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/

Cast your fate to the wind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PddZZ83Be8E

Cast your fate to the wind

I set my sail as the tide comes in

And I just cast my fate to the wind

Vince Guaraldi

When a nation approaches a fresh apogee in its destiny, it must review its own narrative, however bitter. For growth, not just economic, but an overall enhancement of stature, which could lead to greatness, demands the shedding of inappropriate baggage.

But, almost axiomatically, there is the anxiety at the prospect of casting off from familiar shores. It calls for changes: for an end to navel-gazing and decisive action against enemies of the state; but also for letting bygones be bygones. It calls for the ruthless elimination of security threats and the relentless pursuit of national interest; but also for the forging of new ties and alliances, sometimes with unequal and powerful partners that have not always done the right thing by us.

India is rapidly and inexorably approaching that hallowed threshold, that long desired entrance to the portal of resurgent leading nations, with the appropriateness of our candidature held beyond dispute, and is called upon to make ready to seize its moment.  

Some of the reason for arriving at this juncture is attributable to our innate virtue. Our Hindu/Buddhist/Sufi/Jain influenced pacifism and philosophical moderation, and the capacity to absorb different strains and viewpoints into our body politic. In a troubled world perplexed by the mayhem harvested by more dichotomised ways in the Judeo-Christian tradition, our nuanced  responses, our seeming paradoxical embrace of opposing viewpoints, seems wise after all,  and no longer wily or effete - no more the object of derision and contempt.

And other reasons, such as the upheaval in a settled world order, caused humiliatingly by self-inflicted implosion, not external aggression or sabotage, is climactic. An order undisturbed since before the fall of the Berlin Wall; perhaps unchanged from the first Bretton Woods Conference after World War II.

The hard reality is that Europe and America, large as their economies are, will, evidently, not grow at more than one or two per cent per annum for years, if not decades. And this too is dependent on mercantile and political cooperation of the sizeable fast-growing nations such as India and China.

A mirror held to the changing world reflects news of China looking at buying Newsweek magazine put on the block by owners’ Washington Post; also struggling to survive as a US broad-sheet in the Internet Age. But what does China actually want with Time magazine’s feisty competitor? Could it be to get their world-view out more clearly to the target audience, and without inherent Western bias and prejudice?

India, recent purchasers of halcyon British automotive marques Land Rover, Range Rover and Jaguar through the Tata Group, is now moving towards making their engines in India. This move would have been deemed sacrilege a few years ago; but now, it has been prompted, not by a jingoistic Indian manager, but by the European CEO of Tata Motors. So the erstwhile financially troubled brands will be transformed: becoming more profitable and affordable. The engine design team will still be from the British Tata-owned operation, but the luxury vehicle engines will henceforth be made in India.

Meanwhile, Press reports state Beijing and Mumbai are pleased at the windfall discounts available on their high-end Mercedes Benz, BMW and Audi car purchases, occasioned by the persistent weakness in the Euro. This is probably good in the long run also, because the buying demand these days is in these, and suchlike places.   

The prompting to resize our ambitions is coming in from various sides, some positive some negative in their impetus. The intensifying of terrorism and internal insurgency is a measure, if backhanded, of both our democracy and our success. Nobody is whisked away at midnight in India for railing at the state however misguidedly. Treason is not a term used to gag dissent and make political opponents disappear. Nor is the Indian State put out at suggestions that it is the greatest terrorist of them all! This State, now seen as a contender, is subject to efforts from certain quarters to hinder its progress and sap its strength. Ergo, it is necessary for us to find the modern wherewithal to prevail, and thwart such designs.

But even left to itself, India’s economic growth is posing challenges to our somewhat bullock-cart and buffalo gazing political leadership. Besides, no politician or political party is able to hoodwink the population anymore. In the Internet Age the control over information is innately slippery. It is not just a matter of secrecy and leakages, but the transparency, including the hackery, engendered by the possibilities of technology available. It is this technology that is proving harder and harder to outwit. Every side of the fence is affected, the heroes and villains, and all those of us betwixt and bemused.

And the ideological narrative too has changed drastically. We are no longer Socialist. Perhaps neither is China. But ideology to them has become an internal matter for them to interpret as they see fit. Because China realised it’s priorities in the now seemingly distant eighties. And today, having paid its dues, is indeed in control of its metamorphosis.

So to do this thing we are now called upon to do, we too must ignore the scars of recent centuries, must let go the post-colonial angst, as well as more recent geo-political biases against us.

We need instead to focus and not be distracted by rear-viewing cacophony, narrow parochialism or phoney nationalism. There is no opportunism in recognition of ground reality. It is not wrong to jettison that which is spent.

Since independence, through forty years of a Socialist India, we worked obliquely to undermine the authority and power of the West. So it should come as no surprise that they did nothing to help us either!

But now all is different. We have a shot at reforming global trade talks and international institutional financing in our favour. We could be in the UNSC soon, not just as a temporary but permanent member. We could be taken off all the presently inaccessible high-technology lists. Our nuclear programmes could go forward unfettered.  We could address our regional concerns with Pakistan and China with much greater confidence.

But first we have to drop the burdens of history and cast our fate to this favourable and prevailing wind.

