So, easy as it may be to blame OC Secretary General Lalit Bhanot for his embarrassing remarks on relativity and filth; he has not, some of us may recognise, said anything untrue. Our cavalier attitude to cleanliness can be demonstrated on any city street or village across our beloved country. We may know what clean is but that does not inspire us to make and keep clean, particularly in any civic sense.

Meanwhile, the FII’s have pumped in close to $ 6 billion in the month of September alone, with a strong likelihood of much more to come, in a belated acknowledgement, that India is one of the few places they stand to make money in the next couple of years. This even as our absolute numbers of people below the poverty line keeps growing in relentless fashion.

And if we do finally resolve the Ayodhya issue with the building of a longed for grand temple to Lord Rama at his exact birth-place, as well as that of a great mosque on the banks of the Saryu river; we would, as a nation, have definitely achieved a  proud milestone in the history of independent India.

If the import of the somewhat inscrutable Japanese proverb to do with revenge and rivers and floating corpses was meant to be about our communally conflicted recent past, it will have turned instead to a last laugh on our ill-wishers and detractors with less than absolute faith in our native cohesiveness and good sense.  

Besides, we have other ways and means. There is a very old, very wise, Indian concept of “upaya”, celebrated, amongst other places, in the brilliant and visionary treatise Lal Kitab which has Persian origins and was originally written in Urdu. Without going into the esoterics of its efficacy, it is clear that the central suggestion is that of remedy and relief affordable to apparently intractable issues of karma and destiny. In short, there is no problem that cannot be alleviated or even solved with some flowing water, the gathering of certain offerings to be made, and the performance of some prescribed rituals over the whole enterprise. It is, in the end, a most reassuring world-view.

(1,055 words)

October 3^rd, 2010

Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Leader on Edit Page of print edition of The Pioneer as "We are like this only" on Wednesday 6th October, 2010. Also online at www.dailypioneer.com and is mirrored in the pioneer epaper.

Winston Naked

Winston Naked

There is a new and largely critical book on Churchill written by Frankfurt based historical researcher Madhusree Mukherjee, called Churchill’s Secret War. It has, not surprisingly, been extensively reviewed in the Indian media.

It says, amongst other things that help to strip away some of the lustre from the great man, that Winston Churchill was deliberately and wilfully responsible for the last of the Bengal famines (1943), that killed at least three million people.

It was one of the diabolical ironies of the devout Anglican moorings of the British Raj, particularly during the Victorian era that saw it to its zenith, that we lost over 45 million souls to periodic (about seven years), man-made famines throughout 200 years of British rule. And these needless deaths were caused by imperial priorities of war, annexation and armies on the march, such as the Afghan War, or, as in Churchill’s time, WWII.

The Raj thought nothing of  depriving the poorest “natives” of basic staples of food by creating artificial scarcities resulting in rampant inflation, in order to divert grain and victuals to the war or annexation effort of the day.

But when Churchill wrote, (had ghost written), his four volume A History of the English Speaking Peoples, he lionised himself and dwelt on aspects of his selective memory. There wasn’t, of course, a single word in it about the Bengal famine of 1943-44.

To an imperialist like Churchill, unwilling to preside over the loss of Empire, anything that could strike a blow on the back of Indian nationalism was fair means. This included opposing limited self-government in the 1930s, vilifying Mahatma Gandhi, promoting the policy of divide and rule, and despising Indians in general for their temerity in wanting to overthrow British rule. So, genocide via famine too was probably reckoned to be par for the course, betwixt the many “weak whiskies” and cognacs that he famously consumed throughout the day and night.

To the credit of the Mughals whom the British usurped power from in the first place, there was no such privation during over 400 years of their rule; though the Mughals were given to massacres and sackings of another kind, of course. But such blood-letting, brutal as it was, did not involve, comparatively, such large numbers.

And similar kudos must go to ourselves since independence, despite the abject appeals that resulted in the humiliating PL-480 handouts from America in the Sixties, before our own Green Revolution made us food self-sufficient in the following decades.  

