A failed promise

So Raj Thackeray has finally been arrested, after much pussyfooting by the Congress government. It says a lot about the lows to which politics in this country has gone when a simple law and order situation is viewed purely politically. Here is a man who is fomenting hatred and inciting violence and instead of arresting him, the political ramifications of his arrest are being calculated.

There’s another larger issue here – how our younger generation of politicians, far from bringing in a breath of fresh air to our politics, are content to carry forward old ways. Raj Thackeray is only the latest example.

Why do we lament the fact that our political parties are dominated by leaders in their sixties and seventies, if not more? Why do we sneer at the BJP for selecting an 80-year-old as their prime ministerial candidate. Because we expect the younger generation to bring in a more modern vision, a new kind of politics, shunning the identity-based and outdated appeals of the older generation, and a new style of functioning, eschewing the patronage politics of yore.

We remember fondly the political greenhorn Rajiv Gandhi, who held out a hope for the country, never mind that he wasn’t able to realize it and became a prisoner of the old guard.

But today’s younger lot of politicians appears to be letting us down. On the face of it, they’re suave, sophisticated, cosmopolitan, liberal. But to what use? Dayanidhi Maran, 42, appeared to be the ideal telecom and IT minister – a young man who understood technology and the power of Indian entrepreneurship (he and his brother had built up a cable and television business). He was doing all the right things – wooing the private sector, further opening up the telecom sector, bringing in huge investments into the information technology sector etc. But scratch that veneer and he wasn’t any different from the older lot. He demanded and got the telecom and information technology ministry even though it involved a conflict of interest because of the business his brother ran. He wanted an independent regulator overseeing the telecom sector to toe the ministry’s line on a range of issues, even if this meant backtracking on telecom sector liberalization. He tried armtwisting the Tata group to add his family’s television channel as a joint venture partner in a proposed DTH venture. The list could go on.

Take Anbumani Ramadoss, just short of 40. His crusade against AIIMS director P Venugopal was all about being denied patronage rights over the country’s premier medical institute. His interventionist campaigns against smoking and fast food smacks of an outdated mentality where it is alright for the state to dictate people’s choices.

Sukhbir Badal, 45, has been educated abroad and when I once interviewed him when he was minister of state of industry at the Centre, came across as a young man with modern ideas. But he has not given shape to those ideas, even though he has been the virtual chief minister when his father Prakash Singh Badal was ruling Punjab.

So are Raj Thackeray, just a few months short of 40, and his cousin, Uddhav, 48, any different? Sadly no.

Why has the younger generation not been able to strike a different path? Some of it has to do with the way they come into politics. All the examples given above are from regional, family-run parties. That is the only political culture they are familiar with. So they see no contradiction between their otherwise cosmopolitan, modern lifestyles and the feudal style of operation.

But then how do you account for Sachin Pilot, otherwise a sensible young man. Yet he couldn’t stay away from jumping into a caste-ist fray when the Gujjar agitation broke out in Rajasthan. So you had a Wharton-educated young man making patently identity-based appeals.

The younger generation is not living up to its promise. What a pity.

Rose-tinted Reminiscences

Tragic though the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was, it was galling to hear, amid all the outpouring of grief, those fulsome praises of her. I didn’t have a problem with the countless nostalgic reminiscences about Pinky in Oxford – people generally like to hear and read about personal stories of leaders and other famous people; such stories tend to humanize them.

But it was a bit much to be told that she was this great democrat who wanted to uplift the poor of Pakistan and had a different vision of Indo-Pak ties. This is absolute nonsense. I felt the same when she returned to Pakistan in October in this blaze of glory and was being hailed (as was Nawaz Sharif) as the democratic alternative. Two people whose regimes were marked by corruption and venality being hailed as democrats is a bit difficult to digest. Was Benazir helping the poor in Pakistan when she spent millions on importing Evian water for her family during her stint as prime minister? Or when her husband got the tag of Mr 10 per cent? Just about seven years back, the Pakistani public was bursting crackers and dancing in the streets when General Musharaff overthrew Sharif. Nobody was clamouring for Benazir then. Public memory is short. The failures of the Musharaff administration made Benazir and Sharif seem more acceptable. We’ve seen this happen in India as well, when Rajiv Gandhi was voted out on charges of corruption in the 1989 elections and was all set for a stupendous comeback in 1991 before he was assassinated. There are so many more examples. But does that mean the media and weighty commentators on public matters should also fall into the same trap? Should they abandon their objectivity in the face of a tragic death?

