In defence of the speculator

GAUTAM CHIKERMANE
The Indian Express Thursday, August 25, 2005

Governments, regulators and the financially illiterate across the world, suspect, fear and abhor speculators.

• I just can’t understand why thousands of people, pursuing a full-fledged, legally-sound profession, are being looked at as morally depraved bad-guys.
• Here’s a regular man-next-door, with a family to support, who has chosen to buy and sell stocks for a living.
• He has invested his capital to buy and sell these shares. He has invested his time and mind in studying price movements, maybe even fundamentals of companies.
• He has made efforts to come to grips with the entrails of how trading works. And he’s there to make a profit out of it.

Just what does a speculator do? He trades — buys and sells in short time-gaps — stocks, currencies, commodities, derivatives and even real estate. He does this by taking a call on where prices will be in the short term. The term could be as short as a couple of days, it could be a couple of weeks, or even a couple of months. Much of his investment is leveraged, that is, he invests on margin. He takes extreme high risk with his investment — if his call is wrong, he generally loses all his money, if right, he gets a fat return.

Above all, he serves a very important function in society in general and in the stock markets in particular. But for him, there would be no liquidity in the market. Meaning, if an investor wanted to sell his shares at any given point, she would spend far more time seeking a buyer who would pay the price she’s asking for, or else, sell at a lower price and increase the spread between the ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ price of a share. The speculator, by absorbing a significant part of market risk (the potential to lose money), in lieu of significant rewards, smoothens transactions.

Yes, the speculator doesn’t make software, add value. But the value he provides allows thousands of Infosys employees and shareholders to encash their wealth, when they want it, at the least cost. Unlike fifteen years ago, the potential for manipulation in the top 100 or even 200 shares is difficult. That’s why the buy-sell difference in these shares is small. Compare that difference with smaller or less traded stocks, and you’ll know the role of the speculator and the value he brings.

Population policy and health care

FROM POPULATION CONTROL TO REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH — Malthusian Arithmetic: Mohan Rao; Sage Publications New Delhi.

Even as the women's collectives and the voluntary health groups protest against the National Population Policy, which promotes two-child norm, the recent National Commission on Population categorically endorses drastic fertility reduction.

• Why does concerns about population growth continue to dominate India's development and health policies?
• How did the idea of relating population growth to poverty come about?
• What has been the nature of debates on population control among Indian intellectuals and international donor agencies?
• Can the agenda of reproductive health fulfil the need for primary health care?

Through a critical analysis of India's population and public health policies, this book examines these above questions. The key argument of the book is that India's population policies were and are primarily guided by the neo-Malthusian ideas of population growth combined with the eugenic notions of birth control. Internationally the alliance between the birth controllers, American corporate capital, and the demographers not only led to distorted demographic enquiries into population growth but also strongly brought in the neo-Malthusian understanding that the poor with their large family size are responsible for their poverty. The role of international agencies like the Rockfeller Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Population Council, and the World Bank, the book argues, is significant since they are very keen on thrusting the neo-Malthusian and eugenic ideas on India's official policies and programmes.

Through a critical evaluation of the Family Planning programme in India, the book offers a vivid picture of how neo-Malthusianism pervades the entire Family Planning programme which has led to coercive tactics like forceful sterilisation of men and women, introduction of vasectomy camps, forceful insertions of contraceptives like IUCD and the hormonal implants. It also explains how this programme has, over decades, emerged as one of the largest public health initiatives in the world with the entire primary health care being geared towards the goal of a small family size. In the process, as the author shows, the entire health care system was restructured towards meeting the small family norm by projecting it as necessary for the good health of people.

He shows that the alliance between feminists, the neo-Malthusians, and the environmentalists with the patronage of institutions like the World Bank and the Population Council has brought in the so-called "paradigm shift" in the population programme of developing countries. Throughout the book, the author elicits the politics, networks, alliances of different population control lobbyists like the international donors, environmentalists, demographers, and advocates of reproductive rights and elaborates on how justification for population control was sought from different platforms and ideological moorings.

The book is not only a powerful critique of neo-Malthusianism and neo-liberalism which continue to influence India's population policies and programmes, but also underlines the need for an universal primary health care. This well-researched work is of utmost relevance to academicians, activists and policy-makers interested in health care and population policy. S. Anandhi The Hindu, Tuesday, Aug 30, 2005

Muslims and the West

Bhikhu Parekh

India can certainly play a mediatory role between the Muslims and the Western world because of India being a neutral country, maintaining equidistance from both parties, and also enjoying their trust. After Indonesia, India has the largest population of Muslims in the world. It is close to the West and its relations with US, of late, are warming up. India has some experience in dealing with terrorism and it has a good record of integrating its Muslim minority/minorities into its society.

India has had three Muslim presidents, and Muslim officers occupy high positions in the Armed Forces. Despite India facing terrorism from Pakistani sources in Kashmir for the last 15 years, it never declared war on Islam. There has been no large-scale Muslim militancy after the 2002 Gujarat riots in which Muslims found thesmelves at the receiving end.

Indian Muslims, in spite of their grievances, have been thoroughly loyal to the country. No wonder, President Bush noted that out of 150 million Indian Muslims, not one had joined the Al Qaeda or fought in Afghanistan. And above all, we have the Gandhian heritage. Under the stewardship of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, we played a fairly successful mediatory role between the West and the former USSR. I am sure we can do it again. THE INDIAN EXPRESS Wednesday, August 24, 2005 Read comment[s]

Eat the cake and have two too

Believe in the consumption-led approach to growth
Gurcharan Das
The Times of India, November 20, 2005

Indian economy continues to grow robustly, and has been doing so for two decades, contemptuously ignoring our governments. The only way to explain this contradiction is that politics and economics are increasingly getting divorced in India, and we may have become like Italy, where they used to say, the economy grows at night when the government is asleep.

