Indian Economy in Minnow Raj: Tera Kya Hoga Kaliya?
As we launch into the first-phase of our tumultuous, Naxalite attack-ridden, month-long General Elections for 400 million voters, we need to be justifiably proud of the endeavour. It will cost us at least US $ 2 billion to execute. But, after all the sound and fury is over on May 16th, there is a clear threat looming pretty much constant to all expected outcomes.
It is the resurrected threat of another bout of a regressive Luddite/Lohiaite/Loknitiist/Socialist/Casteist/Populist economic muddle confronting India’s future. It is an anticipated muddle. And we must brace for it. Because, it will be brought on, not just by the natural infirmities of coalition politics, now par for every course, but largely because of the nature of its constituent parts.
Most of the regional and small parties of today, without whom there will be no forming a government this time, were spawned on a diet of anarchic and self-defeating Socialist politics. Their views were inspired by erstwhile freedom-fighters Pandit Ram Manohar Lohia and Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan. These worthy gentlemen revolted against our benighted socialism of the time, which they, however, found to be elitist!
Of course it is true that even after 61 years of independent India, we have been unable to reconcile the needs of the hinterlands of Bharat with the internationalism of India. And this is the principle reason, along with a desire for a share of voice, for the rise of the regional and small parties.
Pandit Nehru tried to reconcile the two worlds, the urban and the rural, the educated and the masses, by embracing Socialism. As a former imperial colony, we took on an early anti-capitalist policy direction. Of course, it didn’t work then, and not just for us, and it won’t work now. But the Bharat versus India schizophrenia persists, with some new overtones of India Inc. versus the rest.
Back then, even without more extreme hands at the helm of power, we endured the infamous “Hindu rate of growth”, for over thirty years, pegged at no more than 2 per cent of GDP. We started to grow at a better pace with increasing doses of economic liberalisation since 1991 and the future demands an acceleration of market reforms if we are to maintain high GDP growth rates.
But followers of Lohia and Narayan amongst us even today, aided and abetted by their new generation ranks of have-nots, those as yet untouched by the effect of market reforms, populate the small and regional parties, all seething with assertion. But do their leaders realise the way ahead as they seem poised to wrest a greater share of power at the centre? Do they see the practicality in policies that can help them deliver on their promises? Do they know there is nothing to gain by blocking progress and going back to a discredited and woolly ideology that simply does not work?
In this television and internet age, they had better realise they will not get away with it for long, as each regional party in power is already witnessing. Bharat or India alike will reward or punish its rulers based on development and its pleasant effects on their daily life and populism can only go so far.
But in other matters, in the assertions of their first flush, these self-same Lohiaities and Loknitiists did succeed at extending the march of Indian democracy. Looking back, the ferment engendered by them in the Sixties, and more particularly in the Seventies and Eighties, led to the end of the dominant, and undeniably arrogant one-party system, in favour of multiple parties, the advent of coalition governments, and a sprinkling of statistically significant Independents. And, it might be argued, even national parties proscribed to sizes well short of a majority as their vote-banks were redistributed.
But economically, by inclination, the regionals and smalls have always been retrograde so far. Irrespective of the global trend, they tend to position themselves further Left than the Fabian Socialism and Soviet inspired “mixed” economy favoured by Pandit Nehru and Indira Gandhi. They refuse to update their economics. Unless, that is, we take Union Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s positive handling of the Railway Ministry, and not that of the State of Bihar, as the economic policy pointer for the future.
In the early days of their struggle, the Lohiaites and Loknitiists also wanted to overthrow the upper-caste stranglehold of the Congress Party. The consequent ferment they engendered did; aided later by Prime Minister VP Singh’s Mandalisation of the Eighties, and the BSP’s Dalit empowerment of even more recent times.
But whenever these social progressives ran governments, or helped to run them, at the state level, or the centre, in stable coalitions, or majorities, or short-lived minority configurations; their economic policies have always been sadly backward, lacklustre and riddled with corruption.
This may not have mattered when India saw itself as a have-not, as a Third World nation. But now, with clear-eyed aspirations of becoming a leading world economy it must think differently. Since it is clear that the regional parties have come to sit at the high table for good they must resist the temptation to trash it. They must change course and adopt the development economics that will keep them in good stead with the electorate now and into the future.
Let us remember that all the socialist misdirection of the past before 1991 has already put us fifty years behind more market-economy based former colonies. And at a vast economic and strategic disadvantage to a politically Communist but economically Capitalist China.
With the increasing significance of regionals and smalls, it must be noted that their survival, in such luxuriant numbers, on a very crowded political bus, is unlikely. The victors will be those who have effectively savaged, vanquished and subsumed one of their own kind and/or taken to the service of one of the national parties.
It will be either DMK or AIDMK and friends. Likewise in state after state of this 28 state contest that will have to add up to a national election with a winning coalition and coherent policy thereafter. But all this comes afterwards.
For the moment, the most that the big fish can hope for is to lead a flock of disparate minnows into government formation after May 16th 2009 rather than the other way around.
(1,050 words)
16th April 2009
Gautam Mukherjee
Published as Leader EDIT in The Pioneer on 17th April 2009 as "Economy in minnow raj" and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived online under Columnists.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Cadillac Dreams & Moderation Screams
Cadillac Dreams & Moderation Screams
Picture this--335 bhp at 4,800 rpm, gleaming poetry in motion, choice of interior trims, 18.58 feet long, a new four headlamp combination, and lashes of sexy chrome.
I write in hyper appreciation of one of man’s manifest fantasies, epitome of the American Dream--of the 1958 two-door Cadillac Eldorado Coupe hard-top, and the Eldorado Biarritz Convertible. This Marilyn Monroe of automobiles, with its wrap-around windshield and high, slender, pointed tailfins; was enhanced in 1958. That was when the Eldorado upped its engine power for muscular acceleration, added killer tailfins and twice as much wattage with those bright-eyed lights.
The 4 door hard-top version, the memorable Cadillac Eldorado Brougham was introduced in 1957, and kept the exact same styling till 1958. This one cost more than the Rolls Royce Silver Cloud , at $ 13,074. And this great car had the world’s first memory power seats. It also had a stainless steel roof, air suspension and every other luxury known to GM at the time. And it had great hand-built quality from Detroit, that quintessential Motown. In 1959, when the Eldorado was toned down, deviating from its early design sensibilities for the first time, and was outsourced to Pininfarina in Italy; they were actually hand-built a lot worse by the Italians.
This beautiful car, in all its versions, from the birth of the El Dorado Concept Car of 1952 till its zenith in 1958, epitomised the “anything is possible” optimism of the baby-boomer years after WWII. The Eldorado brand ran on and on, from 1953 to 2002. But later versions were truncated, suppressed, compressed; its looks, design, and larger than life performance hopelessly betrayed.
But the story of the Eldorado, struggling to reinvent itself, symbolises the decline and loss of self-confidence of all American Automotive design, engineering and manufacturing, much affected by Japanese competition from the sixties onwards.
The Land of The Rising Sun gradually took over the US mass market with its sexless, compact, but reliable runabouts. Except, that is, for brief rallies, from the likes of the much loved GM Pontiac Firebird, the Trans Am and from the “friendly fire” of the Ford Mustang.