I find the comparison between Benazir and Rajiv also a bit odious. The only similarities are that they came from political dynasties and their parent (father in the case of Benazir and mother in the case of Rajiv) met violent deaths, which pitchforked them into the centrestage. And that both of them were voted out and were all set for resounding comebacks when they were assassinated.

But Rajiv at least had a vision for the country. It’s another matter that many disagreed with his vision and that he couldn’t help realize it. But what vision did Benazir have for her country during her first term? I have read many articles on her after her death, but nobody has talked about where she wanted to take her country.

Rajiv was really reluctant to enter politics. He was forced into it by his mother and later circumstances. Benazir, according to several accounts, often said she didn’t choose this life but this life chose her. That contradicts all the Pinky in Oxford tales from her classmates who remember how hard she tried to be Oxford University union president. Clearly she was hardly the reluctant politician that Rajiv was.

So let us mourn the tragic death of a young leader. Let us be angry about the violence that is consuming the sub continent. But let us stop idolizing someone who clearly does not deserve a halo.

Cliches Continue

I have little respect for most film critics, barring a couple. I get the feeling that they tend to bring their personal prejudices into play when reviewing. I can almost predict what one female film critic is going to say about a film. If it has Aishwarya Rai, then the film has to be bad. If Aishwarya happens to be in a film directed by a crossover film director, then the film will be good, but Aishwarya will be bad. If it’s a crossover film, it’s always good. Shahrukh Khan will always lift a film above a shaky plot and shoddy direction. Salman Khan is always to be sneered at. I now try to imagine what she will say about a movie and then read her reviews only to see if I am right. I usually am!

I find one thing common among all film critics, though – their Shabana Azmi-Naseeruddin Shah blind spot. Any film starring these two (especially Shabana) have to be raved about, no matter how bad it is. Take the case of Dus Kahaniyan, the movie which is ten movies strung together. All the reviewers gave mixed reactions to nine of the stories. Only one got a unanimous rave review – Rice Plate, starring – you’ve guessed it – Shabana and Naseeruddin. The story was sensitive, the acting nuanced. All the usual reviewing clichés were there.

Till I saw bits of Dus Kahaniyan on cable. Rice Plate quite simply appalled me. Shabana was hamming and Naseeruddin had nothing to do. People criticize Amitabh Bachchan for over the top acting in Black. Why is everyone silent about Shabana in Rice Plate. Old south Indian ladies do not carry themselves the way Shabana did. She could have taken tips from the way Konkona Sen Sharma prepared for her role in Mr and Mrs Iyer. That was authentic down to a T.

The story was a bit ridiculous too. No woman (no matter how orthodox) who has lived in Bombay for decades will sit in a taxi only because it has pictures of gods and then recoil in disgust when the driver turns out to be a Muslim. Or refuse to take back a packet of namkeen she has dropped when she collided with a Muslim man (Naseeruddin) just because he picked it up. Even village women don’t react that way, for heaven’s sake. But just because Shabana and Naseeruddin acted in this film, no one pointed out this basic problem. Clearly, for film critics, willing suspension of belief is not a malaise affecting films in which these veterans star!

Apart from this, what got me was the usual cliché about Hindu orthodoxy, a subject I’ve dealt with in earlier posts – Dixie Chicks and Parzania (16 February 2007) and Profiling and Labelling (27 August 2006). Two stories in Dus Kahaniyan made me see red (a lot of my critics would say saffron, I know but that only reflects on their prejudices).

If Rice Plate dealt with Hindu orthodoxy, another story in Dus Kahaniyan, starring Neha Dhupia and Mahesh Manjrekar, dealt with a woman saving a child from rioters. The way she tried to save the child was ridiculous, of course – she sexually assaults the sword wielding rioter! – but once again the rioter is a Hindu and the child he’s wanting to kill is a Muslim.

As if Muslims don’t have their prejudices and Hindus don’t get killed in riots!