Roach points out that India's consumption share of GDP is 64% — higher than that of Europe (58%), Japan (55%), and China (42%). The world economy needs another major consumption-led growth nation other than America. Thus, "India's consumption-led approach to growth may be better balanced than the resource-mobilisation model of China". That consumption is a virtue is an idea that Lord Keynes made popular, and serious economists still believe it, but Indians with their streak of asceticism are less confident.

Roach suggests that this government's populist programmes, which go under the code name "inclusion", such as the Employment Guarantee Act, might even generate a consumption dividend in the hands of the poor. I would agree with him if I had any hope that its benefits would actually reach the poor. But it would also argue that reforms elsewhere — creating an integrated goods and services tax, furthering disinvestment, committing to genuine special export zones and fiscal prudence — are not incompatible with, but might actually further, social objectives."

Left's right

What about our right to dissent? A response from two students of Jawaharlal Nehru University
JOHN THOMAS & NILANJANA SENGUPTA The Indian Express : Saturday, November 19, 2005

It is unfortunate that the peaceful protest staged by the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University during the prime minister’s visit has been portrayed by a section of the media as “disruption”. Not only has there been a misrepresentation of facts but the interpretation of events has towed the standard line followed by the administration and those who believe in restricting dissent to token forms of expression in seminar halls and high priced publications read by a select few.

No one denies the prime minister his right to free expression. In fact millions of Indians, whether they like it or not, live out lives shaped by the will and whim of the prime minister and the ruling clique, expressed through their policies and programmes. The question here is whether the people — in this case the students — have the right to dissent. And dissent, not only in secluded corners allotted to them, where there is no one to hear them anyway, but right there, face to face with those with whom they disagree.

On November 14, at JNU, it was not Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s right which was ‘disrupted’. It was the right to protest — the cornerstone of any democracy — that was violated and brutally disrupted. Not just the editorialising, but the facts too were incorrect. When, on that day, a group of students raised black flags and slogans against the neo-liberal policies of the Congress government, there was no ensuing scuffle between students. The protesting students were brutally beaten up by National Students Union of India and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad lumpens from all sides and the police actively aided and abetted the attack.

When peaceful protesters were being beaten up right in front of his eyes, it is indeed ironical that the prime minister was quoting Voltaire — “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.” Truly, the point is not whether you agree with the protesters, but it is time someone speaks out in defence of their right to dissent. Both writers are students at the School of Social Sciences, JNU

Your comment[s] on this article Read comment[s]

Take time to choose your philosophy

The students are half my age and hence need to know that the political ideal they are espousing is primarily because of association, i.e., to please the peers or superiors, and not out of any rational conviction. They are not enough into life for having a balanced view towards money and economy.Dissent need not be a spectacle or mob-anarchic. The democratic freedom we have earned should not be a cover for the Protest industry. Now that we are into the media-era, more sophisticated tools of canvassing should be employed. But for that the dialogue process requires to be transparent and honest, as Habermas would emphasize, and not the irrational zeal of recruiting cadres by hook or by crook. Fraternally, Tusar N. Mohapatra, Posted by: Tusar N. Mohapatra, India, 20-11-2005 at 0243 hours IST

Tariffs or dual pricing

YOGINDER K. ALAGH

The Indian Express Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Raja Chelliah had pointed out that by the late ’80s India had moved from a control system which required a babu to control prices to rule-based systems — like the use of tariffs or dual pricing — in more than two-thirds of Indian industry. I know from experience how difficult the initial reform is since the one to one relationship is a cosy one for the industrialist and the “controller”. Arguing that rule-based systems like replacement costs were not possible as this would mean that the moneys collected would need to be kept aside separately and prices would rise, reveal the bureaucracy’s war economy mindset and ignorance of elementary economic theory.

It neurotically keeps coming back to the bad cost plus so-called “fair rules”, which uninformed politicos and bureaucrats love for the powers they give them on individual economic agents. Policy then has a level playing objective, so that the transition to a global economy is knowledge based and without avoidable human costs.

Yukichi Fukuzawa

Norimitsu Onishi

The Times of India: Sunday, November 20, 2005

TOKYO: A young Japanese woman in the comic book 'Hating the Korean Wave' exclaims, "It's not an exaggeration to say that Japan built the South Korea of today!" In another passage the book states that "there is nothing at all in Korean culture to be proud of." In another comic book, 'Introduction to China', which portrays the Chinese as a depraved people obsessed with cannibalism, a woman of Japanese origin says: "Take the China of today, its principles, thought, literature, art, science, institutions. There's nothing attractive." The two comic books, portraying Chinese and Koreans as base peoples and advocating confrontation with them, have become runaway best sellers in Japan in the last four months. In their graphic and unflattering drawings of Japan's fellow Asians and in the unapologetic, often offensive contents of their speech bubbles, the books reveal some of the sentiments underlying Japan's worsening relations with the rest of Asia.