Alas, despite this, thousands of starvation related deaths still occur in the poorest parts of the country today, owing to our callous political and bureaucratic bungling of surplus food stocks, abysmal storage conditions, and appalling distribution inefficiencies. There is also the rank corruption in the rationale and timing behind questionable exports and imports of food.

For all his rediscovered faults, Churchill’s lasting contribution to history was his early recognition of the true intent of the Nazis. And that is why he was the right person to preside over the war years. But afterwards, the British people, in their wisdom, saw to it that he was voted out of office, and, to their credit, they never let him back in.

But deprived of parental warmth as he was in his childhood, Churchill developed a vicious streak that was never very far from the surface. And it is one of the truisms of life that a man may burnish his image as much as he likes, but people can somehow see right through him to his essential self.

And as for imperialism itself, not only did the baton pass to the Americans directly but is ready to be passed on to the Chinese sometime later in the 21^st century. Though, in fairness, it might be a few years yet. Besides, there could always be an unforeseen twist in the tale, resulting in the abortion of such naked ambition, seeking to work its inexorability, not through the dogs of war, but in peace time.

Yet another icon of our post war era, but more properly blossomed in the Sixties, Seventies and since; is the musician John Winston Lennon of The Beatles and subsequent solo career alongside the Japanese-American Yoko Ono. He has also had a new BBC documentary made on him. Called Lennon Naked, it dwells on his essential psyche.  

The new film shows John’s deep insecurity, his excessive drug taking and resultant psychosis, his cruelty towards his near and dear, an eccentricity and arrogance bordering on something darker, and clearly indicates that he was responsible for the break-up of The Beatles out of a spiteful hubris.

Lennon’s working class soul was essentially troubled by an anguish of abandonment felt from early childhood; much like the aristocratic but very lonely Churchill, brought up by governesses and preparatory schools. One compensated with an ostensible crusade for Peace, however subversive; and the other, by ruthlessly prosecuting a war that he nearly didn’t win.

Lennon’s was the more lurid history. His mother Julia left his father to remarry when John was just six. His father went off to sea and disappeared for 17 years. John was brought up by his Aunt Mimi, while his own mother had three more children with her new husband, living just a few lanes away in his native Liverpool. And then she was tragically run over by a bus.

All this was, no doubt, grist to the mill for the flowering of that famous Lennon genius, but it was also the reason for his pain and anger.  Likewise Churchill’s life- long leaning towards heroics, adventurism and brinkmanship was probably compensation for the hollowness and inadequacy he felt inside. It helped to keep the “black dog” on his back at bay, helped with liquor, long baths, the painting of passable water-colours, and those famous cigars.

Lennon’s middle name was Winston. And both gentlemen, for all their storied glory, were tortured souls, driven, in equal measure, towards greatness and self-destructiveness.

That Churchill was put out to lionised pasture, and lived for decades during which he saw the world he believed in slip into history, was perhaps fitting. And likewise that John Lennon was shot in the street by a crazed fan, stilling the childhood injury done to his soul with a bullet through his heart.

(1,046 words)

September 13^th, 2010

Gautam Mukherjee


Published in The Pioneer Op-Ed Leader on 15th September 2010 as "The war on Bengal" and also online at www.dailypioneer.com where it is archived also under Columnists.

Two Versions

Two Versions

There is a distinct disconnect between the Government and the Governed in India. The former drifts, flounders, feathers its own nest; and the latter suffers patiently or not so patiently.

The Governed are decidedly victims of extremely poor Governance, even in the midst of high growth rates lately; in a phenomenon similar to that which prevails in neighbouring China. There too, the majority of the numerous people, on a per capita basis, are very poor, while the single Communist Party ruled Government and nation is certainly well off, and the fastest growing economy in the world to boot. But then, ours, almost equally populous, is also the second fastest growing economy.

Still, this complaint is not only about neglected and disenchanted tribals turned Maoist, disgruntled Islamists turned terrorist, emasculated middle classes turned into grumbling nonentities; or ever growing numbers of poor people robbed of every shred of their dignity!

After all, this, and more along these lines, has proved so intractable to our successive Governments as to almost seem old hat. And being in a ruling party near majority in UPA II seems paradoxically to have made the quality of Governance worse. And this has in turn bewildered and belied all the high hopes of the electorate that chose not to return a typically blackmailing, regionally focussed multi-party coalition to the Centre this time.