Two-faced Fascists

I am posting below a column written by my ex-boss, R Jagannathan, in DNA, which is so absolutely bang on.

It’ll also be interesting to see how the Taslima Nasreen case will pan out. Though several newspapers have pointed out the hypocrisy of the so-called secular brigade in taking up cudgels for victims of Hindu fundamentalism while remaining silent on Muslim fundamentalism, that group has chosen to keep a low profile. There’s no hysterical outpouring of condemnation of Nasreen’s victimisation by the more prominent members of that brigade. I can understand Brinda Karat keeping quiet (her party is involved) but what about the other prominent jholawalas? What about those who organised a protest rally in Delhi against the persecution of the artists in Baroda by Hindu extremists? Weeks after their march, Nasreen was attacked in Hyderabad. It was met with silence. As her current situation is.

The Left as a fascist force

R Jagannathan

DNA, Thursday, 22 November 2007

http://digital.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx?queryed=9&eddate=11/22/2007

It's interesting to see how Nandigram has changed perceptions about the Left, and especially the CPI(M). In recent weeks, one has seen not only traditional Left intellectuals rallying against the party's violent "recapture" of Nandigram, but even stalwarts like Ashok Mitra, who was finance minister in Jyoti Basu's government, now think the party has become arrogant and inept.

This is the same Mitra who once arrogantly proclaimed, "I'm not a gentleman (bhadralok), I am a Communist." The Mitras of the world are now coming to realise that being Communist in the old mould could mean fascist as well. So much so, that even ordinary people have now started talking about Nandigram and Godhra in the same breath, never mind the dissimilarities.

Between the murder of over a thousand in Gujarat and a few score in Nandigram there is definitely some difference, never mind what the BJP and the Sangh Parivar may like to think. But the mindset is the same. If a Narendra Modi could talk of an action-reaction scenario after Godhra, it did not take long for the West Bengal chief minister to justify the party's decision to take the law into its own hands in Nandigram the same way. He said: "(In the) last 11 months, the Bhoomi Uchched Pratirodh Committee, the Trinamool Congress and the Maoists were creating violence with arms. And (in the) last two-three days, CPI(M) workers had paid them back in their own coin." If this is not state sanction for revenge, what is?

The RSS and CPI(M) are two sides of the same coin. One espouses fascism in the name of the party and the other in the name of Hindutva. Neither is democratic. One hears little about what goes on in RSS conclaves or at the CPI(M)'s politburo meetings. And the reason is the same: if one knows who said what at a meeting, then individuals will begin to matter and the party/sangh can never reign supreme.

Let's look at other similarities. The Left accuses the Guru Golwalkar of the RSS of being a Hitler fan, but sees no ignominy in lionising Stalin and Mao, the biggest mass murderers after Hitler. One mindless reference to Hitler in Golwalkar's book (later expunged) is enough to condemn him as fascist, but decades of idolisation of Stalin does not taint the Left with fascistic attributes.

Why hasn't the general public seen through the Left's mask of democratic behaviour? Two reasons. One, we all naively believe that the Left champions the cause of the poor. This automatically blinds us to the possibility that they may be after power for its own sake; and to gain power and retain it, they may be as willing as Modi to use violence. For most of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when it was by no means certain that the Left would win again and again in West Bengal, they were busy using strong-arm tactics to win elections. The latent arrogance and fascism is surfacing overtly only now because they have come to believe that their hold on power is absolute.

The second reason is their antagonism to the Sangh Parivar. Since few people have any doubts about the character of the Sangh, we assume that anyone fighting the RSS must be a democrat or secular or both. Clearly a fallacy. In fact, the only two groups that have fought pitched battles for non-sectarian reasons are the RSS and the CPI(M) - in Kerala. The reason is simple: they look at each other and see themselves. This is what they are trying to exorcise by calling each other fascists.

It has taken the murder of Rizwanur and the mayhem in Nandigram to open the eyes of intellectuals all over the country. We now know, fascism is not defined by the colour of your warpaint. Saffron or red, it's your mindset that defines it.