They also point to Japan's longstanding unease with the rest of Asia and its own sense of identity, which is akin to Britain's apartness from the Continent. Much of Japan's history in the last century and a half has been guided by the goal of becoming more like the West and less like Asia. Today, China and South Korea's rise to challenge Japan's position as Asia's economic, diplomatic and cultural leader is inspiring renewed xenophobia against them here. Kanji Nishio, a scholar of German literature, is honorary chairman of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform, the nationalist organisation that has pushed to have references to the country's wartime atrocities eliminated from junior high school textbooks.

Nishio is blunt about how Japan should deal with its neighbours, saying nothing has changed since 1885, when one of modern Japan's most influential intellectuals, Yukichi Fukuzawa, said Japan should emulate the advanced nations of the West and leave Asia by dissociating itself from its backward neighbours, especially China and Korea. NYTNS

Politics is a difficult vocation

By Pratap Bhanu Mehta

The Hindu Saturday, Dec 27, 2003

Outbursts against politicians are usually not very helpful because they unhelpfully moralise an institutional and social problem. We want to organise power democratically in a large society but are not very imaginative about how to do it. It is a commonplace observation that running for office requires tremendous resources and unless you have a private fortune at your disposal, politics is an impossible ambition. Instead of facing this problem squarely, our moralistic pieties created a system of perverse incentives where the only way politicians could raise money was clandestinely.

It is a symptom of our distance from politics that we underestimate what an extraordinarily difficult vocation it is. Reconciling a multitude of interests is a job for which we express derision only at our peril. And we ought in all fairness to admit that socially, politics is amongst the most open spaces Indian society has created. It is the one social space, where, when all is said and done, the dominant cleavages in society find representation. Politics mirrors our society more than the market, more than professional institutions, more than the government middle class. It has, with occasional lapses, allowed for a social mixing of different sections of society in a way no other activity has.

There is an obvious reason why we love to hate our politicians. It is the only way of avoiding misanthropy, hating most of our social world. Is there any class whose complicities in our predicament do not run as deep as those of politicians? Business that does not pay taxes even after rates become reasonable, teachers who do not teach unless it is for tuitions, doctors who are complicit in rackets for over testing, lawyers who will resist legal reform, journalists whose objectivity is compromised for something even less exalting than votes, bureaucrats who self abdicate responsibility even when there is no pressure, professional bodies that fail to self regulate, NGOs that often chase good money more than good works, trade unions that will do anything to protect their privileges, judges who will become punitive to become popular, are each in their own way, contributing to the pathologies we want to lay at the door of politicians. But the impurity of politicians allows us to feel pure, their crookedness affirms the uprightness of the rest of us, their actions allow all of us to behave as victims and their presence explains all our woes.

Any robustly functioning society needs, amongst other things, an imaginative institutional architecture, that sets the right set of incentives and a core moral consensus that can make the lines between right and might, opportunism and principle, clear. The pathologies of politics only reflect the fact that we are only partially successful on the first front, and as a society deeply confused on the second. De Tocqueville long ago rightly observed that politics can dance lightly on the surface only when there is a core moral consensus to restrain it. But this moral consensus can often be produced only outside politics: in families, in social organisations, in schools, in religious institutions.

But these institutions, with the very arguable exception of families, have largely failed in this aspect of their social function: organised religion is too compromised a moral force to be a serious locus of defendable values. Anyone would be hard pressed to defend politicians beyond the point, so much of their veniality is unnecessary. But a society that acquires habitual contempt for politics and politicians is not a society on the road to moral enlightenment; it is a society opening itself up to despotism. This contempt for politicians is usually high on emotion and short on analysis, and has become a convenient way of displacing responsibility. Politicians are the totem of profanity by which we all affirm our own sacredness.

Cause and caution

One lesson we ought to have learnt from the failures of Marxism is to be cautious about attributing political outcomes and choices to over-determined systemic causes such as globalisation. There is no convincing and determinate connection between globalisation and Hindu nationalism. By Pratap Bhanu Mehta The Hindu Friday, Feb 27, 2004

K Natwar Singh

The Hindustan Times: Sunday, November 20, 2005

• Politics need not knowingly slip into the slime and squalor of an endless debasing debate and deliberation.
• Our political and other institutions are under siege by round-the-clock cable TV onslaught in the name of transparency.
• Free speech does not mean freedom to abuse and misinform.
• Subtlety of style and form is now almost extinct as far as the national political dialogue is concerned.
• The establishment of truth should be our primary duty. Not the display of the nastiest emotions — envy, vanity, greed and jealousy.
• Why such ferocious obsession with politics. How about courage, nobility of heart and mind.
• What about using leisure to enjoy life and not aim at squalid intrigue and loathsome verbal over-kill.
• Why this penchant for building edifices of lies.

Some Animals are More Equal than Others

By RAVI VYAS

George Orwell's classic, Animal Farm has gone down in popular imagination as the anti-Communist novel of all times. But, looking back on it more than 60 years on, this 90-page satire on dictatorships is much more than an anti-socialist diatribe. Of course it is a political novel, but Orwell's politics embraced a number of issues: the essential nature of all dictatorships, both of the Left and the Right, politics and the corruption of language, the ephemeral nature of human relationships or the only form of real angst, the menace of bureaucracies, but, above all, the commitment of language as the partner of truth.

Prima facie, Animal Farm is a short satire on dictatorships. The animals on the farm revolt against their master, Jones. They are successful in getting rid of the tyrant and in managing the practical work of the farm; but they are disastrously unsuccessful over some things they had never regarded as a problem, their dealings with each other. The Revolution is hardly complete before differences appear. The pigs do not actually work, but direct and supervise others. With their superior knowledge, it was natural they should assume the leadership. With the leadership, they also assume the buckets of milk yielded by the cows, and the apples from the orchard.

