Waiting For Baba Ramdev

(Note: Originally posted at CRI)


Note. This post is counterpoint to our guest post arguing for entry of Baba Ramdev. I am restricting myself to the specific question of Baba Ramdev, however the original post raises many interesting broader points, which I will defer for some at later date, as it is difficult to respond coherently to all the points in a single post.


Baba Ramdev, or to be more precise his foray into politics, is topic du jour among “the right wing ” netizens.  He has managed to electrify lot of good and sensible people. To an extent that is understandable. Metaphorically speaking, he is taking fighting into the enemy camp which is any day a better strategy then trying to fire-bomb your own army (which is all what BJP seems to be capable nowadays).

Now I do concede that right wing could do a lot worse than Baba Ramdev. From what we know of the man, Baba Ramdev appears to be an honest and sincere man. More importantly he is a patriot, and this is what attracts many to him (but not me), apolitical.

Even conceding all that I don’t think his involvement in politics is such a good idea. Problem will Baba Ramdev, like most of the Indians, is that he believe in what can only be called as Underpant  gnome theory of political science, going something like this

1.  Elect a charismatic leader with personally admirable qualities.
2. ???
3.  Mission accomplished!

You see, the problem with this. If you guessed step 2 with the  question marks , hey you just won a million dollar from a Nigerian dictator’s bank account.

Step 2, which to reiterate, Baba Ramdev (like most Indian) misses is the ideas. What are his specific political ideas, what policies he is in for, what are his specific proposals. We don’t know, because there aren’t any (to best of my knowledge).

So what will happen, when Baba Ramdev does win elections? Well as Edmund Burke said a wise man learns from the past, and as it turns out we have seen this movie before.

And this is why I am not swayed by him being  apolitical. Truth is, politics is not reformed by apolitical people (by which I mean people who are not familiar with the politics and disdainful of it) entering into politics, but only by politicians.

There is another point, if Baba Ramdev does enter into politics, the event, will without doubt, raise expectations of middle class (excluding the cosmopolitan flotsam, ofcourse), what will happen to them when this experiment fails, as it surely will, like it always has? The disappointed and bitter middle class will sink even more into morass of indifference, fatalism and cynicism, thus making the problem even more intractable.

However, in my opinion, the most important argument against Baba Ramdev’s political foray, is that he is much more valuable outside formal politics.

I will explain it. I am a cultural nationalist. I hold that the real strength of India is not its army or democracy but its culture. If, to quote Iqbal, winds of time have not been able to destroy us, even as once mighty empires laid waste before it, it is to our innate spirituality to which the credit should go.

As long as we follow Dharma, no one can vanquish us, and if we let go of it, no one can save us.


We require, and are eternally grateful to Sadhus like Baba Ramdev for nurturing Dharma and making sure we do not forget our real heritage.

The Black Swan

(Note: Originally posted at CRI)


So this is a short one. Anyway it seems that I am one of the last guys to have read The Black Swan. I bought the book during a book shopping binge under the impression that it had something to do with sub-prime crisis. As it turns out, while the book does address financial shenanigans, its scope is much broader, more accurately described as epistemology, or study of knowledge, which, as a conservative,  happens to interest me.
Now I will not claim that book exposed me to new information, however what it did was much more valuable. The Black Swam has helped me to begin seeing existing information in a new light, emphasizing what was previously underestimated.

I think that insight can be readily applied to politics. So here are some takeaways (in brief) from the book as applied to politics.

1. We can not predict
Properly speaking this applied more to punditry than to actual politics. The short term politics, which most of punditry is concerned with, is susceptible to too much uncertainty to enable any prediction.
In the near long term though, politics can be predicted. Here my definition of “near long” is rather tautological for I take it to be period between major realignment, such as Mandal or Ayodhya.

2. All ideologies are narratives (to some extent), and all politics is opportunistic (to considerable extent)
I find the conventional understanding of politics erroneous. It is assumed that there is a nice committee of philosopher/meta-physicians/policy wonks which come up with a nice set of dos and donts, which is called ideology and which is the starting point for politics.