But things are undeniably worse than in UPA I, plagued as it was by its 60 seat wielding Communist allies. And worse also than when the Opposition many party NDA combine ruled, under the sage and popular  Prime Minister AB Vajpayee. This then must be complacency; bred perhaps by a reduced threat perception about the possibility of being unseated. Otherwise, it is indicative of the cluelessness of two leaders, or is it three, at the top, all naïve at best, about the nuts and bolts of Governance.  

This lament is also not just about corruption, though it has grown sufficiently brazen and all pervasive to put us in the leading ranks of corrupt nations worldwide. The Commonwealth Games coming up are in undeniable danger of turning into an expensive and embarrassing fiasco. And for sheer looting, shoddy workmanship and dangerous callousness, it has already plumbed heretofore unfathomed depths of depravity.

No, it is time to recognise that our political classes, the bureaucracy and other arms of Government have been left behind. They are simply unable to keep up with the demands of a resurgent India. And everything under their sway, which is altogether too much for them to cope with, is suffering. Vital matters such as Defence and Agriculture are in bad shape.  So are the entire gamut of state administered Education, Health, Natural Resources, Law & Order and Basic Infrastructure.

It has always been so in independent India. But the state of affairs was less glaring when the Government used to shackle private enterprise so tightly that they could barely function. Then everything was at a near standstill anyway. But now, the private sector has pulled away since 1991, and is today responsible for all the bright spots on the national landscape. Practically all of the growth in annual GDP figures and most of the lucrative employment opportunities are in the private domain, particularly if the unorganised sector is included in the calculations.

Through it all, the mystery wrapped up in the enigma of Indian Governance today is an insidious myth of spurious aam aadmiism. This is ruthlessly promoted, looking however, not really for equity or justice or upliftment, but for a constituency of stable votes.

It is reminiscent of the failure of Communism not just in West Bengal and Kerala, but around the globe, including in the most durable Fidel Castro’s Cuba, starving at America’s doorstep, all in its ostensible championing of the poor.  

It is also reminiscent of the riddles of revisionism that sometimes plague history and legend alike. For example, coming down to us from the 9^th century, there is a persistent and fascinating legend about the existence of a female Pope,  remembered as Pope Joan, who successfully masqueraded as a man (John or Johannes), all the way from a mere provincial monk to the exalted Seat of St. Peter in Rome.

This, of course is denied absolutely by the Vatican as scurrilous untruth, particularly as the sex of the Papess was only outed when she went into a labour of childbirth while leading a Papal Procession. She was, predictably, torn to pieces by an outraged mob.  

But the legend of Pope Joan is a compelling story, and two feature films have been made about it. The first, from 1972, was directed by Michael Anderson, and its screenplay was written by one John Briley, who also wrote one for Richard Attenborough’s multiple Oscar winning film on Mahatma Gandhi in the eighties.

The other version, also titled Pope Joan, is a multi-national and detailed production, from 2009. The older film, from 1972, is somewhat glamorised with the beauteous Liv Ullman in the title role, but the newer one is a serious attempt to capture the ignorance, superstition and brutality of the “Dark Ages” when Christianity, even Roman Catholicism, with its considerable orthodoxies, was not quite as settled into its groove.

Contextually, there are several titillations. Celibacy was by no means universally practiced by the clergy. Nor was the Church a neutral observer in matters worldly though the sword and guile was used in a manner different from the Papal diplomacy of today. Some might say, even in matters sexual, things haven’t changed very much.

Pope Joan features also on Tarot Cards, immortalised as “The Papess”. But then, Tarot Cards have always been a vehicle for a coded history imbued also with a number of fascinating Hindu (Kali), Hebrew/Kaballah and Romany Gypsy influences; woven in holistically to enhance the powerful mysticism of its fortune-telling propensities in the hands of a good reader.   

But the most telling part of the narrative on Pope Joan is to do with what is permissible to history. And there, Pope Joan, like the incompetence of Indian Governance, is simply not officially acknowledged. Our politicians and bureaucrats, our judges, municipalities and policemen, likewise admit to nothing. And as long as they can get away with this kind of stone-walling and lack of accountability, nothing substantive can change for the majority of people in this country.