Once there was no longer any danger of Jones's return, a new threat must be found to keep the other animals working their hardest, contented in submission to the pigs. The new threat is himself a pig, Snowball. Long after Snowball has been driven into exile, his name serves as a slogan of hatred: his machinations are held responsible for every failure on the farm, and every animal suspected of disaffection is denounced as an emissary of Snowball. Meantime, the basic principle of the Revolution, " All Animals are Equal", inscribed on the barn wall after the expulsion of Jones, has a qualifying clause — "But Some Animals are More Equal than Others".

Animal Farm works as an allegory because the story is coherent on a number of levels. Since it is conceived and written in the classic tradition of satire — the tradition of going back and forth in time or what academics describe as the tradition of "receding planes" — it contains something for every reader. Like Gulliver's Travels or Aesop's Fables, it makes a delightful children's story. It can also be read as a lament for the fate of revolutions. When all is said and done, it was the language of politics that was responsible for the dénouement: "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind." The Hindu Literary Review Sunday, Aug 07, 2005

The End of Poverty

Touch the Last Child: Can images of deprivation soon become just pieces of history? Jeffrey Sachs’ roadmap needs attention, says Pratap Bhanu Mehta The Indian Express Sunday, April 17, 2005

If one had to choose one word to describe both Jeffrey Sachs, the man and his vision, the word that comes to mind is audacious. The End of Poverty is doubly audacious. It chronicles one of the most astonishing careers an economist has ever had. Sachs tamed hyper-inflation in Bolivia, was credited with the success of Poland’s economic reforms, and was associated with shock therapy in Russia, a charge he denies. Subsequently, Sachs emerged as amongst the most indefatigable champions of the world’s poor, a principal architect of the Millennium Development Goals.

The book chronicles his attempts to understand the complexities of development, and lobbying rich countries to get their policies right. The second half is a vigorous argument in favour of new approaches to confront fatal diseases and debilitating poverty in developing countries, especially Africa. Its central message is that poverty and disease can be eradicated, but it will require, especially in Africa, generous aid.

Sachs shows with untiring vigour how developed countries have blocked every single move that could benefit really poor countries: blocked aid, reneged on debt forgiveness, refused to open their own markets, and then attached conditions to aid that were designed to ensure that aid programs failed. Sachs often writes with a great sense of historical parallel and irony. But along the way the reader will learn of the intimate connections between geography, climate, ecology and economics, lessons that few economists care to remember. The central lesson of this book is that development is difficult but not esoteric. Indeed, it is a failure to grasp the obvious that has most stymied the process of development.

The charkha spun cobwebs

The God That Failed SWAGATO GANGULY

THE TIMES OF INDIA October 1, 2005

It is commonplace to link India's failings in tackling large-scale poverty and destitution, to its inability to live up to the lofty vision of its founding fathers when they fought for independence. This line of thinking, however, can be turned around. It is precisely because we place Gandhi and Nehru, particularly the former, upon a pedestal that we do not examine their thoughts too closely. If we were actually to become intimate with what, for example, the father of the nation had to say, we might raise troubling questions. From a pragmatic perspective what matters is not how many tears one sheds, but how many children one saves. Indian politicians are typi-cally good at the former, but short on ideas when it comes to the latter. And they don't depart from Gandhi in that respect.

If one takes the principal weapons that could save Indian children — modern medicine, high incomes and education (particularly female literacy) — Gandhi was ambivalent about the last two, and decidedly against the first. When Kasturba was dying, Gandhi would not allow doctors to administer penicillin to her. The incident is usually cast in a heroic mould by hagiographers, but it is reasonable to query whether this would have been Kasturba's uncoerced choice in the matter.

Coherence or intellectual consistency are not hallmarks of Gandhian thinking. And it is not enough to gloss this as indicative of flexibility or lack of dogma. Gandhian fuzziness and lack of clarity have had severe negative consequences for India. Its later variant has been the trademark hypocrisy of Indian politicians for which, not accidentally, the iconic image in popular culture is the bumbling figure in a Gandhi cap.

Gandhi's idea of the charkha as the solution to India's pauperism is similarly whimsical. If we had to personally weave all our clothes on a charkha, there would be greater pauperisation, not less. Gandhi's fetish for the charkha, and the mythical self-sufficient village economy that it represents, translated into the impulse to preserve small-scale industry from competition in independent India. Sectors reserved for small-scale industry could not develop economies of scale and consistent output of internationally competitive products.

He opposed not just England but the industrial principle itself, spawning a loony Luddite left as well as a hard-right swadeshi brigade more strongly entrenched in India than anywhere else in the world. The paradox is that Gandhi was financed by industrialists: the Birlas, the Sarabhais, the Bajajs. As Sarojini Naidu trenchantly observed, it cost a fortune to keep Gandhi in poverty. The Gandhian model is usually played off against the Nehruvian one, but it is useful to remember that Nehru was Gandhi's protege. The economic autarky that Nehru instituted was a scaled-up version of Gandhi's self-sufficient village. It was a bad idea diluted, which helped extend its sway. Six decades into Independence we should be able to look our national heroes in the eye, warts and all.