But, for the most part, the great open road of endless possibility symbolised by the extravagantly styled American automobile, turned punishingly sensible as the time went on, with a crowd of Datsuns, Nissans, Mitsubishis, Toyotas and the like replacing an exuberant style sense with rank plodding utility.
And the wealthy, luxurious places vacated by top-end American cars, rejected increasingly for inferior quality, were filled by the great European marques and in the latter-day also by the Japanese, with the introduction of the Lexus. The fact is, GM, Ford and Chrysler lost their way in the forest a very long time ago in their attempt to emulate foreign ways when their heart just wasn’t in it.
Today, the talk is all about hybrids and electric cars, global warming and renewable energy. So firmly does this press upon the popular imagination that dissent in these areas is seen as a modern day heresy. But still, there are distinguished heretics, who persist in questioning the wisdom of the majority.
85 year old distinguished dissenter Freeman Dyson, a physicist and futurist at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University in New Jersey says, “All the fuss about global warming is greatly exaggerated.” Dyson thinks “The climate studies people” championed by the likes of “opportunist” Al Gore, “who work with models, always tend to overestimate their models”.
Dyson is echoed by fellow physicist Richard Muller, from the University of California, Berkeley, who points out that 2008 was, in fact, globally speaking, the coolest year of the last ten. Muller says the present so-called global warming may be working to prevent a new Ice Age and does not have a lot to do with human intervention.
Dyson, who invented a rocket system called “Orion” that uses small and periodic nuclear explosions against a spaceship’s massive pusher-plate to propel it to the moon and beyond; still holds a candle for coal, properly scrubbed of its pollutants, as the bulk energy source to rely upon. This is because there is a lot of it, and because it can meet the energy needs of the poor in populous countries like India and China.
Dyson says it is silly to ask for green solutions that will put the prices of everything up. He thinks those who are flocking to the use of electric cars are not taking into account the cost of replacing their expensive batteries every three years. Dyson agrees however that there is too much Carbon Dioxide being emitted, but advocates the planting of genetically engineered carbon emission eating trees to tackle the problem. About a trillion of them, he calculates, will take care of all the extra CO2 being spewed into the atmosphere and a plantation programme like this is feasible.
Dyson does not agree with policies that seek to prevent the access of teeming millions of the world’s poor to betterment, in countries like India and China and the African Continent, in the name of saving the environment.
Richard Muller, on his part, holds a brief for more nuclear energy usage. He says there is more natural radioactivity from the rock formations around Denver, for example, than there is in the areas where nuclear waste is being buried in America and that a certain, fairly large amount of radiation, is actually harmless.
President Obama is well down the road to some form of Eco-Warriorship, judging from the “or else” tone of his recent advice to GM, Ford and Chrysler; even though, the contours of it, to public knowledge, are still vague. We don’t know if he will ask for changes beyond asking the American auto-industry to make electric and hybrid cars, presumably on a more affordable basis, in exchange for more government help.
From the point of view of the emerging nations like India and China, we are, as yet, responsible for under 15% of global carbon emissions jointly. This will, of course, rise as we grow our economies. But, increasingly, it seems better to try and ensure global cooperation on this universal issue by turning to solutions such as the ones offered by Dyson and Muller. These are solutions which are long on practicality and short on hysteria.
(1,051 words)
8th April 2009
Gautam Mukherjee
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
The Politics of Identity and Memory
The Politics of Identity and Memory
Identity and Memory are probably natural enemies. Identity seeks to assert itself, extract tribute for its virtues, and move on, without worrying too much about inconsistency. Memory, on the other hand, is genetically programmed to look back, and attempts to cast the future based upon the past.
The Congress Party can perhaps be sympathised with for its memory-based politics, its well-worn Nehru-Gandhi litany, the proprietary notion that the “family” knows best, white-washing its own Sikh killing atrocities and shortcomings, while pointing fingers at all others. But it cannot be very easily forgiven, even by its own allies, and vote banks, used and regularly short-changed as they are. The difference is, these days, they are no longer afraid to say so.
Apart from its patchy record at alliance building, the successes of the UPA government are not very many. In the whole universe of liberalisation and modernisation there has been precious little progress in five years expect for the introduction of the MODVAT. The other undeniable diplomatic success is the ending of our nuclear apartheid by signing the Indo-US Civilian Nuclear Accord. But, the economy under an economist has been run into the ground. We are currently running an unprecedented fiscal deficit of 14 per cent of GDP and experiencing near-stalled rates of growth.
In matters of political organisation, the Congress Party plainly seeks to dictate terms to its own allies in the UPA. So much so, that the bulk of them have not only decided to resist such high-handed abuse of alliance decorum, but unhitch their wagons altogether. The Congress Party of course hopes against hope that these same parties who are walking out now will return to the fold after the polls. They take no blame for the state of affairs however. That is just not the Congress way.
But even so, at general election time, Congress’ retreaded propaganda, its brazen claims to be the sole upholder of secular ideals, and its self promotion to the effect that it is the “party of unity”, comes across as so much misinformation.
This is because it talks of “unity” without protecting the security of our man in the street. It speaks of unity as a euphemism for a nominal appeasement, but lets terrorists roam this land and strike at will. It is scandalous that the government has done nothing effective to prevent the slaughter of thousands of innocents, of all religions, murdered at random. Its unashamed poll-time talk of unity is both appalling and sinister when cast in this die. Very few of the perpetrators of twenty odd incidents of terrorism have been caught. And not a single terrorist has been convicted of so much as slapping someone!
This sort of political manipulation, too-clever-by-half strategising, combined with ideological and intelligence infiltration, is what has brought neighbouring Pakistan to its knees, now on the brink of balkanisation and thoroughly hoisted on its own petard.
But, we need to realise we have no reason to be smug. Left to Congress helmsmanship, cloaked in the garb of a self-serving “secularism”, we use the Indian Muslim, the Tribal, the Christian, the sub-caste minority, just as the state of Pakistan uses its jehadists, distributed over many organisations. We may not be exporting murder and mayhem, but we think nothing of holding the interests of the majority community hostage. India, under the UPA, is unique in its propensity to let the tail wag the dog and thinks nothing of even importing vote-banks to suit.
But even as the present government works its amalgam of social engineering that can vote but not assert itself yet, we must realise the long term consequences. If we continue to devalue our institutions, calling for “committed” bureaucracy, in a reprise of the policy followed by Madame Indira Gandhi, we will face equally harmful consequences. And likewise, if we continue to politicise our enforcers, through narrow political intervention, dictating whom to catch, under which law, when to do so, and when not, and whom to let go altogether…
History shows that this kind of bias in favour of a majority works well enough, as in a predominantly Protestant country, or a Catholic one, or even a Muslim one; but when a so-called secular polity uses its minorities as cat’s paw, it is foolish to expect the instrument to stay docile and obedient over time. Let us remember Bhindranwale and the LTTE, also created by the Congress Party. Take a look at the changing demographics and political tenor in Assam. And let us look at the Taliban and friends across the way.
It is not surprising therefore that Pakistan feels no fear in thumbing its nose at Indian demands for justice even after the latest Mumbai attacks of 26/11. If we cannot, or will not, root out terrorism, including sleeper cells and logistical supporters within our own territory, we cannot expect to be taken seriously by anybody else, let alone the perpetrators.
