Democracy and Tyranny - II

Further to the previous post , also read Nitin's guest post on India Economy Blog

"Democracy and Infrastructure"

Second Part, Tyranny

A more interesting aspect is whether dictatorship is more conducive to economic progress.

I suspect this position will find support among many people, most probably due to examples of China and Singapore.

However it is not entirely justified, for the simple reason that China and Singapore represent an overwhelmingly miniscule percentage of dictatorship. Other dictatorships (North Korea, Cuba, Burma) do not present a very flattering picture.

In my view dictatorship is inherently flawed for the reason while the democracy provides means for self correction (however rudimentry) none exists in case of tyranny.

Further tyranny always entail a bloated state machinary and corruption.

Category : India, Politics, Economics, Society, Civilization

Democracy and Tyranny - I

1. This is in response to Nitin's guest post at Indian Economy Blog, "Democracy and Infrastructure" as owing to bad karma my comment got flagged as the spam.

2. This is just my mostly uninformed speculation

Gist of Nitin's post is the query whether there is something in democracy which impedes economic growth (although he talks specifically about infrastructure, but in my view the question can be extended to general economic outlook), as opposed to authoratarian governments.

First, the democracy

While in a democracy there will always be tendency for populism (which is nothing but precedence of short term and personal goals over long term and collective objectives), there is no clear answer.

The reason is (As I have said before in context of freedom) while democracy is necessary condition it is hardly a sufficient.

To wit, democracy is a system of governance through rule of the majority, it is not a system to qualify the merits of policies. Judgement of policies is left to the discretion of individuals.
Therefore in a democracy not only nature of economic policies but also the progress of nation is dependant on the ideals the individuals espouse. These ideas, are in essence the foundation of civilization. Further almost invariably these ideas are conceived, debated and agreed upon not by the whole population but by a select group called "intellectuals". The reason whole population doesn't participate even if it is free is partly because not everyone is trained to think and partly because not everyone has the time to collect required amount of information.

The conclusion is that direction a democracy takes is dependant on

1) The basic ideals it is founded upon

2) Which in turn is decided by a rarefied circle of intellectuals


If one is interested in reasons for less than impressive performance of Indian democracy , it is to be found in the above two premises.

1) The idea behind Indian constitution is social and economic freedom but wishy washy statism.

2) The reason for this was misplaced faith that the members of constitution assembly regardless of political affiliations ( i.e. left and right) placed in state, both in its influence and its immunity to corruption and distortion.

Therefore not only Indian republic was bestowed with statist thinkers even the common public was indoctrinated so that it came to accept the presence of interventionist, omnipresent, omniscient and omniprescient state as an axiomatic position.

What is more Indian public was encouraged to increasingly rely and depend on state not just for welfare of society but also for welfare of specific social segments.

Therefore to blame Mulaytam Singh or Arjun Singh for the mess we are in is trivial. In fact if one were to take a cynical position about susceptibility of public to pavlovian conditioning even blaming present generation seems useless.

The rot that India faces whether corruption or social decrepitude did not set in a course of few days. The short sighted policies adapted by our leaders and the wide latitude Indian public gave to them (to the point of idol worshipping) are to blamed.

 

Category : Politics, Society, Economics, India, Civilization
 

Wisdom Of Chacha Chaudhary

Reproduced from one of the many illuminating episodes of that great sage of wisdom Chacha Chaudhary.

Once, it so happened that Chacha hired a servant "Ramu" whose sole duty was to give him one glass of milk before sleeping.

Since Ramu was health concious (and further believed in socialism), he decided to help himself with half of the nourishing milk replacing it with water.

Now when this continued for some weeks Chacha started having doubt and hired another servant "Kallu" entrusted with the task of keeping an eye on Ramu.

Ramu with ingenuity characterstic of lawyers and frauds offered to share milk with Kallu.
Kallu believed that solidarity with comrades took precedence over integrity and therefore happily acquiesced to fleecing his master (who it must be said was a bourgeoise vermin) and helped themselves with two third of the milk, replenishing as before with water.

It was not long before Chacha grew suspicous and hired yet another (!) servant "Dholu" to ensure that Ramu and Kallu do not cheat.

However Ramu and Kallu were able to persuade Dholu to take part in their little scam.
There was a problem though, any further division of milk did not leave anyone with enough milk. But knavery is father of "jugaad" and our three heroes were nothing if not knave.
Thus they divided the whole milk among themselves, and coated white luxurious moustache of Chacha with the cream.