Thorstein Veblen and Dr. M.N. Srinivas

Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) was of the view that the lower classes were not out to overthrow the upper class; but, rather, strived to climb up to it. Its presence, indeed, served the larger community by setting the example and giving the working class purpose. Peter Landry

We have to recognise the process that the doyen of sociologists, Dr. M.N. Srinivas, had termed Sanskritisation. This term comes from the word Sanskriti, which means culture. This learned scholar had told me years ago that the Indian masses first ape, then digest, and finally assimilate elite behaviour. He had decades of published research to prove this. By Subramanian Swamy

Wrong shade of red

Sitaram Yechury
The Hindustan Times: November 19, 2005

Often described as Left extremism, there is a concerted attempt to denounce communism as fostering a ‘cult of violence’ and equating anarchism with revolutionary activities. It needs to be underlined that anarchism is the very antithesis of Marxism and mindless militancy negates — and often regresses — the fundamental tenets of revolutionary activity.

The CPI(M) was formed in 1964. Certain sections went on to form the CPI(M-L) in May 1969, based on an erroneous understanding that the Indian ruling classes were a ‘comprador bourgeoisie’, i.e. they were merely agents of imperialism and, hence, did not possess a social force or a mass following domestically, it was, therefore, only a matter of time when they would be overthrown. Thus, there was no necessity to mobilise the people and organise a mass revolutionary party. The people, it is presumed, are ready for a revolution by overthrowing the ruling classes. All that was needed was to arm the people and, hence, emerged the slogan ‘People’s War’. This slogan was accompanied by its twin of ‘annihilation’ of class enemies. The following years saw widespread violence and anarchy. The CPI(M) was the main target as it was seen as ‘obstructing’ this process.

Apart from such reprehensible violent activity, there is a serious ideological problem as well. While expressly appropriating ‘Maoism’, they seek to replicate the pre-revolutionary Chinese experience in modern India. By doing so, they negate Mao himself who once said a party which was not able to analyse the situation evolving in its own country and would rather emulate experiences of another country without analysis was a “hotchpotch”. It is a serious ideological flaw to universalise this experience and to seek to impose it under modern Indian conditions.

The CPI(M), while rejecting both the ideological positions and the practice of the various Naxalite groups, stated in its programme: “The struggle to realise the aims of the people’s democratic revolution through the revolutionary unity of all patriotic and democratic forces with the workers-peasants alliance at its core, is a complicated and a protracted one. It is to be waged in varying conditions in varying phases. Different classes, different strata within the same class, are bound to take different positions in these distinct phases of the development of the revolutionary movement. Only a strong Communist Party, which develops the mass movements and utilises appropriate united front tactics to achieve the strategic objective, can make use of these shifts and draw into its ranks these sections. Only such a party bringing within its fold the most sincere and sacrificing revolutionaries would be able to lead the mass of the people through the various twists and turns that are bound to take place in the course of the revolutionary movement.” (Article 7.16)

“The CPI(M) strives to achieve the establishment of people’s democracy and socialist transformation through peaceful means. By developing a powerful mass revolutionary movement, by combining parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggle, the working class and its allies will try their utmost to overcome the resistance of the forces of reaction and to bring about these transformations through peaceful means. However, it needs always to be borne in mind that the ruling classes never relinquish their power voluntarily. They seek to defy the will of the people and seek to reverse it by lawlessness and violence. It is, therefore, necessary for the revolutionary forces to be vigilant and so orient their work that they can face up to all contingencies, to any twist and turn in the political life of the country.” (Article 7.18)

Social transformation in India, thus, can only be on the basis of the concrete analysis of the concrete conditions that exist in India. It can neither replicate the Russian or the Chinese or for that matter any other experience in the world. The writer is Rajya Sabha MP and Member, CPI(M) Politburo

Charkha stood for self-help

An economist’s take on Gandhi’s vision: I.G. Patel’s posthumous lecture prescribes Gandhian touch for economy. Express News Service: Saturday , November 19, 2005

New Delhi, November 18: Giving the economy a Gandhian touch to ensure overall well-being. This is what the late Dr I.G. Patel, renowned economist and former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) prescribes for an ideal India. Dr Patel was to deliver this year’s Lakdawala Memorial Lecture organised by the Institute of Social Sciences and the Planning Commission on September 1. The lecture, which was postponed after Patel died on July 17, was read out today at a gathering of academicians at the Indian Institute of Social Sciences. Former RBI Governor Bimal Jalan chaired the meeting.

According to Dr Patel, ‘‘Gandhiji did not perhaps outline his economic vision in the language of economics. But he had a clear vision of an economic system which encompassed every aspect of Indian society. We can ignore his vision only at our peril.’’ On charkha, Dr Patel says,‘‘It would be a travesty to reduce it to wearing khadi. The charkha stood for self-help, dignity of labour, decentralisation of economic activity, narrowing of the gap between cities and villages, and above all, for ending enslavement of ordinary people without property or skills, who had only their hand physical labour to sell as a means of meagre livelihood.’’

He says Gandhiji was against capitalism if the means of production was concentrated in a few hands. ‘‘He wanted everyone to own his means of production — a concept much wider than the current notion of empowerment through education and the like. He was against socialism as it concentrated all means of production in the hands of the state, which led to the enslavement of everyone. If everyone could have access to machinery, he was for it. Where large-scale production was inescapable as in the case of steel, he was for public ownership,’’ he says.

‘‘Decentralisation of production may not be easy. But something needs to be done to prevent the relentless march to urban slums. With today’s technology and with rural electrification and technical training, it should be possible to carry jobs where people live and not vice versa,’’ says Patel.