This general election is not just about “unity” and “divisiveness”, about secularism and communalism, as the Congress Party would have us believe. It is about electing a government interested in working for the unity and integrity of this nation. It is nobody’s case that a strong country can be built on a tissue of falsehood and cynicism and working against itself in the name of unity.
But even if one were to leave internal security alone for a moment, the call of the future won’t properly let us. A new report from Goldman Sachs predicts that the BRIC nations will collectively overtake the combined GDP of the G-7 nations by 2027, nearly a decade sooner than expected.
And within this club too, India has the pole position. Goldman Sachs has India growing at 6.3% per annum from 2011 to 2050. Russia, with its oil, is projected to grow at 2.8%, Brazil at 4.3%, and China, the mainstay of the globe at present, at 5.2%.
India grows on its billion plus people and its consumer spending which accounts for 60 % of its GDP. So, all in all, we must remember that we have a future if we care to reach for it. But first, we must survive as a nation, despite bad politics, by preserving our cohesion and vitality, because we are, despite ourselves, on the threshold of our rise to prosperity and well being.
(1,053 words)
31st March 2009
Gautam Mukherjee
Published in print in The Pioneer as Op-Ed leader entitled "Bogus claims of Congress" on Wednesday 8th April, 2009 and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived therein under Columnists.
Identity and Memory are probably natural enemies. Identity seeks to assert itself, extract tribute for its virtues, and move on, without worrying too much about inconsistency. Memory, on the other hand, is genetically programmed to look back, and attempts to cast the future based upon the past.
The Congress Party can perhaps be sympathised with for its memory-based politics, its well-worn Nehru-Gandhi litany, the proprietary notion that the “family” knows best, white-washing its own Sikh killing atrocities and shortcomings, while pointing fingers at all others. But it cannot be very easily forgiven, even by its own allies, and vote banks, used and regularly short-changed as they are. The difference is, these days, they are no longer afraid to say so.
Apart from its patchy record at alliance building, the successes of the UPA government are not very many. In the whole universe of liberalisation and modernisation there has been precious little progress in five years expect for the introduction of the MODVAT. The other undeniable diplomatic success is the ending of our nuclear apartheid by signing the Indo-US Civilian Nuclear Accord. But, the economy under an economist has been run into the ground. We are currently running an unprecedented fiscal deficit of 14 per cent of GDP and experiencing near-stalled rates of growth.
In matters of political organisation, the Congress Party plainly seeks to dictate terms to its own allies in the UPA. So much so, that the bulk of them have not only decided to resist such high-handed abuse of alliance decorum, but unhitch their wagons altogether. The Congress Party of course hopes against hope that these same parties who are walking out now will return to the fold after the polls. They take no blame for the state of affairs however. That is just not the Congress way.
But even so, at general election time, Congress’ retreaded propaganda, its brazen claims to be the sole upholder of secular ideals, and its self promotion to the effect that it is the “party of unity”, comes across as so much misinformation.
This is because it talks of “unity” without protecting the security of our man in the street. It speaks of unity as a euphemism for a nominal appeasement, but lets terrorists roam this land and strike at will. It is scandalous that the government has done nothing effective to prevent the slaughter of thousands of innocents, of all religions, murdered at random. Its unashamed poll-time talk of unity is both appalling and sinister when cast in this die. Very few of the perpetrators of twenty odd incidents of terrorism have been caught. And not a single terrorist has been convicted of so much as slapping someone!
This sort of political manipulation, too-clever-by-half strategising, combined with ideological and intelligence infiltration, is what has brought neighbouring Pakistan to its knees, now on the brink of balkanisation and thoroughly hoisted on its own petard.
But, we need to realise we have no reason to be smug. Left to Congress helmsmanship, cloaked in the garb of a self-serving “secularism”, we use the Indian Muslim, the Tribal, the Christian, the sub-caste minority, just as the state of Pakistan uses its jehadists, distributed over many organisations. We may not be exporting murder and mayhem, but we think nothing of holding the interests of the majority community hostage. India, under the UPA, is unique in its propensity to let the tail wag the dog and thinks nothing of even importing vote-banks to suit.
But even as the present government works its amalgam of social engineering that can vote but not assert itself yet, we must realise the long term consequences. If we continue to devalue our institutions, calling for “committed” bureaucracy, in a reprise of the policy followed by Madame Indira Gandhi, we will face equally harmful consequences. And likewise, if we continue to politicise our enforcers, through narrow political intervention, dictating whom to catch, under which law, when to do so, and when not, and whom to let go altogether…
History shows that this kind of bias in favour of a majority works well enough, as in a predominantly Protestant country, or a Catholic one, or even a Muslim one; but when a so-called secular polity uses its minorities as cat’s paw, it is foolish to expect the instrument to stay docile and obedient over time. Let us remember Bhindranwale and the LTTE, also created by the Congress Party. Take a look at the changing demographics and political tenor in Assam. And let us look at the Taliban and friends across the way.
It is not surprising therefore that Pakistan feels no fear in thumbing its nose at Indian demands for justice even after the latest Mumbai attacks of 26/11. If we cannot, or will not, root out terrorism, including sleeper cells and logistical supporters within our own territory, we cannot expect to be taken seriously by anybody else, let alone the perpetrators.
This general election is not just about “unity” and “divisiveness”, about secularism and communalism, as the Congress Party would have us believe. It is about electing a government interested in working for the unity and integrity of this nation. It is nobody’s case that a strong country can be built on a tissue of falsehood and cynicism and working against itself in the name of unity.
But even if one were to leave internal security alone for a moment, the call of the future won’t properly let us. A new report from Goldman Sachs predicts that the BRIC nations will collectively overtake the combined GDP of the G-7 nations by 2027, nearly a decade sooner than expected.
And within this club too, India has the pole position. Goldman Sachs has India growing at 6.3% per annum from 2011 to 2050. Russia, with its oil, is projected to grow at 2.8%, Brazil at 4.3%, and China, the mainstay of the globe at present, at 5.2%.
India grows on its billion plus people and its consumer spending which accounts for 60 % of its GDP. So, all in all, we must remember that we have a future if we care to reach for it. But first, we must survive as a nation, despite bad politics, by preserving our cohesion and vitality, because we are, despite ourselves, on the threshold of our rise to prosperity and well being.
(1,053 words)
31st March 2009
Gautam Mukherjee
Published in print in The Pioneer as Op-Ed leader entitled "Bogus claims of Congress" on Wednesday 8th April, 2009 and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived therein under Columnists.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Bite the Silver
Bite the Silver
President Ronald Reagan’s great line with regard to détente was, “Trust but Verify,” delivered with a handsome former “B Movie” actor’s attractive grin. Good as the Reagan Administration was at this double-checking, the collapse of the Soviet Union had more to do with General Secretary Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost topped by attempts at prohibition in a hard drinking nation.
These “innovations” revealed, alas, that the USSR was being held together with putty, scotch tape and the willpower of some bulky and stony-faced gentlemen in overcoats. It was an edifice that evidently did not bear much shaking.
The end of the USSR and its hegemony over its satellites, owed very little, as it is now known, to smart US footwork through highly complicated SALT and START negotiations. In fact, Reagan readily admitted being taken by surprise at the sudden fall. So much for the “Iron Curtain”, a term popularised by none other than Winston Churchill. It came down, in the end with a classic TS Eliot style whimper.