In reality (or so I hold), politics is a *programming jargon alert* continuously iterative process  with starting points, if there were any, lost in the mist of history. Which leaves us to rely on dynamics of politics, sure people have some ideas in the starting but what determines their actions is expediency, they have to compromise and align with others for power, which is ultimately what politics is about, if these alliances are stable over long period of time, their (initially) disparate ideas are merged to form an ideology. This happened both in case of American conservatism as well as American liberalism.

3. Narrative is important.
Why does the above happen? It’s because humans love narratives, thinking in terms of sequence of cause and effect is so natural to us that to actually do otherwise take real effort. This is hardly surprising, we instinctively turn to narrative as it makes world more predictable and hence more safe (to be more precise safety is an illusion), evolution-wise this is fantastic. An effect of this, to paraphrase Orwell, those ho control the narrative also control the levers of power.  Which is why left still survives and thrives despite being a disaster.

4. Hindsight is 18/20.
Politics is actually messier than what appears in rear view mirror. The reason, as told in the previous points, we tend to narrate politics as a logical end result of intermediate step which were only determined by the clearly demarcated ideologies and (that mythical beast) voice of the public, whereas in reality where politics end up is significantly determined not by the ideologies but by political manoeuvring resulting in unexpected political events such as ascension of India Gandhi.

Turned out this wasn’t that short after all. Oh, well!

How should we learn from American conservatism (or anything else for that matter)

(Note: Originally posted on CRI)

“What can we (meaning Indians) learn from American conservatism ?”,  this is a question that is being  frequently asked and discussed by many Indian bloggers, generally belonging to what who can be called, for lack of any better term, centre right.

Now I have a problem with this question. This may seem weird considering how much I obsess over American politics. To describe my unease will be difficult, however it is simple to illustrate it.
See this is Indian democracy,

jugaad

And this is American democracy

benz

Now most of the times when above question is discussed, the answers tantamount to borrowing steering or transmission from Benz, force it into our contraption and expect contraption to work like Benz. Unfortunately this is not how machine, or for that matter democracy, work.

Democracy, put it simply, is hard. It is a complex system consisting of interdependent sub-systems and components. To make things, well, more complicated, unlike machines humans are complicated with (allegedly) free will, they have feelings, which makes any system dependant on their actions, such as democracy, difficult to design or predict.

Learning about social institutions, which ultimately democracy is as is economics, from external examples without the broader context in which they function is fraught with danger. Yet that is the mistake we have repeatedly made, first romance with socialism, and now flirting with libertarianism.

So does this mean that it is impossible to learn from outside. Far from it! But to really learn instead of focusing on the specifics and the contemporary, we have to go one level higher and investigate the factors which influenced the evolution of American democracy to its present state. Only when we have knowledge of these factors we can actually judge what will work in our context, and how exactly should we go about re-designing our institutions.
But whatever we do,  let’s not get carried away with it.

Sarah Palin’s New Conservatism*

“Today’s conservatives resemble the exhumed figures of Pompeii, trapped in postures of frozen flight, clenched in the rigor mortis of a defunct ideology”,  thus opined Sam Tanenhaus, editor  of NYT Books Review, on contemporary conservatism in his book Death Of Conservatism, published in the immediate aftermath of Barack Obama's victory in the 2008.

His literary swagger could be excused. After rending   clothes and gnashing teeth through eight long years of George Walker Bush (who according to them had all the unpleasant characteristics of   Hitler, Satan and company of dimwitted cousin), in 2008 the liberals were finally back in Washington and how!
With Obama’s audacious victory  as well as the earlier drubbing of Republicans in 2006 Congressional elections,  they had captured both executive and legislature after a long time, to top it all for a short time they had filibuster proof majority in senate, it seemed nothing could go wrong for liberals.

In fact so pleased was liberal intelligentsia with their good fortune that they believed that similar to climax of horror movies (when the protagonist manage to off grotesque monster), 2008 election marked beginning of end for conservatism , and beginning of beginning for long term ascendancy of liberalism.
Unfortunately for them, conservatism, just like monsters of horror movies, is back. Barely a year after its epitaph was being written, it was back, stronger than even in form of tea parties, giving ulcer to liberals and media (but I repeat myself).