Spirituality and Sustainability

Anil K Rajvanshi

All the development models will become untenable if we do not put a cap on our greed for materials, resources and energy. Present economic models are based on increased consumption and encourage greed. Ever increasing choices available to an average person fuel the greed impulse since the fear of missing out is very high. Spirituality can help in keeping our greed for materials and resources in check and sustainable development can only take place when we use the resources for our needs and not for our greed as Mahatma Gandhi once said. Spirituality is the state of mind that makes it understand that the Truth is beyond the barriers of worldliness, caste, creed, race or geographical boundaries.

It is universal in nature and a great spiritual thought is a cause of celebration for the whole mankind. It connects us to Universal Consciousness and gives a certain perspective in life. As a person progresses on the path of spirituality his or her priorities in life change. The focus of life shifts more towards getting personal happiness through mental peace and is less on material needs and desires and more towards sustainability. Recent examples of Mahatma Gandhi and Einstein have shown that with very few needs and living very simple lives they were able to produce the highest quality of thought.

Spirituality also helps us have a compassionate view of nature and as we evolve spiritually we become more tuned to it which helps us in preserving it. Besides it helps us live in harmony with each other and enables everybody to work together for the common good. Also in all religions the respect for nature is preached and the maxim of simple living and high thinking is ingrained. Nevertheless the clock on technology cannot be turned back. It is an evolutionary process and as we advance technologically we also become more spiritual, since technology helps us in doing things more efficiently and thus our needs are satisfied with less quantity of materials and energy. This allows us to think and reflect on higher things in life.

Eventually we will follow nature where all the processes are carried out extremely efficiently with few materials, in minimum number of steps and at room temperatures. Thus a combination of high technology together with spiritual growth will be a new paradigm of sustainable development. Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) 2004

Happiness doesn’t equal a Mercedes Benz

MURLI MANOHAR JOSHI
The Indian Express Sunday, July 28, 2002

The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Resource Development indices have been designed on the basis of suggestions and modules provided by the international financial institutions. These mostly relate to and reflect the material development of a society. My basic point is that development of the human personality does not entirely depend on material values. Going by any definition, there are four components in a human personality—body, mind, intellect and soul. Any development parameter should reflect the influences of all these four parameters. For instance, if a society is affluent but fails to impart human values to its individual, then its development indices should not be counted as high.

In an affluent society, the crime graph could very high, whereas in a less materially endowed society the same incidents of crime could be low. Which then is the developed or the under-developed society? Similarly, a social set up may have a well evolved aesthetic-cultural value system in place, but can be less affluent with less economic mobility. It is time that we look at the world through a different looking glass—new parameters—in order to understand how peace, democracy and development is inter-connected and inter-dependent. How by encouraging and sustaining the human values of even an under-developed society, the conditions of strife can be reduced. On the question of human value, the conditions that need to be looked into are compassion, the instinct to share with others, tolerance, respect for diversity.

A society should also be judged against these inherent human, civilisational values. All these aspects needs to be factored in the indices along with the educational attainment, life expectancy and income levels. There should a redefining of the parameters. Only then can the human development index reflect the true ground reality. There is a need to re-evaluate and re-define what is ‘a developed society’ and what is an ‘under-developed society’. In fact, the UNDP agreed that there is substance in the view that I am taking on the developing of new parameters to evaluate human development index. They agreed that factors like the human values, happiness index of a society, spiritual level of a society should find a place in the parameters.

Individuals of a society can attain fulfillment, happiness and sense of achievement without owning a Mercedes car. Whereas, an upwardly mobile society which enables it individuals to achieve a high level of material comfort may not provide mental and spiritual succour.

Robert B. Reich: The liberal ideal

• First, the separation of church and state. We do not want to live in a theocracy. We should maintain that barrier and government has no business telling someone what they ought to believe or how they should conduct their private lives.
• Secondly, liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.

The current degree of concentrated wealth in America is a direct threat to our well-functioning democracy. We can see it in the symptoms every day, in terms of campaign financial contributions streaming in to mostly the Bush campaign from corporations. We also see the enormous effect that large corporations have, and the enormous power they wield in Washington simply by virtue of their size and economic power.

• Liberals, thirdly, have always represented opportunity and equality of opportunity, whether it be access to affordable health care, or good education, or a fair chance to get a good job.

The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality of result. It’s equality of opportunity. There’s a fundamental difference. So condemning the working class and the poor to lousy schools and to a health care system that is increasingly skewed toward the privileged violates these basic tenets of liberalism, as does a tax break that is overwhelmingly benefiting those who are already very rich at a time in our nation’s history when the gap between the rich and everyone else is wider than it’s been in over a hundred years.

• And finally, liberals believe in a foreign policy that is multi-national and collaborative, working through the United Nations, NATO and our major allies, seeking to prevent violence and war through spreading middle-class prosperity rather than through the simple assertion of our military might. Our moral authority is as important, if not more important, than our troop strength or our high-tech weapons. We are rapidly losing that moral authority, not only in the Arab world but all over the world.

The silent majority really is a liberal majority, even though the word liberal has taken a real beating over the last 20 years by radical conservatives. The fact is that most Americans support these basic values. They represent mainstream America. The problem is that the radical conservatives are better organized, have more money, and have monopolized more of the airwaves and broadcast media than liberals. Also, the Democrats have been so weak-kneed and have lacked the courage of their convictions.