Watching how Wall Street, Main Street, practically every Western street have crumbled over the last year; and how oblivious of ethical consideration the once mighty players seem to be, brazening it out over their undeserved entitlements; maybe TS Eliot was on to something. It might well be the very nature of all endings that Eliot grasped. And if he did, it was the gift of his very own, very special, muse. He realised, and told us all, that, in effect, endings, unlike beginnings, tend to be anti-climactic.
But whimpers apart, these days, in matters financial, people can’t be blamed for being a tad paranoid.
Everything of value seems to be melting like so much ice-cream. Fraudsters in expensive suits lurk behind every corporate pillar and wall of plate glass. Madoff jokes are more painful than funny. And seeing our own Ramalinga Raju stare into the camera with his unremarkable, everyman gaze fills one with dread and despair. We are blind and under prescient. It’s as if we wouldn’t be able to recognise a crook if he had both his hands in our pockets!
We need to drag out Reagan’s old trust and verify line and wear it as a motto, a mantra, a protective talisman, a prophylactic. But is that just us? No. The universal search for authenticity, for truth, has grown almost comic in its intensity.
President Obama, reacting to the considerable public outrage, says he will institute checks and balances and Congressional oversight so that such financial excesses cannot take place in future. This, even as he gets Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to unveil plans to help private entities buy up to a trillion dollars of “toxic assets” on the balance sheets of America’s leading banks.
Of course, the privates have to put up some money, even if it’s just 7 per cent of the dough to qualify for “assistance”. And while it may be hard to imagine this of burnt sub-prime assets now, who’s to say that these brutally “marked to market” assets won’t bounce back hard once the economy starts growing again?
That is precisely what happened in India after the Unit-64 debacle. But here, it was the Government itself that bought the beaten down assets and made the eventual profits. Value, like authenticity, tends to fluctuate over time and tide.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the UK says, despite his entire career spent in the originally Left leaning Labour Party, that laissez faire is, for now, dead. He knows that’s what people, badly done by, want to hear
Not that Brown wants to go back to a pre-Thatcherite orgy of Nationalisation. That kind of Old Labour, the Labour Unionist kind, the rhetoric dripping with Socialism and a fine disregard for market economics, cannot survive a day in today’s globalised world.
But authentic value did have a simple and clear cut meaning once. It dealt with the bullion worth of precious metals like silver and gold. People didn’t like paper currencies in those times, let alone the fanciness of “derivatives”, “options” and other financial instruments of today that have so much to answer for.
Dhirubhai Ambani, the apocryphal story goes, made his first fortune of a few lakhs of rupees arbitraging the differential in value between the price in London’s Silver Bullion market and the old Imadi Rials, from the reign of Imam Yahya of Yemen, 1904-1948, planchetted on the vastly trusted Maria Theresa Thaler (MTT). Dhirubhai was working a humble job at a petrol pump in Aden at the time. He bought and melted down as many of the coins as he could, and that was how Dhirubhai organised his first nest egg to go into business for himself.
The MTT, a large silver bullion coin, some 28 grams in weight, with an unvaried 833.33/1000 silver content and a portrait of the buxom Empress on the front and the Habsburg Double Eagle on the back, is probably the world’s most long-lived and trusted coin. It has been used in world trade continuously since it was first minted in 1741. It was named after Empress Maria Theresa, who ruled Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia from 1740 to 1780.
Since 1780, when Maria Theresa died, the coin has always been dated 1780. It has been struck in mints at Birmingham, Bombay, Brussels, London, Paris, Rome and Utrecht, in addition to the Habsburg mints in Günzburg, Hall, Karlsburg, Kremnica, Milan, Prague and Vienna. Some 389 million were minted till 2000, though in 1946, the Vienna Mint rescinded any rights of foreign governments to issue the MTT but went on to strike a further 49 million of the coin themselves.
The MTT was preferred coin in large parts of North Africa, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and throughout the Arab world. It was also one of the first coins used in the US and probably contributed, along with the Spanish eight-bit dollar, to the choice and nomenclature of the “dollar” as the main unit of currency.
This devotion to an enduring coin may seem quaint today in the midst of a shattered world economy and the long abandoned Gold Standard in favour of Sovereign Guarantees on paper currency, and the vagaries of trade in the international currency markets. But that doesn’t stop the price of gold and silver going up in troubled times.
(1,051 words)
Tuesday, 24th March 2009
Gautam Mukherjee
Published in print in The Pioneer on April 1st 2009, OP-ED Leader entitled "Sparkling in the dark" and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived there under Columnists.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Great Expectations
Great Expectations
There is a poignancy about a long cherished dream beginning to come true. The wait itself does strange things as blue turns to grey. Over the time it takes, one struggles to retain the original pure impulse. But, as the chips fall into place, there is an odd sense of bewilderment, because, along with the longed for entitlements coming to fruition, there is a strangely pyrrhic feeling. And the reciprocal demands begin almost at once. Manifold demands in fact, that represent new burdens of responsibility.
Nobel Laureate and Welfare Economist Amartya Sen lays out some prerequisites to the growth path. He says much, more in import than the words he uses, his tone modulated to be as kindly as he can make it.
In context of the ongoing global recession which offers opportunities for India, Dr. Sen hopes that we will begin to do more about our responsibilities to the world at large. He says that once, right at the start, just after independence, we were championing the causes of the underdeveloped world. That idealistic commitment, to a resurgent post-colonial world and non-alignment proved untenable in the long run, and has rightly faded from public policy.
Today, India and the world is brutalised by Islamic terror. But some say the causes of Islamic terror too lie in the obtuseness of the feudals and oligarchs, undemocratically hogging the show for themselves at the expense of illiterate hordes. And this particularly, in countries, now radicalised, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, and just under the iron-fisted façade of being the stable Guardian of Holy Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
In India too there is much sloganeering about poverty and inequality, particularly at election time, but deep economic and social inequities do persist even 60 years on, and we need to address them. The list of the aggrieved is long. There are Islamists, Maoists, other minorities and their grievances, gender issues, caste, environment, poverty, education, health, infrastructure, water, power, food--all these things and others more numerous.
We, in India, must meet our obligations to ourselves and to the world. A blinkered and selective rendering will not sustain. And this is not just because of, or in exchange for, the global prominence we seek, but to be essentially counted for more than just the potential size of our market! We need to be counted, says Dr. Sen, as a civilised, progressive country that cares for all its people and also about the issues that threaten mankind.
Nevertheless, our elevation is beckoning. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, recently recovered from heart surgery, knows this only too well. He has been asking his doctors whether he would be able to go to the G-20 Summit, scheduled for the 2nd of April, in London, and not, you will notice, on the first.
In the host country, Great Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is eagerly awaiting economist Dr. Singh. This G-20 summit comes at a crucial juncture when the world economy, as put by the “sage of Omaha” Warren Buffet, is “falling off a cliff”.
Talking of cliffs, dark-haired and Scottish, the sometimes dour Gordon Brown is likened, somewhat unfairly, to a moody Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. Moody or not, Mr.Brown, as UK’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer, knows his economics too. He knows that much of a longed for early recovery could depend on China and India.
China continues to put in the life-saving money, billions of its dollars in reserves, into US Government Treasury Bonds. And it is this Chinese money injection that is shoring up the greenback even as the Obama administration is undertaking the greatest fiscal deficit fuelled bailout in US history.