(1,055 words)

September 8^th, 2010

Gautam Mukherjee

Deja vu Jack, would you please pass me a slice of immortal soul?

 

New Bride Photograph by Dayanita Singh

Déjà vu Jack, would you please pass me a slice of immortal soul?

On the brink of annihilation by reason of obsolescence, after the outright demise of Polaroid, comes the last-gasping, floundering pantheon roll-call of photographic greats such as Kodak, Pentax, Nikon, Hasselblad, Olympus, Leica and so on; some languishing blue, yet clinging poignantly to their still-film avatars, but with nowhere else to go.

Others in the distinguished line-up, have used their famous brand names to sell out to a digital world of miniaturised, finger–snapping fast memories. But before the strains of the last post fade from hearing quite, here comes a revival!

It’s a marked thing no mistaking, another turn in the sun for the 35 m.m. film-using still-camera, back with a thump with its honour restored.

And this new interest is arising, not out of corny nostalgia or demand from the retro-freaks, but purely on the grounds of superior aesthetics. Now what exactly can you call the phenomenon- would you call it moving with or back in time?

The revival of the arcana of negative-positive dark-room developments and chemicals-leaning thereby towards the many qualities and effects it can impart; the art in its handling, the mystery, depth, atmosphere, authenticity, truth of its inherent nature, quirks, camera tricks, of film speeds, shutters and light, the development effects of exposure, paper, screens, thickness; all this and more.

In contrast, that is, to the mere near-film quality, no flash induced red-eye, but distinctly robotic digital snapshot. The province of the click as many as you please digital pictures may be soulless, but have, like bottom–feeding carps, practically displaced all the grand marques of the colour & BW photo-clicking kind. Photo artistes may mutter, aficionados may stutter, but that may be just the modern day equivalent of the green devil absinthe talking.

Pour quoi the change of heart? Perhaps, it is a belated recognition of the virtues of old fashioned still photography. Besides, it is difficult to commit to pictures that can be snapped in their thousands stretching towards infinity, constrained only by the capacity of the storage devices attendant, and the upload, download, folder, attach and send universe they tend to inhabit. It’s also the slightest bit pornographic even without the mms spreading smut, with a new convenient invasiveness all of its own.

But coming back to this revivalist context, I read a recent wisecrack in a magazine that echoes Albert Einstein’s famous remark about God and Certainty and Dice, albeit in a smarmy, self-serving and commercial kind of way. This one presumed to say: God takes pictures with a Leica, the film-roll carrying analog kind if you please; the intelligence conveyed to us mere mortals with a wonderful omniscience that can sometimes, of course, be the province of a self-confident advertiser.

This new found, if revived fondness for negative and print is similar to a renewed interest, bordering on reverence, usually reserved for the real McCoy, applied to old vinyl long-playing records replete with their sleeves, labels, scratches, stumbles, halts, hiss, all seen, not as the Neanderthal annoyances of crude technology but as so much in-built, or is it built-in, “atmosphere”. So think of the kudos earned by those prescient aesthetes who still keep their record players in working order and their album collections in their regularly dusted sleeves? Besides, they’re starting to mix in this retro-atmosphere into the new digitised world of recording to get away from the synthetic perfection of today’s techniques.

Fact is, all these transitions are not without their traumas. Years ago, Rolls Royce put in a toy gear change for drivers to play with, even as their cars ran on the then new-fangled and axiomatically silent automatics. Sometimes, it was recognised, back in the sixties or thereabouts, already a half century ago, letting go is not the only option. There’s always pretence.

What’s going to be the next U Turn on the technology trail? Whatever it is, it is good to remember that this harking back in the spirit of revision is not, at least till now, a mass sentiment. The majority are content to move on with the times without a backward glance.

But a few tend to pine over losing something more than just the bathwater even as they hold the squalling baby in their arms. These coves search. They seek. They wonder. They worry. And after all these travails, they sometimes zero in on an issue that may have escaped the notice of the many in their stampede for the exits.