I’ve spent half of my adult life in public office. I have run for elective office. I’ve spent the other half of my adult life as a student and scholar of the American political and economic system. So I don’t use those words carelessly. I use that example to illustrate the difference between public and private morality. Radical conservatives want to police bedrooms. It’s not government’s business what people do in their private bedrooms. But public morality is quite distinct. And liberals ought to be sounding the alarm about a breakdown of public morality at the highest reaches of corporate America in terms of the looting of corporations, executive salaries that are preposterously out of proportion to what they ought to be, and also corporate contributions and lobbying, and pollution of American politics. These are the real moral failings today, and they need to be understood as such. There is a crisis of public morality. Instead of policing bedrooms, we ought to be doing a better job policing boardrooms.

This is a time when progressives, liberals, people who share these values, need to become more involved than they have at any time since the Vietnam War. The populism that Republicans use is an artificial, superficial populism. It’s a populism that doesn’t really respond to the deep needs of working Americans. In fact, the median wage for workers without college degrees continues to drop, adjusted for inflation, particularly when you consider the erosion -- the steady erosion -- of health benefits. Republicans want to blame affirmative action. They want to blame women and feminists. They blame immigrants, just like they want to blame the French and Germans and anyone else who was not with us in our war in Iraq.

The blame game is a cheap and dangerous form of populism. It doesn’t respond to the underlying issues, the underlying problems. It simply channels people’s anger toward others. It’s divisive. It separates Americans from one another and it separates us from the rest of the world. The kind of populism that Democrats used to espouse was a populism that focused on the genuine needs of working people for better jobs, for health care, for better education, for better opportunities, and the needs of people around the world for expanded opportunities as well. And that’s the kind of populism we need. A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW: June 14, 2004

Veblen vs. Marx

Thorstein Veblen was odd man out in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century American economics. Veblen is best known for his book The Theory of the Leisure Class. In it he introduced the term "conspicuous consumption." Conspicuous consumption was consumption undertaken to make a statement to others about one's class or accomplishments. This term, more than any other, is what Veblen is known for. Veblen wanted economists to try to understand the social and cultural causes and effects of economic changes. What social and cultural causes were responsible for the shift from hunting and fishing to farming, for example, and what were the social and cultural effects of this shift? Veblen's skepticism about religion and his rough manners and unkempt appearance made him unattractive to universities. Home Books Encyclopedia

Thorstein Veblen(1857-1929): Veblen's theory of the leisure class is to be compared to that of Marx's theory. Marx was of the view that the upper class were at "swords points" with one another and the inevitable historical outcome would be the violent overthrow of the upper classes. Veblen, however, was of the view that the lower classes were not out to overthrow the upper class; but, rather, strived to climb up to it. Its presence, indeed, served the larger community by setting the example and giving the working class purpose. Peter Landry www.blupete.com

A commodity is a Veblen good if people's preference for buying it increases as a direct function of its price. The definition does not require that any Veblen goods actually exist. However, it is claimed that some types of high-status goods, such as expensive wines or perfumes are Veblen goods, in that decreasing their prices decreases people's preference for buying them because they are no longer perceived as exclusive or high status products. The Veblen effect is named after the economist Thorstein Veblen, who invented the concepts of conspicuous consumption and status-seeking. Wikipedia

Marshall McLuhan, Peter Drucker, Alvin Tofler and Robert Reich

Marshall McLuhan was born in 1911 and died in 1980. By the time of his death, he had been dismissed by respectable academicians, and he was known in the popular press as an eccentric intellectual whose day in the media spotlight had come and gone. By 1980, the transformation of human life catalyzed by television was taken for granted, and it no longer seemed interesting to ask where the electronic media were taking us. But in recent years, the explosion of new media - particularly the Web - has caused new anxieties. Or to put a more McLuhanesque spin on it, the advent of new digital media has brought the conditions of the old technologies into sharper relief, and made us suddenly conscious of our media environment. In the confusion of the digital revolution, McLuhan is relevant again. McLuhan's slogans "The medium is the message" and "The global village" are recited like mantras in every digital atelier in the world. By Gary Wolf Wired magazine, Jan 1996

For twenty-five years, Alvin Toffler has been shocking us with his descriptions of the future. From Future Shock to The Third Wave, Toffler has argued that we are involved in nothing less than a change of civilization - as profound as that from hunter-gatherer to agricultural, from agricultural to industrial. Now back with a new book, War and Anti-War, Toffler is as provocative as ever, as he examines the increasingly bloody consequences of cultures in collision as the Digital Revolution gathers force. The most successful futurists don't predict the future. They make their fortune by interpreting the present in a new way - a way that makes more sense and seems more conventional the farther into the future one goes. Alvin Toffler made his fortune by explaining the strange dread people were beginning to feel about rapid technological change in the late 1960s. By Peter Schwartz Wired magazine, May 1993

"Knowledge exchange" is an intrinsic and critical aspect of business as we have come to understand it in the late 20th century. After all, we speak easily of "knowledge workers," "knowledge resources" and the "knowledge economy." Analysts such as Peter Drucker, Alvin Tofler and Robert Reich have been telling us for years about the central role of human understanding in the global economy which is now fully upon us. Companies need the knowledge of all their workers, not just the privileged insight of top management. They need to establish bi-directional paths to the knowledge of suppliers and strategic allies. Most of all, companies need first-hand knowledge about what customers and prospects want, and be able to turn these perceived needs into successful products and services. By Christopher Locke May 1994 issue of Internet World

Gandhi's India

Gandhi wanted an India where terrorism and violence weren't an option to resolve conflicts. Violence created more violence and was a downward spiral into doom, death, and destruction of the social fabric. Gandhi pleaded life-long for

• non-violence; dialogue; consensus-building;
• love and understanding of the opponent;
• religious tolerance;
• massive employment schemes to give productive employment for India's millions, especially its youth;
• rebuilding India's villages and creating ecumenical communities of care and concern;
• promotion of local handicrafts and skills;
• self-reliance in agriculture and industry;
• production of need-based basic goods and services;
• empowering communities to participate and create their own political structures from bottom-up;
• encouraging self-help projects for human development of all so that swaraj would not result in dependency;
• making basic education a priority;
• ensuring that all Indians irrespective of their religion, caste, class, colour, or education were equal and had equality of opportunity in every sphere of life;
• and that one's moral values would underpin every activity.