But China’s exports to the US and Europe which principally accounted for its spectacular double digit GDP growth, is sharply down. The challenge now is to simultaneously stimulate domestic demand in China, mainly by huge infrastructure based spending, to take up the slack.
India has a complementary story because it does not have more than 12 per cent of its economy dependant on exports. But even as it continues to grow, it does not have the money to execute a fiscal stimulus of the size necessary to properly boost its own and the global economy.
Left to its own devices, India will limp through the coming year, till hoped for global revival comes to its rescue. On its own, there is little to expect from a considerably weakened, almost deflationary economic environment. There is not enough oil in Indian lamps to blaze our own way out of the darkness, let alone shine a light on the shadows of the global recession. Unless, that is, the G-8, with its great capacity to print notes without going under, agrees to vastly boost the kitty of the international lending agencies.
India has already called for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) fund pile to be enhanced from $250 to $500 billion a year. Similarly enhanced funds need to go to the World Bank (WB) too. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) needs, in our estimate, at least 200 per cent more in funds to leverage its own developmental lending power.
India traditionally borrows heavily, at preferential rates, from these and similar funding agencies for her woefully backlogged infrastructure development. At one, more protectionist time, it was different, but now, there is no way we can hope to climb back to near or double-digit growth without getting rid of our infrastructural bottlenecks.
There are similar issues, both financial and technological, connected with India’s inadequate defence and security preparedness too. And even as our appetite for defence equipment is amongst the highest in the world, we have been stalled in many areas due to restrictions and inimical sanctions imposed on us.
These are now largely gone because of the recently signed nuclear power deal with the global community and the US. We now have access to much valuable and enabling dual-use technology. This can boost the speed and capabilities of our indigenous defence industry and aid outright purchases too.
Defence, Agriculture, Water Management, Infrastructure Development, Management Practices--all this can go forward better and faster with more international and private sector participation. It may seem like a typical “spend to save” Keynesian prescription. But for once, the “Great Expectations” from the forthcoming G-20 Summit are animating all at an almost Arthurian round table.
(1,052 words)
Friday, 13th March, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee
Published in The Pioneer as the Op-Ed Page Leader entitled "Economy falling off a cliff" on 24th March 2009. Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com and archived under Columnists.
There is a poignancy about a long cherished dream beginning to come true. The wait itself does strange things as blue turns to grey. Over the time it takes, one struggles to retain the original pure impulse. But, as the chips fall into place, there is an odd sense of bewilderment, because, along with the longed for entitlements coming to fruition, there is a strangely pyrrhic feeling. And the reciprocal demands begin almost at once. Manifold demands in fact, that represent new burdens of responsibility.
Nobel Laureate and Welfare Economist Amartya Sen lays out some prerequisites to the growth path. He says much, more in import than the words he uses, his tone modulated to be as kindly as he can make it.
In context of the ongoing global recession which offers opportunities for India, Dr. Sen hopes that we will begin to do more about our responsibilities to the world at large. He says that once, right at the start, just after independence, we were championing the causes of the underdeveloped world. That idealistic commitment, to a resurgent post-colonial world and non-alignment proved untenable in the long run, and has rightly faded from public policy.
Today, India and the world is brutalised by Islamic terror. But some say the causes of Islamic terror too lie in the obtuseness of the feudals and oligarchs, undemocratically hogging the show for themselves at the expense of illiterate hordes. And this particularly, in countries, now radicalised, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, and just under the iron-fisted façade of being the stable Guardian of Holy Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
In India too there is much sloganeering about poverty and inequality, particularly at election time, but deep economic and social inequities do persist even 60 years on, and we need to address them. The list of the aggrieved is long. There are Islamists, Maoists, other minorities and their grievances, gender issues, caste, environment, poverty, education, health, infrastructure, water, power, food--all these things and others more numerous.
We, in India, must meet our obligations to ourselves and to the world. A blinkered and selective rendering will not sustain. And this is not just because of, or in exchange for, the global prominence we seek, but to be essentially counted for more than just the potential size of our market! We need to be counted, says Dr. Sen, as a civilised, progressive country that cares for all its people and also about the issues that threaten mankind.
Nevertheless, our elevation is beckoning. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, recently recovered from heart surgery, knows this only too well. He has been asking his doctors whether he would be able to go to the G-20 Summit, scheduled for the 2nd of April, in London, and not, you will notice, on the first.
In the host country, Great Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is eagerly awaiting economist Dr. Singh. This G-20 summit comes at a crucial juncture when the world economy, as put by the “sage of Omaha” Warren Buffet, is “falling off a cliff”.
Talking of cliffs, dark-haired and Scottish, the sometimes dour Gordon Brown is likened, somewhat unfairly, to a moody Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights. Moody or not, Mr.Brown, as UK’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer, knows his economics too. He knows that much of a longed for early recovery could depend on China and India.
China continues to put in the life-saving money, billions of its dollars in reserves, into US Government Treasury Bonds. And it is this Chinese money injection that is shoring up the greenback even as the Obama administration is undertaking the greatest fiscal deficit fuelled bailout in US history.
But China’s exports to the US and Europe which principally accounted for its spectacular double digit GDP growth, is sharply down. The challenge now is to simultaneously stimulate domestic demand in China, mainly by huge infrastructure based spending, to take up the slack.
India has a complementary story because it does not have more than 12 per cent of its economy dependant on exports. But even as it continues to grow, it does not have the money to execute a fiscal stimulus of the size necessary to properly boost its own and the global economy.
Left to its own devices, India will limp through the coming year, till hoped for global revival comes to its rescue. On its own, there is little to expect from a considerably weakened, almost deflationary economic environment. There is not enough oil in Indian lamps to blaze our own way out of the darkness, let alone shine a light on the shadows of the global recession. Unless, that is, the G-8, with its great capacity to print notes without going under, agrees to vastly boost the kitty of the international lending agencies.
India has already called for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) fund pile to be enhanced from $250 to $500 billion a year. Similarly enhanced funds need to go to the World Bank (WB) too. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) needs, in our estimate, at least 200 per cent more in funds to leverage its own developmental lending power.
India traditionally borrows heavily, at preferential rates, from these and similar funding agencies for her woefully backlogged infrastructure development. At one, more protectionist time, it was different, but now, there is no way we can hope to climb back to near or double-digit growth without getting rid of our infrastructural bottlenecks.
There are similar issues, both financial and technological, connected with India’s inadequate defence and security preparedness too. And even as our appetite for defence equipment is amongst the highest in the world, we have been stalled in many areas due to restrictions and inimical sanctions imposed on us.
These are now largely gone because of the recently signed nuclear power deal with the global community and the US. We now have access to much valuable and enabling dual-use technology. This can boost the speed and capabilities of our indigenous defence industry and aid outright purchases too.
Defence, Agriculture, Water Management, Infrastructure Development, Management Practices--all this can go forward better and faster with more international and private sector participation. It may seem like a typical “spend to save” Keynesian prescription. But for once, the “Great Expectations” from the forthcoming G-20 Summit are animating all at an almost Arthurian round table.