Chacha called them up in the morning indignant and remonstrated with them for dereliction of their duties. To which the servants protested and as evidence pointed towards his moustache.

However Chacha had enough. He summarily fired them. He closed the incident by repeating a fine proverb Apna haath jagannath.


If only economists and politicians read more Chacha Chaudhary and less of Keynes

Political correctness (with butter)

To my observation that the upside of having a ugly face was that one need not be burdened with trite (and often meaningless) matter pertaining to heart, my good friend VNS replied, "you are not ugly, you are handsome, ....... in an alternate way".

People can say such corny thing sometimes !

The Other Blog

I have started a new blog (in Hindi)

I expect posting to be few and far between

Stuck On, Stupid

It is for pithy phrases like title that I love Americans

Anyway,

In yet another pointless exercise round of dialogues on kashmir, gentle doctor has proposed a five point plan. before continuing I do wonder (sincerily) that does mandarins at sout block have a template for J&K , well if they don't they should have.

PM speaking on the agenda of n th (n being an obscenely large number ) round (why round, isn't this discrimination against triangles and squares, is there a latent strain of polygonphobia in us)
advised terrorists that violence doesn't help anyone (actually it does, more on it later) if only I had a penny everytime someone repeated this stupid cliche, I would be a very very rich man.

Further,

Spelling out the agenda for the second round table Dr Singh asked the participants to concentrate on political institutions and how they can strengthen the centre-state relationship, security, human rights, good governance, economic future, restore public confidence and 'what institutional arrangements can bring people from both sides of the Line of Control closer to each other'.

I fail to understand the point of whole exercise, does Manmohan really thinks that terrorist are commiting heinous crimes for sake of things like this. Terrorism in J&K is not about stagnation, it is about propaganda and indoctrination.

He regretted that some elements did not want the state to progress. "There are some elements within the state who do not wish this dream to become a reality," he said.

In my opinion statements of Indian government when it comes to J&K fall under two categories, stating the obvious or exhibition of cluelessness.

Above is a good example of first category.

Such acts, Dr Singh said, strengthen the government's resolve to ensure that 'every resident of Jammu and Kashmir is protected from such terrorist acts and atrocities. The government is prepared to take every step towards achieving that'.

I think it is most unfortunate that political rhetoric is not enforceable as a contractual obligation
this will make politicians before they make promises which are so obviously unsincere and fake that they are an affront to audience.

The worst was to come however

However, the prime minister also cautioned that there would be zero tolerance in respect to custodial deaths. He asked the security forces to be humane in their approach but remain firmly in control of the situation

I do not condone human right violations. I have no objection if prime minster is concerned about atrocities perpetrated by any branch of state. However I do object to abject apppeasement of Hurriyat (who are nothing but low level scums hands in glove with terrorists) and in the process
legitimizing Pakistani propaganda of excesses commited by Indian Army.
(About which Nitin writes here)

And here I come to the point. Whatever Indian government may do, terrorism in J&K is not going to stop. This is because it is not about self-determination, or unemployment or persecution.

Kashmiri terrorism is purely a tool in hands of Pakistan to harm India. Since Pakistan can not win a direct confrontation, she has sought to defeat us by inciting local population through malicious and fraudelent but highly effective propaganda.

Indian state has failed not only to neutralize the threat of terrorism, it infact has failed miserably in face of hostile propaganda. So much so that not only J&K but even in rest of India there is a belief that accession of J&K to India was controversial and India is on a weaker grounds.

The solution to terrorism is to make Pakistan realize that there is a price, a very steep price to pay for terrorizing Indians. This doesn't mean "an eye for an eye", not at all. This instead calls for "two eyes for even making a move to harm a single eyelash". Paskitan doesn't understand language of diplomacy, she however understand language of raw violence and that is the language India has to speak now. I will prefer to see dead bodies of Pakistanis than dead bodies of Indians, if it sounds crude and inhuman so be it.

But this is not a very effective solution because it acts after the malaise has set.A better solution is to nip the problem in bud.

To reiterate what I said in my previous posts.

The discotent of Kasmiri youth was manufactured by Pakistan in 1980's flush with American funds for mujahideen and the willing accomplice were rabid clergy which used mosques and madrassas to stoke fires. First casuality of this were Kashmiri pundits who had to flee valley (the other options being to convert or to die), at that none beloning to the secular industry (after all in this country Hindus are expendable). It was not until 2 years later when terrorism started kidnapping and killing that Indian government woke up from sleep (which was deeper than that of KumbhaKaran).