These omissions, like torn off buttons on a shirt come back from the wash, may or may not provide the answers to the missing link or ingredient in the future. But to these sorts, quests of such manner make for meaningful activity. Sometimes however, later, perhaps much later, others, far more obtuse about their surroundings, find reason to be grateful to them.

Predictably, we others do not understand what the fuss is about at the time. We never do, actually, not when we first encounter such a phenomenon in the past, not now as we live and breathe, and probably not later either. Progress does cut corners on this very premise. It even presumes to educate us in new ways which are not always an advantage on all parameters.

So it is thanks to the unusuals amongst us, and sometimes an ever-suspicious, lugubrious and ponderous watch-dog or regulatory authority with vague and all encompassing powers to harass and obstruct, that keep societies as a whole from degeneracy in the face of change. All you need to do is read a little Kafka for further elucidation.

But when we talk of the next retro-vision with mass as opposed to niche support, it is probably going to involve a measure of concern about the very modern issues of pollution, global warming and the environment. But since these are relatively new concerns that have cropped up ever since we have grown deadly efficient at plundering the natural resources of this planet, there are no old ways and means to go back to.

No, to incorporate this sentiment and awareness we must build anew, but tinge and tincture our efforts with the sensibilities of an earlier, less rapacious time.

There will have to be, therefore, a technological remake of the old ways before mankind mass produced their 16 lane high-speed highways to perdition. We may not have a scenic route to take back to less toxic times, but some of the inspiration must come from a simpler era anyhow. This particularly, as many of us may be wearying of things and processes that do get better and more efficient at all apparent levels but yet manage to feel utterly soulless in their processes and content.

To capture that fragile and precious butterfly-like anima, gone AWOL amongst all our progress, future designers, geneticists, architects, legislators, journeymen all, may have to build-in “feel”.

This is easier said than done because a simulation will not suffice. To intuit what is necessary, they will have to manifest, from their genetically engineered innards, a slice of soul to deposit, not just the heartfelt, but the immortal kind, as the price of their admittance.

For what it’s worth, it will certainly make a change from the proverbial depositing of death-dealing firearms at the door as an act of good intent; because, let’s face it, by then, guns would have lost most of  their power to kill anyway. Besides, suffer away for now without interference, while you still can, because it's a matter of some speculation what the future will make of germane issues such as love, meaning and death. If you can modify the body with genetics,  just what kind of muscularity will it introduce to the mind?

(1,274 words)

July 25^th, 2010

Guru Purnima

Gautam Mukherjee

Free Imports Zindabad, Licence-Permit Murdabad!

Free Imports Zindabad, Licence-Permit Murdabad!


From a macro economist’s viewpoint, subsidies and price controls distort. So theoretically, the sharp fuel price rises, designed to do away with such things, is for the common good and worth the projected 1% inflation engendered by expected price rises. Notwithstanding protests from opposition parties and allies alike for its “anti-people” aspects.

Perhaps this is a good time to suggest the same market forces logic should also extend to other imports, particularly high-end finished goods, which face a wall of protectionism, even when we do not manufacture the items in India. We protect the inferior by taxing the superior in a classic bit of left-over Socialism.

Consider that the recent US launch of the 2010 Audi A-4, with a number of new bells and whistles, is priced at some $31,000 there, or a modest Rs. 15 lakhs. This is the kind of figure applied in India to the likes of the Skoda Laura and the Volkswagen Jetta, the C and B category marques respectively, from the same stable as the luxury class Audi. But in India, by the time the new A-4 is introduced, sometime in 2011, its price will be in an altogether more precious Rs. 30 or 35 lakh range.

An S Series Mercedes Benz limousine, or a seven series BMW, or the high-end Audi models, which currently sell in India for about 90 lakhs, would be hard pressed to cost a rupee more than Rs. 45 lakhs in Europe or the US. And if these top class cars, were assembled in India, you could probably shave off another Rs. 10 lakhs from their on- street price.

It could happen, spurred by ever higher sales numbers, as the Indian economy, particularly that of corporate India, grows. Call it affordable luxury, though at any reduced price, such items will still remain the province of a privileged few.

There is, however, a universally beneficial reason for letting in sophisticated engineering, including luxury cars, without prohibitive import duties. It tends to raise standards all around.