(1,052 words)
Friday, 13th March, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee
Published in The Pioneer as the Op-Ed Page Leader entitled "Economy falling off a cliff" on 24th March 2009. Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com and archived under Columnists.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Crises of Faith at the Brand Wallahs' Ball
Crises of Faith at the Brand Wallahs' Ball
Brand Wallahs (BWs), meaning the Advertising fraternity, their Public Relations sub-set, and the Marketing mavens that use them, believe they give the kiss of life to a product. Without them, they affirm, the product, the service, the star, the politician, etc… would be faceless, an unfocussed blur minus that all important image. No brand image means being colourless, lacklustre, lost in the crowd, déclassé, quite irrespective of those intrinsic merits they may well feel they have.
The BWs believe they are saviours when crises come crashing down upon a product or company; on a man and his reputation; on a promise gone wrong. They believe that things come right more easily, redemption, even forgiveness is possible, all obstacles overcome; provided the brand image has been built strong and positive in the first place.
Brands Under Fire, an advertising and marketing celebration recently put to market is written by Ivan Arthur & Kurien Mathews and published by Penguin India. It is a lucid account of brand faith and looks at three sticky case studies published under the aegis of The Subhas Ghosal Foundation, named after the Thompson advertising legend, and the Walter Saldanha of Leo Burnett India founded AICAR Business School.
The book reprises three notorious calamities in the workaday placid worlds of Cadbury chocolates, Pepsi & Coke's world dominating fizzy pop, and the kalash logo-bearing Unit Trust of India.
As cure, every single wave of phosphorescent logic from a collection of 13 advertising and marketing gurus crashes down again and again on a conceptual rock called “Trust”.
It is “Trust” that is the adhesive between the company or institution and its consumer. And if this fragile, rather virginal entity is betrayed, then the “Brand” takes an incalculable hit. The only way forward is to restore that trust using multiple tools including good leadership, advertising, public relations, and swift reparations, if not full-fledged restitution.
All of this also applies, of course, to non-company entities desirous of maintaining a brand image, be they cine-jagat's (Peter Pan) Sharukh Khan; The (murderous) Taliban; The (dissolving) State of Pakistan; the (weak) Republic of India; or even Mr.(fraud of all fraudulent frauds) Raju of Satyam!
A brand, like rape, is defined severally by the conclave of BWs. Shekhar Swamy of RK SWAMY BBDO/HANSA calls it a “promise or a pact between manufacturer and buyer assuring (a) product authenticity and (b) product consistency between places over time.”
But the case histories, now dwarfed by subsequent atrocities perpetrated by an accelerating post-modern existence, read, like Rajiv Gandhi's dinky Rs. 60 crore Bofors Scandal, like misdemeanours in B&W (Black and White). That they could still destroy lives and kill innocent children is somehow incidental.
In the first story, Cadbury is seen to have sat on its hands despite prior knowledge of their extensive “worms infestation” problem owing to inadequately packed and badly stored chocolates. The “thoughtless worms struck,” as a tongue-in-cheek Gerson da Cunha puts it, when the infestation received the adverse attentions of the Indian Food and Drink Administration (FDA) and a raucous media. But once placed with its feet to the fire, Cadbury did, of course, rescue the situation by promptly changing its packaging to mimic rival Amul, sitting pretty in a state of unseemly grace. They also brought in Amitabh Bachchan for a baritone restoration job.
Some of the commentary tellingly ponders India’s interminably slow and “weak legal system” that enables entities like Cadbury and Union Carbide to get away lightly without the massive punitive damages they would have had to pay in the West. Verily, Mr. Raju and the now Japanese owners of Ranbaxy have more to fear from The US Legal System than our timeless, toothless, feckless, desi one.
In the Pepsi and Coke case study, the kissa is about pesticides in the drink to a strength of 30 times the permissible limits. The whistle-blower is a New Delhi based NGO, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). But ignoring the possibility that some of their multiple bottling plants might indeed be using contaminated ground water, not to mention the occasional condom and large libations of, it is reported, dirt; both companies chose to conduct independent tests on their colas and broadsided their predictably blameless findings in a robust advertising campaign.
They also pitched in film-star brand power via Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan. Other back channel efforts yielded a remarkable clean chit from the government of the day and aspersions cast on the motives of CSE. The consumers, like forgiving wives of philandering husbands, also chose to be duly convinced.
And why ever not? After all even our treated tap-water is unsafe. Ergo Coke, Pepsi, plus nine other brands of cola and bottled- water cited by the CSE study; were, “safe by local standards”.
Sunita Narayan, Head of CSE, prominent in water management issues, routinely invokes the big picture of a “failure of government institutions to take the issue of public health seriously,” and concludes, a little helplessly, if accurately, that we, “care little for standards in India”.
The final case study is about the collapse and resurrection of Unit 64 albeit as a bland bond fund from a once kalashful of equity one. This was India’s first, indeed its only mutual fund, by monopolistic dictat, for decades. Set up by the socialist Government of India in 1964, it gave its millions of small investors reliable tax free returns ranging from 6 to 23 per cent per annum for many years.
In 2001 came the deluge. The fund’s net worth was largely eroded and it had to temporarily halt trading. A new Chairman, M.Damodaran, later to preside over SEBI's erstwhile glory days, came in to revitalise UTI. Damodaran’s rescue of Unit 64 and the “vibrancy” he imparted to proceedings does make for an inspirational template in 2009.
Damodaran smoothly termed the US-64 problem as a “liquidity issue rather than a solvency one,” and the Government of India promptly coughed up the liquidity. Effectively, the Government nationalised Unit-64, taking over its "burnt" assets, reaping huge profits from the self same equity holdings over time.
For the 20 million or more "betrayed" unit holders it has not gone quite so well. But, even they, ignorant of the ways of equity, did get their money back with a modest return on investment.
(1,050 words)
Tuesday, 3rd March, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee
Brand Wallahs (BWs), meaning the Advertising fraternity, their Public Relations sub-set, and the Marketing mavens that use them, believe they give the kiss of life to a product. Without them, they affirm, the product, the service, the star, the politician, etc… would be faceless, an unfocussed blur minus that all important image. No brand image means being colourless, lacklustre, lost in the crowd, déclassé, quite irrespective of those intrinsic merits they may well feel they have.
The BWs believe they are saviours when crises come crashing down upon a product or company; on a man and his reputation; on a promise gone wrong. They believe that things come right more easily, redemption, even forgiveness is possible, all obstacles overcome; provided the brand image has been built strong and positive in the first place.
Brands Under Fire, an advertising and marketing celebration recently put to market is written by Ivan Arthur & Kurien Mathews and published by Penguin India. It is a lucid account of brand faith and looks at three sticky case studies published under the aegis of The Subhas Ghosal Foundation, named after the Thompson advertising legend, and the Walter Saldanha of Leo Burnett India founded AICAR Business School.
The book reprises three notorious calamities in the workaday placid worlds of Cadbury chocolates, Pepsi & Coke's world dominating fizzy pop, and the kalash logo-bearing Unit Trust of India.
As cure, every single wave of phosphorescent logic from a collection of 13 advertising and marketing gurus crashes down again and again on a conceptual rock called “Trust”.
It is “Trust” that is the adhesive between the company or institution and its consumer. And if this fragile, rather virginal entity is betrayed, then the “Brand” takes an incalculable hit. The only way forward is to restore that trust using multiple tools including good leadership, advertising, public relations, and swift reparations, if not full-fledged restitution.
All of this also applies, of course, to non-company entities desirous of maintaining a brand image, be they cine-jagat's (Peter Pan) Sharukh Khan; The (murderous) Taliban; The (dissolving) State of Pakistan; the (weak) Republic of India; or even Mr.(fraud of all fraudulent frauds) Raju of Satyam!