(1,054 words)

5^th June 2010

Gautam Mukherjee

Published in Leader Edit slot in The Pioneer on June 16th 2010 as "We must seize the moment". Repeated online at www.dailypioneer.com and archived there under Columnists.

Push Me Pull You But Don't Stop Now!

Push Me Pull You But Don’t Stop Now!

A Push-Me-Pull-You is a creature that goes both ways at once; rather like splurging on liquidity and demanding austerity at the same time. It is a strange mutant creature with two heads on opposite ends of its body; but don’t ask which is front and which posterior. It is supposedly a cross between the legendary Unicorn and a lithe Gazelle. And the world knows of it from literature’s Dr. Dolittle, capable of conversing with animals.

The pushmi-pullyu is a perfect metaphor for our complicated economic times. And the prescription from Europe and America is a full-on flow of money, printed by their mints and guaranteed by their governments, to keep the financial system working; while simultaneously getting reacquainted with austerity and thrift from another, older, neither-a-borrower-nor-a-lender-be era. It’s like applying the brakes slowly so as not to go into a death spin from all that reckless speed built up in the past.

It was mighty Sir Bailout again, that saved the US economy from collapse in 2008. Otherwise we might have been revisiting the Great Depression of the 1930s. Refusing to skid off the road was good strategy that prevented calamity.

In retrospect, it was a mean–spirited blunder to let Lehman Brothers go under in 2008 while saving all the rest. But perhaps Lehman was the victim of its own first-mover advantage. Keeping liquidity plentiful and intact is the open secret of ongoing economic recovery in Obama’s America. The same formula is, and must continue to be, applied in Europe.

The fact is, despite apocalyptic and hysterical prognostications, only 20 % of the Eurozone GDP is suffering from Sovereign Debt woes, made acute by negligible to negative growth figures practically everywhere in the developed world.

But for all the fuss, Greece accounts for just 1% of Eurozone GDP. The lack of confidence contagion could, of course, spread, but with sufficient access to institutional funds, is unlikely to do so. The Great Depression came about because first a hundred and then a thousand banks were allowed to fail. Today also, the others lurking on the insolvency bus are Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy. But together, jointly and severally, they still account for no more than 20% of the GDP that backs the beleaguered Euro.

This is not to take away from the fact that when entire countries go bankrupt because of profligate financial management, and not, say, due to catastrophe or war, it is a profoundly disturbing and destabilising phenomenon. Especially since they belong to the supposedly enlightened, democratic, developed, and “free” West.


But surely the 80% better-off in Eurozone can pull their delinquent brothers out of the mire? You’d think so commonsensically, but there are dire predictions from Left-leaning Nobel-laureate economists such as Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, who expect things to get a lot worse. They can’t visualise the bailout recipient states bucking up soon enough with their newly minted responsible ways; and hold out a high unemployment, hyper-inflation spectre, fuelled by all that freshly printed money. They don’t expect Eurozone to survive.

But the sad thing is, many centrists and right wingers around the globe are also sceptical about the West’s ability to pull it off. They see the countries already in trouble as harbingers of things to come. They think the other 80% are technically better off but not by that much.

Meanwhile, the Eurozone national parliaments are glumly voting to pony up their share of the US$ 1 trillion bailout package announced recently, and as long as this is distributed efficiently and swiftly, much of the pain and panic should indeed subside.

It’s another story that the Communist Labour Unions in Greece are acting up and don’t want to accept the austerity measures that are required as a quid pro quo by the lending agencies. They refuse to understand that without drastic reform, the first trillion dollars, already pledged, will disappear into the abyss and much more will have to be conjured up to feed the ravenous belly of the beast; and still not solve the problem.

Unfortunately for the bankrupt sections of the Eurozone, all they can hope to do is finally cut their coats according to their cloth. It is a humiliating business and is going to be painful after years of consumption led boom. This has been the American formula over the last two decades, and Europe has become no more than an American satellite in the interim. But the common man in every bankrupt country is uncomprehending and bewildered and feels betrayed by his leaders.

But they in turn are equally hoisted on their own petard. They thought the good times would go on, like Madden’s Ponzi scheme, from the US led boom through the William Jefferson Clinton years, carried on uninterrupted through the George W Bush ones and on and on, to Obamaland.

But then there was 9/11. And afterwards there was acute jingoism and war: waged half a world away in Afghanistan and Iraq and the NWFP areas of Pakistan, and even more frantic hyper growth just before the bubble burst, with housing being sold to anybody at all who cared to apply.

And the latest is that China, which has been stimulus spending its way out of its own impacted economy while propping up the West, has decided to take the warnings on a real-estate bubble developing on home turf seriously. Ergo it is cutting back on the easy money liquidity that tempted too many to chance their arm. But now the same Western analysts are saying China is sucking out the liquidity that the Europeans and Americans are putting into the global financial system!

So what’s next- currency revaluation? After all, that too is a Western demand. But if the Chinese strengthen their currency their own export led growth engines will slow and impact the already depressed Western economies yet again.

Bottom line: this is shaping up to become the Asian century despite the tremendous volatility on the global bourses at present. The growth is here in India and China and parts of ASEAN for many years to come.

And the way around our mutual problems as the MEA has been saying lately, both with regard to China and Pakistan, is not to let individual issues of disagreement or contention prevent cooperation on the rest.

(1,047 words)

27th May 2010, Buddha Purnima.
Gautam Mukherjee