A long term solution of Kashmir involves (but is not limited to) greater integration which is only possible by getting rid of Article 370.

LLTT

The title refers to Look London Talk Tokyo and is indulged in frequently by journalism.

This is such a piece.

The title is ambitious, "Do our institutes connect with the real India? ". However it has nothing to do with discussion on the cost of subsidies provided to institutions of higher educations and benefit arisding out of it, but it does nothing of the sort.

Instead it is just a disingenuous attempt at obfuscating the issue of reservation.

The writer asks in the most otherhalfish fashion, "Could a more diverse student body work more broadly in the national interest than it currently does?"

Answer is, to a overwhelmingly large extent no, as I have pointed out earlier, students irrespective of their caste pursue higher education for self interest, indeed it is foolish for someone to expect that a student will spend considerable time and effort for altruistic motive.
Student even if he hails from a tribal or backward community after completing his degree would aspire to a high paying job and not to return to his village. Sure there will be always be a certain percentage who will indeed go back and work but it will be so miniscule so that cost of education is not justified.
From another point of view I think it is rather unfair to expect that only students from certain castes have to work in villages.

The writer continues with his ill thought and biased tripe. "The national institutes produce computer programmers, dam builders and investment bankers, and fine ones at that. But perhaps a more enlightened investment would also produce managers of farming co-operatives and social movements, and young engineers designing check-dams and inexpensive power generators for remote hamlets."

Again the answer is no, students from IIT and IIM (or for that matter anywhere) will seek highest rewards. This means that unless constructing check dams and managing co-operatives offers more rewards (significantly so considering that these jobs are of physcial nature and demand more stamina than your average desk jobs) than other options available, no student (whether he is General/SC/OBC) is going to join them.

This I am not saying without knowing the facts, 80% of IITians irrespective of their departments either
1) Go for software
2) Go for IIM/XLRI/ISB/SPJ/Others
3) Go for MS in US

Hence it is a sheer waste of tax payers money and the only solution for governments is to stop subsidizing IITs.

Indeed if writer was sincere, with little though he could arrived at the real nature of the problem
which is two fold

1) Artificial shortage in higher education - Due to unnecessary restrictions placed by state on private investment in field of higher education.

2) Skewed demand - While due to globalization there is a demand in IT and BPO, bureacracy corruption and red tapism ensures that manufacturing and infrastructure which holds promise of progress for backward areas remain stuck.

Further the writer argues that compostion of students effect the composition of the syllabus,

"This disconnect comes not just because of the demands of the curriculum, but also because there are very few students who have been displaced by construction projects. How different would the classroom be if tribal students from the Narmada valley also present? "

Answer is not much. I have met many students who hailed from backward areas. And yet while they were aware of the ground reality by and large they remained ignorant of the possible solutions parroting the tired spoon fed rhetoric of utopia through entitlements.

Another peace of chicnary,

"Cynics will argue that tribal and lower caste students are incapable of engaging issues at a sophisticated level like those who enter through merit. But that means that we must question what merit means, and whether the wisdom of the current system really works."

Actually no one argues that. Critics of reservations argues (with justification) that benefits of adopting reservation as a policy does not justify its cost. Further by providing reservations it provides a cop out to that percentage of OBC which is part of middle class (urban or rural) and ends up with lion's share of benefits.

It is reasonable to ask what has been the benefits to SC and ST after five decades of reservations.

If it turns out that results have been less then what was expected, it is not reasonable again to discuss the reason for failure and propose an alternative solution.

It is disgusting (but not suprising) for writer to imply that those protesting reservations are casteists.

And I find this constant and deliberate over what constitutes merit most annoying.

Merit can be your aptititude, reflexes, language skill, interpersonal communication depending on the job requirement.

A journalist require a skill set than an engineer, hence in the context merit also differs.
One can argue that the examination to measure merit is flawed but this doesnt make merit irrelevant on the contrary it only means that examination system needs to be corrected.

Rest of article is pointless and light on facts in similar veins such as,

"Similarly, medical researchers from an Adivasi background might be able to share the medicinal traditions of their tribes in a medical college, debunking the myth that treatment always comes in a pricey little pill. This is not an easy task. We have a deep-rooted suspicion of traditional knowledge as not being 'scientific' and overcoming this suspicion along with discomfort with tribals who propagate it requires significant change in mindset."

Reading this kind of tripe makes me think that there should be some cut off for bovine manure in media

 

Category : India, Society, Media, Politics