The de Soto Path

Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto was in town in last month and I did this interview with him which appeared in BusinessWorld. Funny really, how no one has invited this man to India though what he says and his writings are far more relevant to us than what a whole lot of others say. He had been invited by McKinsey. Interestingly, he told me he was to be here in October at the invitation of Sonia Gandhi but couldn’t make it. Did woolly-headed socialist Sonia really understand the significance of de Soto? He probably would have rubbished half the things her government is doing.

http://www.businessworld.in/content/view/2935/3015

IN CONVERSATION

'Most Heads Of State I Work For Are Outright Marxists'

Few economists have the distinction of having been attacked with 500 kg of dynamite and machine guns. That's perhaps a measure of Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto's influence. His first book, The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism, countered the philosophy of the Shining Path rebels of the 1980s. Designated by Time as one of the five leading Latin American innovators, de Soto is not a blind advocate of western-style capitalism, as evident from his second book The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. His issues are those most developing countries are wrestling with - informal economy, property rights, unauthorised constructions, land acquisition, etc. The poor are at the core of his writings. The Lima-based Institute for Liberty and Democracy, of which he is the president, advises nearly 80 countries in Latin America, Asia, Africa and East Europe. Talking to Seetha while on a private visit to Delhi, de Soto argues for empirical research and numbers to strengthen the case for market-oriented reforms that help the poor. Excerpts:

You are perhaps the only economist who has been the target of bomb attacks.

That probably means I had a meaningful and very radical message. The Other Path provided very clear alternatives to the ultra-left Shining Path movement in Peru. The book was taken up as a motivational force by many groups. As more and more people used it to explain why it was a good idea to have economic freedom of a certain sort, the rebels found it more and more in their interest to bomb us. They said they were having trouble recruiting for their ranks. But it only made us much more visible and popular. It was not just an academic work; it was a book that had consequences. It was put in a political context - to give an alternative explanation for poverty and oppression - and it worked.

You're a strong advocate of market economy but you also say capitalism is like a private club.

I term capitalism for a few as mercantilism. The first bourgeois capitalists were very exclusivist. They didn't necessarily believe in the market, though they believed in the private sector. The fact that a few succeed doesn't mean it is a real market order, but only a system that works for a few. If it is perceived as a system that does not provide opportunity for everybody, it will collapse. I favour a market economy that's open to everybody, not as an act of faith, but simply because I don't know of a better system.

In India, market-oriented economic reforms are criticised as catering only to a small elite. What could we be doing wrong?

I don't know India. People all over are basically ingenious and entrepreneurial. If the system favours a few, that means it is clogged up. You have got cholesterol in your veins. You have to trace the history of poor people trying to get into business through real cases. Once you find where the cholesterol is, both the left and the right will support you in removing it; they have to be crazy not to.

The other problem is that somebody who thinks tradition must be protected just doesn't allow an opening up, in the name of preserving the culture of indigenous communities. Generally, these desires come from intellectual classes; but when the poor people are given the choice, they move to the United States.

In India, there is a lot of talk about inclusive growth. Should this be through government programmes or simply by freeing entrepreneurial energies?

It's not a bad idea to do both things -remove blockages to the market through change of rules and provide ambulances, hospitals and wells.Everyone knows that what is achieved through charity is minuscule compared to what is achieved through rules that are inclusive. But it's human nature to do the former and get photographed. You can't photograph a change of rules.

But don't all governments tend to indulge in economic intervention and strengthen the role of bureaucracy?

The first motivating force of negative intervention in economic activity is essentially the politician. Politicians are guided by the desire to be popular, to do things that are well-serving. If they don't, it's because the arguments in favour of liberalising the economy have not been well-structured. The tendency of people who believe in the market economy is to repeat and plagiarise a western standard term. So they appear pro-elite. But if you are able to indicate - with numbers, facts and logical structure - that your programmes are good for poor people, you'll have to find a very crazy politician not to support it. More than half the heads of state that I work for are outright Marxists.

Capitalism or the market economy never looks exactly the same in any country; it has different cultural traits. Copycat movements of the west are unsuccessful. You have to have a local adaptation.

You say a lot of unrest and dissatisfaction within countries is caused by a sense of disempowerment of the poor. Is that the only reason for all terrorism?