Consider that Volvo and Mercedes are going in for heavy investments in bus and truck manufacturing facilities in India. Can Ashok Leyland or Tata Motors afford to be left behind? Otherwise, why have they upgraded their design and manufacturing benchmarks with alacrity, including the acquisition of bus and truck plants in South Korea and elsewhere to facilitate the process? Before such competition was allowed, the same domestic companies, somnolent with Government protection, were quite content to sell shoddy vehicles using 1954 technology, well into the eighties and nineties!

On a pure merits basis, fearful protectionism translates into penalties applied to aspiration, and punishment to success. This hurts more in an interlinked world. But choosing such illogic, animated not by a forward-looking vision, works its post-imperial damage, as if we abused children of empire know nothing better than to repeat the brutalisation and injustice.

We have chosen to hobble our progress because of our piece-meal and ad hoc policy, putting us well behind other BRIC economies such as China, Brazil and Russia. We change only if we must, reluctantly, suspiciously, travelling along with our holdalls and tin trunks of yore, and the ubiquitous, if inappropriate kitchen sink also. In our Socialist decades of retardation, dismal economic policy was always swaddled in ideological hypocrisy and if it weren’t for the size of our domestic markets we would have been sunk long ago. Still, it is hard to forget such long used pathways.

Policies of exclusion and scarcity were practiced with a grim colonial mindset, to deliberately enrich cronies with nod and wink favouritism. We made a virtue of permitting duty free or quota regulated import of intermediate goods and technologies, required for the manufacture of products in India. So far so good, but there were invariably built-in licensing bonanzas so that the powers that be could eat their cakes and have them too. Such cynical policy sleight-of-hand led to unrelated diversifications, outright fraud and collusive corruption.

But while hobbling local enterprise, the same Government of India did not allow in fully-built units of anything manufactured abroad, without imposing punishing duties. Neither did it encourage foreign investment. These meant only low-end products were produced, or more truthfully, assembled and copied locally; while sophisticated things were invariably imported at considerable cost, and this applied to everything from defence purchases to chocolate.

Indian industry, unexposed to the intricacies of top class R&D or manufacture, even via the copycat route, languished in its second or third-rate morass. We developed little idea about quality and sophistication in goods or services, or even, let it be said, management or project implementation practices. It gives you some understanding as to why we are so poor at execution even today.

But maybe now, just maybe, for its liberating and self-affirming fallout, amongst other things, it is time to let in not just imported vehicles but a plethora of other items at their international price tags, like civilized and self-confident countries do.

Local industry that is inferior and under-funded will be impacted when this happens. But, whatever won’t excite market sentiment anymore in comparison with markedly better alternatives, will force innovation, to the overall betterment of core virtues, those very aspects which are worth keeping and preserving.

India is inching its way towards integration with the globe in various ways, ranging from satellites, missiles and space exploration, nuclear power and high-end technologies with “dual-use” potential, continuous modernisation of our military machine and our forecasting models for everything from the weather to the economy. Our new found concern about carbon credits, stock market practices, a logo for the rupee which could go convertible someday, and so on. And, of course, painfully bearing the brunt of prices, meaning by that the real prices, of petroleum products that we are forced to largely import.

But, we could gain at the swings what we lose at the roundabouts, with a reworking of our import policies, so that we welcome anything we cannot as yet produce here in India on an open and general basis. By doing this, we could spark off another paradigm shift in our journey to join the ranks of the brightest and the best. And it won’t be very long after that before we can manufacture and offer services that are value-added, technologically cutting-edge, competitively priced, yet second to none.


(1, 052 words)

June 27th, 2010
Gautam Mukherjee

Book Review: The Corruption Conundrum and Other Paradoxes and Dilemmas

Tree in Black- Sourav Biswas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GusxltLA1vQ 
Book Review

Title: The Corruption Conundrum and Other Paradoxes and Dilemmas
Author: V. Raghunathan
Published in 2010 by Penguin Portfolio.

Probability Is The Only Certainty


This little book might seem at first to be an elaborate paean to cynicism, but it is nothing of the sort, even if it refuses to flinch from stating home truths. It does explore why corruption is universally rampant asserting: “a society is as corrupt as the system allows it to be,” but the author advocates remedies, not celebration.