A brand, like rape, is defined severally by the conclave of BWs. Shekhar Swamy of RK SWAMY BBDO/HANSA calls it a “promise or a pact between manufacturer and buyer assuring (a) product authenticity and (b) product consistency between places over time.”
But the case histories, now dwarfed by subsequent atrocities perpetrated by an accelerating post-modern existence, read, like Rajiv Gandhi's dinky Rs. 60 crore Bofors Scandal, like misdemeanours in B&W (Black and White). That they could still destroy lives and kill innocent children is somehow incidental.
In the first story, Cadbury is seen to have sat on its hands despite prior knowledge of their extensive “worms infestation” problem owing to inadequately packed and badly stored chocolates. The “thoughtless worms struck,” as a tongue-in-cheek Gerson da Cunha puts it, when the infestation received the adverse attentions of the Indian Food and Drink Administration (FDA) and a raucous media. But once placed with its feet to the fire, Cadbury did, of course, rescue the situation by promptly changing its packaging to mimic rival Amul, sitting pretty in a state of unseemly grace. They also brought in Amitabh Bachchan for a baritone restoration job.
Some of the commentary tellingly ponders India’s interminably slow and “weak legal system” that enables entities like Cadbury and Union Carbide to get away lightly without the massive punitive damages they would have had to pay in the West. Verily, Mr. Raju and the now Japanese owners of Ranbaxy have more to fear from The US Legal System than our timeless, toothless, feckless, desi one.
In the Pepsi and Coke case study, the kissa is about pesticides in the drink to a strength of 30 times the permissible limits. The whistle-blower is a New Delhi based NGO, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). But ignoring the possibility that some of their multiple bottling plants might indeed be using contaminated ground water, not to mention the occasional condom and large libations of, it is reported, dirt; both companies chose to conduct independent tests on their colas and broadsided their predictably blameless findings in a robust advertising campaign.
They also pitched in film-star brand power via Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan. Other back channel efforts yielded a remarkable clean chit from the government of the day and aspersions cast on the motives of CSE. The consumers, like forgiving wives of philandering husbands, also chose to be duly convinced.
And why ever not? After all even our treated tap-water is unsafe. Ergo Coke, Pepsi, plus nine other brands of cola and bottled- water cited by the CSE study; were, “safe by local standards”.
Sunita Narayan, Head of CSE, prominent in water management issues, routinely invokes the big picture of a “failure of government institutions to take the issue of public health seriously,” and concludes, a little helplessly, if accurately, that we, “care little for standards in India”.
The final case study is about the collapse and resurrection of Unit 64 albeit as a bland bond fund from a once kalashful of equity one. This was India’s first, indeed its only mutual fund, by monopolistic dictat, for decades. Set up by the socialist Government of India in 1964, it gave its millions of small investors reliable tax free returns ranging from 6 to 23 per cent per annum for many years.
In 2001 came the deluge. The fund’s net worth was largely eroded and it had to temporarily halt trading. A new Chairman, M.Damodaran, later to preside over SEBI's erstwhile glory days, came in to revitalise UTI. Damodaran’s rescue of Unit 64 and the “vibrancy” he imparted to proceedings does make for an inspirational template in 2009.
Damodaran smoothly termed the US-64 problem as a “liquidity issue rather than a solvency one,” and the Government of India promptly coughed up the liquidity. Effectively, the Government nationalised Unit-64, taking over its "burnt" assets, reaping huge profits from the self same equity holdings over time.
For the 20 million or more "betrayed" unit holders it has not gone quite so well. But, even they, ignorant of the ways of equity, did get their money back with a modest return on investment.
(1,050 words)
Tuesday, 3rd March, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee
Power as Meditation
Power as Meditation
Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote a series of books called Meditations, laying out his Stoic philosophy, provoked by the rigours of maintaining the Pax Romana, even as he oversaw one campaign after another, against the Syrians, the Serbians, the present day Hungarians and last of all against the scrappy “northern barbarians”, tribes of fierce Picts and Goths that constitute part of today’s Germans.
Marcus Aurelius fought the good fight, prevailing each time with legendary Roman organisation, technological superiority, discipline, attention to detail. It was his lot to strive to preserve the extensive Roman Empire, but he also saw that it was imperative for a Caesar to look beyond immediate events.
Caesar must plot a course for the future, he implied, taking into account the changing dynamics of the situation. And he must do so, unburdened by sentiment, the glories of the past, despite the civilising influence of the Pax Romana and its pantheon of victory ordaining Gods!
Marcus Aurelius meditated, like others before and after him, on human frailty and limitation, the inevitability of physical and mental decline, the interruptions of a span of life, the fact of mortality, the burdens of succession. But he pondered most famously on the nature of power itself, always bracketed within a context, elaborating on its responsibilities, its possibilities…
He visualised the fall of the Roman Empire, not from the ravages of external attack but the onslaught, the challenge posed by erstwhile barbarians, now safely ensconced within the gates. Those who were once rude and rebellious, ostensibly vanquished, enslaved even, and embraced by that sinuous Pax Romana.
Marcus Aurelius saw these subordinated hordes, empowered, enabled to strive and grow, using Roman infrastructure and facilities, steadily gathering strength and inspiration from under Roman eaves. They, the self same, who were vassals, tributaries, outright slaves, yes, but freed forever from the threat of sudden death from marauders. Marcus Aurelius saw them clearly as the future usurpers. And Marcus Aurelius saw this organic process, fostered by the Empire, leading to its eventual downfall.
Back in the future today, we see American commanders, charged with beefing up their fighting forces in Afghanistan in the early days of the Obama Presidency, thinking they have a “winnable” ticket. Quoted in The Economist of February 21st, 2009, they point to changed circumstances for their optimism. They say that unlike the debacle faced by the Soviets in the eighties at the hands of the US supported Mujahideen, this time, there is no other Super Power supporting and balancing the equation.
But do the Taliban really need Super Power support in what is already emerging as a multi-polar world, albeit still under the hegemonic shadow of the globe’s sole Super Power?
In Afghanistan 2009: aren’t the Americans ignoring the cluster-bomb effect of the many sources of support the Taliban can draw upon including the clandestine siphoning of the very American funds and resources intended to put them out of business?
Aren’t they ignoring the diplomatic difficulties of receiving adequate cooperation from a disaffected Russia still smarting from US adventurism in Georgia and oil rich Kazakhstan? Can Russia possibly be happy to see America working to put down roots in areas which were, not very long ago, firmly part of their own bailiwick?
And what about the Iranians, on Afghanistan’s other border? Notwithstanding talk of an Obama led thaw after some thirty years of estrangement, Iran is advancing its own agenda by supplying missiles to the Taliban. They would like to limit the spread of NATO influence in Afghanistan. Why would Iran want the establishment of American hegemony in such close geographical proximity to themselves? How will this impact their own bitterly contested nuclear weapons ambitions, dressed up, for the time being, sheep as lamb, or as a desire to put nuclear power to its peaceful uses?
And can we really ignore the sustained double-game that Wahhabi Saudi Arabia has been playing in the calculus of global Islamic militancy? And what about the profits from the extensive Poppy cultivation in Taliban controlled areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan?