But let’s not get ahead of this story of conservatism’s comeback. This story begins immediately after the Obama’s victory, even as Tanenhaus and his ilk were gloating, trouble was brewing.
But before that full disclosure at the time I had predicted that Republicans were headed for a well deserved exile in political wilderness. Subsequent events proved my prediction incorrect.

Liberals had taken charge just when US was entering most severe recession since World War – II, a result of subprime crisis. What is worse, US had narrowly (according to some) managed to avert financial Armageddon, though the way it was averted proved to be unpopular.

Before we continue, to some among you, who are less unsympathetic to liberalism than me, this might seem unfair to liberals,  and to those among you who are just plain crazy or Oliver Stone, this might look like conspiracy of Rovian proportion.  Now without going into details in this post, suffice it to say the crisis was a bipartisan folly and liberals were reaping what they had helped sown.

Anyway to continue, the work for liberals was cut out. Their first priority should have been to get economy on track; everything else took back seat including their hobby horses.  If liberals had done that they would have increased their public acceptability and consolidated their political gains thus helping them secure real long term dominance.

It is here that liberals met the same problem they have frequently encountered spanning time and space, which is, to paraphrase what Nietzsche said , in liberalism ideology never comes into contact with reality at any point.

Same happened this time, liberals, and this includes current American president and full time dilettante Barack Obama, instead of taking verdict as what it was, which is a result of voter’s anger over Republican Party making a perfect mess of government, what with shoving democracy down the throat of unwilling tribes, and  taking wide stances in inappropriate places, they took it as a indictment of free market and a mandate for tilting  the American politics to left.  This transformational reading of election lulled liberal into a false sense of security. Result?  Instead of trying to address economy, they busied themselves with their pet projects.

The first manifestation of this was the spectacle of Obama acting as Santa Claus by completely outsourcing the task of writing legislation for economic recovery to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Result was an early Christmas present, otherwise known as stimulus.
This largesse to special interest groups, at expense of general public raised the first murmurs of discontent.  These murmurs turned to outrage when Obama decided to go where no liberal had been able to go before that is healthcare.

Even this didn’t deter liberals, though discontent was palpable, they estimated it was perhaps too diffuse to harm them. But then a miracle happened, powered by the social networks and largely independent of any existing conservative organization at the time began a series of citizen up swell. Alarmed by the prospect of anonymous bureaucrats deciding their healthcare choices, the furious public started to besiege the house members in constituency town halls.

Normally to any ordinary politician this would have sounded huge warning gongs and he would have curbed his enthusiasm. But not the liberals (see liberals, reality), in a move which was to presage their subsequent disaster, they decided the only problem plaguing them was that they were just too damned nice and their opponents were just too mean.

Thus came out Alinsky’s rule no. 11 from the democrats armament, and began a long campaign of vilification which started with Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Liberals hoped to gain a reprieve by redirecting people’s anger at them. But this had the opposite effect, as designated enemy of Obama  both Rush Limbaugh and Fox News became even more popular.

More importantly, this propaganda further inflamed popular passions and the besieging of town hall transformed into protests across America, small at first which later became known as Tea Party movement. Instead of getting a clue the liberals decided to go for broke, and then started a second campaign of vilification again ordinary people participating in the protests.  They were vilified, as liberals do, as bunch of know-nothing knuckle dragging racists.

The result of this was as before, after a long time Scott Brown, a Republican won what was popularly known as Kennedy’s seat.

And now starts the third act. After they lost the filibuster proof majority, it was believed that Obamacare is dead. However in a display of sharp political maneuvering, liberal managed to pass it, and it became the law.

After the passing of Obamacare, liberals believed that it will become more popular. Unfortunately for them and as before the reverse happened. The liberals were handed one of their worst political defeat and due to liberal immaturity, conservatism is more popular than ever.

*From Wes Craven’s New Nightmare