VIVEK PINTO The Hindu Magazine Sunday, Oct 02, 2005

The relevance of Hind Swaraj

The fulcrum of his moral and political thought. VIVEK PINTO

The enduring significance of Gandhi, in no small part, lies in Hind Swaraj, a clearly written and easy to read book which Raghavan Iyer calls "the point d'appui [the fulcrum] of Gandhi's moral and political thought." Iyer says, "the essential relevance of Hind Swaraj is perhaps even more poignant today owing to the deepening and spreading sense of alienation, especially among the young, from the beliefs and values of an acquisitive, if affluent, society."

A question rarely asked is: why did Gandhi write Hind Swaraj? Was there one important reason that spurred Gandhi to write this seminal and polemical work, as it is a dialogue between the "Reader" and "Editor"? The latter was Gandhi and the former were Indian extremists who, in 1905, came to prominence in London. By 1907, India House was the hub for "youth sent on a scholarship scheme" to terrorise the Raj by murdering, important British officials and exporting arms to India. Thus, they expected the British to grant India independence.

James Hunt, an American scholar, in Gandhi in London (1978) answers the question. Hunt writes, Gandhi "had his most public encounter with ideology of terrorism," during a dinner to celebrate the Dussehra festival on October 24, 1909, at Nazimuddin's restaurant in Bayswater, London, and that "as a consequence of this encounter Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj." (p.236) The existence of an "ideology of terrorism" is evidenced by the murder of Sir William Curzon-Wylie, an aide to the secretary of state for India, Lord John Morley, in July 1909, by Madanlal Dhingra, a student and member of this group.

Gandhi and V.D. Savarkar (1883-1966), a fanatical anarchist and spokesperson for Indian terrorists — extradited in 1910 and transported for life in the conspiracy to murder the British Collector of Nasik, A.M.T. Jackson — spoke at this dinner. Gandhi in "A Word of Explanation," Young India, January 1921, writes, "It [Hind Swaraj] was written ... in answer to the Indian school of violence ... I came in contact with every known Indian anarchist in London. Their bravery impressed me, but I felt that their zeal was misguided."

Gandhi's moral and principled argument with Savarkar and "the Indian school of violence" was that violence was intrinsically evil and opposed to human values. Hence, its ends of purportedly gaining swaraj for India were immoral and abhorrent. Further, he argued: what did the terrorists envisage for free India after British departure? In other words, was terrorism and turmoil going to be used against free Indians? Gandhi using polemics as a literary device in Hind Swaraj dialogued with the anarchists, who posed as nationalists, on various critical issues pertaining to India and unambiguously concluded that, "violence was no remedy for India's ills". Instead, Gandhi called for "a gospel of love in place of hate ... replace violence with self-sacrifice ... pit soul force [satyagraha] against brute force."

Gandhi said, "I must confess that I do not draw a sharp line or any distinction between economics and ethics. Economics that hurt the moral well-being of an individual or a nation are immoral and therefore [we] ... insult the naked by giving them clothes they do not need, instead of giving them work they sorely need." Is this the India that you want? The writer is a Gandhi scholar who teaches at the University of Tokyo. The Hindu Magazine Sunday, Oct 02, 2005

Drucker can’t die

IN REMEMBRANCE; PETER DRUCKER: 1909-2005 GAUTAM CHIKERMANE

Drucker was so young, so vibrant, so full of new ideas. How could he age, leave alone die? But on November 11, eight days before he turned 96, he passed away, leaving behind a work that will live on till civilisations do. It will influence more thinkers and leaders than any other single individual’s work. Best known as the ‘father of management’, he had become a subject, a course, if not a field, in himself. Something like Plato, Keynes or Ved Vyasa. His work sweeps from history to art, finance to technology, organisations to people. All of which will continue to breath life into ideas.

As someone who has been following management and organisational behaviour in particular and seeking the unseen in general, I can say without batting an eyelid that even at 95, Drucker was the youngest business, management, societal and economic thinker alive. And the youngest futurist, even though he claimed not to be one. But what he wrote, the ideas he nourished were pretty much like looking into a reverse rear view mirror that showed a crystal-clear future. How else could he have written books like The Post-Capitalist Society (1993) and articles like ‘The future that has already happened’?

The one hallmark of the man has been his being way ahead in observing, capturing, analysing new trends and fresh ideas and translating them into insights that are digestible, touchable by the rest of us. I feel a dull aching in my heart, an uneasy vacuum when I realise that this consultant’s consultant, this guru’s guru, this man who has directly influenced the likes of Churchill and Welch, the 20th century’s most influential philosopher has gone without leaving an intellectual heir. He will rest in peace, but his ideas will continue to drive the rest of us. The Indian Express Monday, November 14, 2005