Terrorism is usually born where there is helplessness - whatever you do, you don't see a future. Secondly, terrorists provide services - the protection of the businesses and the assets of the poor. Give the poor a property right that is efficient. It should not be only a recognition of their land. That's like giving them a knife with only one blade. Give them a land that has a series of functions - that can be used for starting a business, sold and leased, used as collateral. It should be like a Swiss army knife. People will take the Swiss army knife over terrorist protection. Then the terrorists lose their constituency.

Thirdly, don't give up on terrorists. Don't forget that some of the most radical reforms in favour of the market are done by illuminated terrorists like Deng Xiao Ping. People do change their mind. But you have to indicate to them in terms that they can understand.

You say the poor are not the problem but the solution.

The market economy is essentially about scale. How can you get scale if you don't bring in the poor? They're the consuming mass and they are conglomerated, which is what you need for the division of labour. There is a problem when you have people out in the jungle with no connections whatsoever, like the headhunters of Peru or the sheep people of Colombia. But people conglomerating in cities are the solution. Both Marx and Adam Smith said so. I'm not saying anything new. All I'm saying is identify them in our areas.

Why do you say property is a key institution for the poor?

Property is not just land or a physical object. It is simply the right that one has to give an asset - tangible or intangible - a series of functions and create an identity. Secondly, the value of all things tends to increase. When you become more productive, the value of things goes up. Financial value is captured in a property title. You ask Bill Gates or anyone from Infosys the value of what they've got and they will show you a piece of property paper. If you do not give the poor property over the little that they own, their chances of making it in a capitalistic world are zilch. Because they have no way to capture identity, location, capital or give guarantees for credit.

The issue of land rights has come up in India in connection with land acquisition for industry, giving tribals rights over common land and slum clearance programmes. How are these issues to be dealt with?

When private sector came into Britain, they had something called the enclosures. The oligarchy moved with great agility and took over the forests and left a lot of the proletariat in the situation of Oliver Twist - dispossessed. But that's not what happened in France, Germany, United States or Canada. They didn't let the oligarchy take away the forests or the buildings. They gave equal access. It all depends on how you do your laws.

Secondly, in the beginning all poor people lived in slums; that's the starting point. The question is whether you're going to have property over it and whether you're going to use it as a tool for moving ahead. Steve Jobs that started Apple started in a garage. Practically all American billionaires of today started in garages.

A property right means a person's right to something is recognised. It's like a voucher which tells them that they have a title over something that will have to be substituted for something equivalent. But give them security. If they feel you're going to expropriate them without any form of compensation, they will simply stop any movement towards change.

But what about cases where people have encroached on government land?

If you have got 100,000 people who have encroached on government land, how are you going to take them out? It's just not realistic. It's not going to happen. What you can do is empower them and find a way to make sure that when you do, you are not going to set an example for more encroaching. In Peru, it took 21 years to go from custom (encroachment) to law. If you lower the cost of getting land legally, everybody would prefer to earn their land through legal measures than illegal measures. Illegal measures are not costless - it means you have to get thugs on your side, accept corruption. People will always choose the law provided it's cheaper than the illegal part.

But when doing this, it is important to get the numbers. Numbers are very convincing. For example, in Egypt, we tried to find out how many people live in public housing and how many people were given public housing. We found that the number of people living there was ten times the number who had been allotted houses. Obviously, people had built additional storeys on public housing. So the question was do you bring down the additional storeys and destroy the city or do you say I forgive you but this is the last time you're going to do it.

The thing is when you've got numbers, you are able to see what is politically feasible and what is not. If you have to choose between 25 million people and 5,000 big landowners or a few bureaucrats who don't want change, you're going to go for the 25 million. But the first thing you need is an inventory of where you are. How big is your informal sector? What is it constituted by, where are the real obstacles? And then you will see that politicians will do very rational things. Because there is such a thing as reward for satisfying constituencies.

Should the government be acquiring land for private industry?

Logically, if what you are going to do with the land industrially is put it to a higher value use than the person who owns it now, you should be able to buy it. Let the poor people become rich because the land on which they are can be put to more profitable use. Let the market deal with it. This doesn't mean that eminent domain has no role but its use should be very selective. Property should be fungible so that the highest price takes it in the right direction.

In India, operationalisation of a legislation giving tribals rights over traditional land is being held up because of opposition from environmentalists saying this will endanger forests.