And indeed what of the almost completely Talibanised nuclear weapons state of Pakistan? We can see its liberal democratic impulses being rapidly swallowed up by the python of radical Islamic insurgency. And we can see the sorry state of America’s dithering and faltering “War on Terror” made more ridiculous by the ineffectual pursuit of the Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan’s “northern tribal areas”.
The broader, if blown cover, for a blatantly hegemonic America circa 2009, is in terms of promoting “democracy”. But oddly, democracy, like a transplant, either takes or it doesn’t. It has, for what it’s worth, in India. It has not, despite vigorous effort, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and even less in President Zardari’s Pakistan.
This, while America dreams on and President Obama makes clear he will not pursue policies that will dilute American “leadership”, a word that is seen as a euphemism for hegemony, by the influential and centrist US Atlantic Magazine in its January/February 2009 issue.
Soaring above such immediate concerns, a new US Government’s National Intelligence Council (NIC) report entitled “Global Trends 2025” looks ahead and projects a decline of US power as the “unintended consequence” of the policies it is pursuing at present.
It says the rise of a multi-polar world order is inevitable, precisely because various American allies and partners will grow steadily stronger and will have to be negotiated with rather than commanded. Other power players, not present in the world order after WWII, will join the high table and bring new rules and stakes to the game of international power sharing. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen thinks the transfer of power has begun already as a consequence of the Global recession playing out right now. Still, no hegemon deliberately wants to dilute its own power and America won’t give up without a fight.
All this portends well for India, willy-nilly emerging as a major power in the run up to 2025. India will, soon enough, not just have a voice but a say in world affairs. We may not have fully realised it as yet, but as the Slumdog Millionaire put it with little regard for cliche, this leg up in the world is simply meant to be. It is our destiny.
(1,051 words)
Thursday, 05 March 2009
Gautam Mukherjee
Published as the OP-Ed Page Leader on Friday, 13th March, 2009 as "Imperial hubris at last?" and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Archived under columnists.
Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote a series of books called Meditations, laying out his Stoic philosophy, provoked by the rigours of maintaining the Pax Romana, even as he oversaw one campaign after another, against the Syrians, the Serbians, the present day Hungarians and last of all against the scrappy “northern barbarians”, tribes of fierce Picts and Goths that constitute part of today’s Germans.
Marcus Aurelius fought the good fight, prevailing each time with legendary Roman organisation, technological superiority, discipline, attention to detail. It was his lot to strive to preserve the extensive Roman Empire, but he also saw that it was imperative for a Caesar to look beyond immediate events.
Caesar must plot a course for the future, he implied, taking into account the changing dynamics of the situation. And he must do so, unburdened by sentiment, the glories of the past, despite the civilising influence of the Pax Romana and its pantheon of victory ordaining Gods!
Marcus Aurelius meditated, like others before and after him, on human frailty and limitation, the inevitability of physical and mental decline, the interruptions of a span of life, the fact of mortality, the burdens of succession. But he pondered most famously on the nature of power itself, always bracketed within a context, elaborating on its responsibilities, its possibilities…
He visualised the fall of the Roman Empire, not from the ravages of external attack but the onslaught, the challenge posed by erstwhile barbarians, now safely ensconced within the gates. Those who were once rude and rebellious, ostensibly vanquished, enslaved even, and embraced by that sinuous Pax Romana.
Marcus Aurelius saw these subordinated hordes, empowered, enabled to strive and grow, using Roman infrastructure and facilities, steadily gathering strength and inspiration from under Roman eaves. They, the self same, who were vassals, tributaries, outright slaves, yes, but freed forever from the threat of sudden death from marauders. Marcus Aurelius saw them clearly as the future usurpers. And Marcus Aurelius saw this organic process, fostered by the Empire, leading to its eventual downfall.
Back in the future today, we see American commanders, charged with beefing up their fighting forces in Afghanistan in the early days of the Obama Presidency, thinking they have a “winnable” ticket. Quoted in The Economist of February 21st, 2009, they point to changed circumstances for their optimism. They say that unlike the debacle faced by the Soviets in the eighties at the hands of the US supported Mujahideen, this time, there is no other Super Power supporting and balancing the equation.
But do the Taliban really need Super Power support in what is already emerging as a multi-polar world, albeit still under the hegemonic shadow of the globe’s sole Super Power?
In Afghanistan 2009: aren’t the Americans ignoring the cluster-bomb effect of the many sources of support the Taliban can draw upon including the clandestine siphoning of the very American funds and resources intended to put them out of business?
Aren’t they ignoring the diplomatic difficulties of receiving adequate cooperation from a disaffected Russia still smarting from US adventurism in Georgia and oil rich Kazakhstan? Can Russia possibly be happy to see America working to put down roots in areas which were, not very long ago, firmly part of their own bailiwick?
And what about the Iranians, on Afghanistan’s other border? Notwithstanding talk of an Obama led thaw after some thirty years of estrangement, Iran is advancing its own agenda by supplying missiles to the Taliban. They would like to limit the spread of NATO influence in Afghanistan. Why would Iran want the establishment of American hegemony in such close geographical proximity to themselves? How will this impact their own bitterly contested nuclear weapons ambitions, dressed up, for the time being, sheep as lamb, or as a desire to put nuclear power to its peaceful uses?
And can we really ignore the sustained double-game that Wahhabi Saudi Arabia has been playing in the calculus of global Islamic militancy? And what about the profits from the extensive Poppy cultivation in Taliban controlled areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan?
And indeed what of the almost completely Talibanised nuclear weapons state of Pakistan? We can see its liberal democratic impulses being rapidly swallowed up by the python of radical Islamic insurgency. And we can see the sorry state of America’s dithering and faltering “War on Terror” made more ridiculous by the ineffectual pursuit of the Al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan’s “northern tribal areas”.
The broader, if blown cover, for a blatantly hegemonic America circa 2009, is in terms of promoting “democracy”. But oddly, democracy, like a transplant, either takes or it doesn’t. It has, for what it’s worth, in India. It has not, despite vigorous effort, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and even less in President Zardari’s Pakistan.
This, while America dreams on and President Obama makes clear he will not pursue policies that will dilute American “leadership”, a word that is seen as a euphemism for hegemony, by the influential and centrist US Atlantic Magazine in its January/February 2009 issue.
Soaring above such immediate concerns, a new US Government’s National Intelligence Council (NIC) report entitled “Global Trends 2025” looks ahead and projects a decline of US power as the “unintended consequence” of the policies it is pursuing at present.
It says the rise of a multi-polar world order is inevitable, precisely because various American allies and partners will grow steadily stronger and will have to be negotiated with rather than commanded. Other power players, not present in the world order after WWII, will join the high table and bring new rules and stakes to the game of international power sharing. Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen thinks the transfer of power has begun already as a consequence of the Global recession playing out right now. Still, no hegemon deliberately wants to dilute its own power and America won’t give up without a fight.
All this portends well for India, willy-nilly emerging as a major power in the run up to 2025. India will, soon enough, not just have a voice but a say in world affairs. We may not have fully realised it as yet, but as the Slumdog Millionaire put it with little regard for cliche, this leg up in the world is simply meant to be. It is our destiny.
(1,051 words)
Thursday, 05 March 2009
Gautam Mukherjee
Published as the OP-Ed Page Leader on Friday, 13th March, 2009 as "Imperial hubris at last?" and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Archived under columnists.
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