Mr. V. Raghunathan, writer of this brilliant addition to management theory, taught Finance at IIM Ahmedabad for nearly two decades. He then went on to ING Vyasa Bank as its President before becoming the CEO of GMR Varalakshmi Foundation.

Here, he plays a continuous series of mind games via examples of logic with its knickers in a twist. But he starts off with the positive and commonsensical assertion that success is probable if the odds are meticulously pre-planned and materially stacked in one’s favour.

Raghunathan believes weighing and measuring componentry to arrive at probability, for or against a desired outcome, is the only certainty. It is, in plainspeak, an as-you-sow-so-shall-you-reap credo, very close to the age-old Hindu belief in Karma and its phenomena in tandem, namely cause and effect- applied to business, management, governance and decision-making.

Raghunathan, erudite, affable, conceptually lucid, is something of a Renaissance man, with six management books to his credit, additional skills as a cartoonist for a national daily and a columnist for the pink papers. He also played chess at the all-India level. He likes old locks and has gathered an impressive collection of the contraptions to himself.

His intellectual references, for the purposes of this book and its deductive and inductive logic explorations, are to do with the ancient Greek philosophers and other Western science moderns such as Albert Einstein who’s famous remark about certainty: God does not play dice, Raghunathan, to his credit, contests.

The author emphasises that: “God not only plays dice but His other name is random variability. If we do the right things, God’s way of rewarding us is to increase the probability of success.” Accordingly, Raghunathan does not talk of faith, except for fleeting references to the Bhagvad Gita, again to affirm the value of right action. There is no acknowledgement of predestination or embedded tendencies deep in our DNA programmed to ensure future outcomes or towards his assessment of probability.

The writer tries not to take sides in the moral equation. He is silent on Graham Greene’s belief that it is important to choose a side in order to remain human. But Greene, the master of moral dilemmas and cold betrayal depicted in novel after novel never confuses humanity with ethics. In fact, one may well remark at the quality of Greene’s vision of humanity which seems to consist of failings and wonder at its moral price!

Raghunathan on his part also makes clear that paradoxes, dilemmas and conundrums have no easy intellectual certainties, no obvious right answer or solution to them. What they present are either/or choices and sometimes, multiple-options based on the available facts.

Time and again, the author points to the inductive choices, also known, ironically, as leaps of faith. He rearranges the same set of numbers or gets the protagonists to cast the dice over and over, as in voting. And we see very different implications present themselves with each alteration. Raghunathan jokes, finally, about the best democractic decision being dictatorial.

To navigate safely through such binary or multipolar matters, mankind has traditionally turned to belief in a higher power for guidance and inspiration. Divorced from this ethical lodestar, it is quite easy to treat expediency as the greatest good, and wisdom as no more than comment on the durability of such expedient means.

Besides, these three cousins-paradox, dilemma and conundrum, tend to thrive in chaos. Applied to the stock market, Raghunathan points out that, “the opportunities to earn disproportionate returns are negligible in an efficient market”.

The author, a mathematician, is captivated by Game Theory, made famous by the acclaimed film A Beautiful Mind on the life of John Nash, its inventor. Game Theory states one reaches “equilibrium” on the very first move, meaning, the first move made well, as in the proverb “Well begun is half done”. But, Nash goes at uncovering such axiomatic truths mathematically, as does Raghunathan.

He describes the power of compounding, an open secret of the successful corporation, bank or wealthy individual. But the writer shows how the concept tends to elude the grasp of ordinary people, because of what he calls “counter-intuitive” thinking.

Finally, why did Raghunathan write this instructive, cerebral book: “To me, paradoxes are important in their own right. Paradoxes improve our logical thinking as well as intuition,” he says. That it aids research in behavioural economics and helps to prove or disprove economic phenomena is nothing to sniff at either.

(800 words)

16th June 2010
Gautam Mukherjee

Shortened version of this review appeared with the same title in the Sunday Pioneer on 11th July 2010 in the Agenda Section on the BOOKS page and also online at http://www.dailypioneer.com/