That's not a valid argument. The advantage of making sure that whoever has the land or the asset is clearly identified through property record is that you can sanction them if they are damaging the environment.

(Businessworld Issue 13-19 Nov, 2007)

Jamshedpur and governance

This is an article I wrote for DNA last year, probably my last one there. I should have posted it when it was published, but don’t remember why I didn’t. Don't know what the status of Jamshedpur is now, but the questions that the article raises are still relevant.

Anyway, here goes.

Saying tata to good governance?

Saturday, November 18, 2006 21:11 IST

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1064785

Conundrum of democracy in Jamshedpur

Seetha

"It is creating anxiety in the people of Jamshedpur as they are used to a certain standard of life ..." B Muthuraman, managing director, Tata Steel, sounded very much like a colonial potentate as he said that on camera during a programme on the brouhaha over the status of Jamshedpur. The natives wanted a benevolent ruler (in this case, the Tatas) to manage their affairs for them, he seemed to be saying.

But there's no ignoring the fact that over 50,000 people submitted a petition against converting the Jamshedpur Notified Area, administered by the Tata Steel-owned Jamshedpur Utilities & Services Co (Jusco) into an elected municipal corporation. The issue of Jamshedpur's status is currently being seen in black-and-white terms - bad politicians versus good Tatas. But it is really one of a choice between a representative democracy versus a controlled democracy.

There's no denying that the century-old administration by the Tatas is what made a backward village called Sakchi into a bustling township that is India's only UN Global Compact city. On the face of it, in a liberal democracy, an elected body is to be preferred over any non-elected one, since the former is seen to be more accountable.

So when Muthuraman said, "While you have one successful model which has been there for a hundred years would you like to bring in some other model which however lofty may not yet have been tried", it did come across like a desperate attempt to cling on to control.

Except that many urban middle class Indians feel that the other model - a municipality - has been tried and has failed miserably. The politically-stoked tumult over the drive against unauthorised shops in Delhi (which has an elected municipality), only reinforces fears about rapacious politicians and urban decay. The other proposal - that Jamshedpur should be declared an industrial township - is also flawed from a democracy point of view, though the 74th Amendment relating to urban local bodies allows this arrangement where companies are willing to provide civic amenities.

Providing basic infrastructure is the function of the state and the industrial township idea absolves the state of its primary responsibilities and pushes the burden on to someone whose responsibility is to generate wealth and employment.

The controversy over Jamshedpur also throws up some larger issues about the quality of democratic governance. Isn't it tragic that in a 60-year-old democracy, a representative institution like a municipal corporation is seen as negating good governance, and a non-elected body is being preferred in its place? Isn't there something wrong with our democracy if people are scared of those they elect to office?

There is a democratic way of solving the Jamshedpur issue. Let its fate be decided by its residents, through a referendum, perhaps. If the majority wants to retain the current status, let it be so. If they want it to become a municipality, so be it.

But the choice of Jamshedpur's residents is not going to be end of story. Why should an elected municipality mean a decline in standards of civic life? Shouldn't the 50,000 people who want Jamshedpur to stay the way it is then get more involved in the way it is run, either actively or by electing responsible people to the municipality?

Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. These people - and their sympathisers across the country - can probably never hold their own against greedy politicians and corrupt bureaucrats. Their own apathy will be partly responsible for this. But is the political lethargy of citizens reason enough to prefer a bureaucrat or technocrat dominated system over a representative one?

There are no easy answers to all these. But these are questions each Indian must wrestle with and find answers to. Because on that will depend the kind of democracy India will be.

Three new posts

I am posting below three articles I wrote for The Telegraph, Calcutta. These are three issues I feel strongly about.

The first one is the return of the interventionist state. Some of the stories I heard about the cement industry (which I couldn't put into the article, both for want of space as well as to protect the person who told me what had happened) is pretty scary. As is the proposal for the compulsory registration of pregnancies.

The second one is about this whole woman president hype. I have always held that reservations for women in state legislatures and Parliament is silly tokenism and that women politicians aren't working hard enough (more about that later).

The third is about how industrialists are again becoming the devils. The tone of this article may seem a bit out of sync with my usual views, but I strongly believe that the demonisation of big industry is happening partly due to its own fault.
Anyway, read on.