My Top Ten list for Rio+10

Never mind what the cynics say, Johannesburg can, should, make a difference
MOHAN DHARIA THE INDIAN EXPRESS Saturday, August 31, 2002

The international conferences held at Stockholm and Rio de Janerio have attracted the world’s attention to the issues of fast degrading forests, wildlife, nature, life supporting systems and ever increasing pollution. Population explosion, poverty, half-baked industrialisation, unplanned urbanisation and indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources are the main culprits. Leaders of various countries who met at Rio proposed an agenda to meet this challenge. And subsequent conferences held over the past ten years have tried to pursue this agenfa.

But the results have been discouraging. Most of the developed rich countries that create most of the poisonous gases and consume most of the natural resources are primarily responsible for the threat to our ecosystems. Poor countries unwilling to control their population are also responsible. The Johnnesburg Earth Summit has a wide ranging agenda aimed at improving people’s lives, conserving natural resources and balancing the needs and responsibilities of the developed and developing world. From the agonising experience of the past, many developing countries like India are circumspect about the outcome of Johannesburg Summit.

The disenchantment comes from the stonewalling by the US-led group on the issues dear to the heart of developing countries. The negative approach of the US and other countries has utterly failed in building fund raising capacities, transfer of technology to developing world and in fulfilling the basic programme commonly agreed in the historical Rio de Janerio Summit of 1992.
It’s expected that the Johannesburg summit will prescribe basic guidelines and a timebound plan of action for sustainable development. Here are ten of my suggestions:

1. Natural resources like land, water, air, forests and species belong to society. No individual or organisation should have a right to utilise these resources according to his or her desire. Society or the people should lay certain conditions over the use of the natural resources in resepective areas.
2. The luxury and pleasure oriented lifestyle must change. Instead, people should adopt the principle of ‘Moderate Living and High Thinking’. Renowned saints and seers all over the world have advocated the philosophy of ‘Simple Living and High Thinking for the past hundreds of years. Mahatma Gandhiji warned the world, long ago that ‘‘nature has enough potential to meet the geniune human need but it would never be possible to meet the ever growing greed.’’
3. It would be advisable to encourage decentralised production in order to preserve nature and ensure social justice. A decentralised economy and Decentralised authority are not only consistant with people’s democracy, but they’re equally ecofriendly and necessary for sustainable development.
4. The craze for unplanned urbanisation and race for mega cities should be immediately halted. Mega cities have created unhealthy filthy slums and pollution all over the world. No new city above a population above one million should be encouraged, and all cities with a one million plus population should be asked to commence decongestion by creating new growth centres.
This action will considerably help in bringing down the demand for water, wider roads, flyoers and markets, avoiding further pollution.
5. The backbone of rural life has been virtually broken by fast industrialisation, commercialisation and urbanisation. A better course would be to emphasise the process of decentralisation. It’s equally important to stop the influx of people migrating to cities in search of employment and other civic amenities.
6. All countries and cities creating abnormal levels of air, water and noise pollution should be asked to bring down their levels within permissible limits. Both rich and poor countries will have to play a positive role in this regard.
7. A concrete programme should be undertaken in all poor and developing countries to bring down the growth rate of population. Eradication of illiteracy, education and the health care of pregnant and lactating mothers alongwith newly born babies will have to be clubbed together to successfully implement the family planning programmes. Unless all countries agree to ensure employment or earning opportunities to every citizen, it would never be possible to improve the quality of life of the people.
8. Social and economic disparities have widened the valley between the rich and the poor. Though huge investments are necessary to create infrastructure for industrial and agricultural growth, the development of unused and underutilised natural resources like land, water and cattle wealth posseses tremendous potential to generate jobs and render social justice.
9. People the world over have been watching such international summits and conferences for years. They are rightly feel that most of the developed countries are only interested in exploiting developing countries as their markets. Rich nations should realise that enhancing the income level of millions of people in developing countries may be a sensible approach.
10. People the world over want positive action, particularly from rich countries. Mere expression of resolve is not adequate—what’s needed is urgent action, a complete change in attitude. Before people lose all faith, the Johannesburg summit should provide the required lead for sustainable development and a new world order.

The writer, who heads the environmental organisation Vanarai, is a former MP, former Environment minister and former head of the Planning Commission. He is also a part of of the Indian delegation at the Johannesburg summit.

Health mustn’t hinge on wealth

When the “buy one, take one free” sales pitch hits the market for healthcare, it is time to sit up. “Buy a heart bypass and take a week’s holiday in Goa” or “Get the second bypass at 50% discount” is no longer a joke. It is on offer today. K. SUJATHA RAO The Indian Express Wednesday, December 24, 2003

• This then brings in the question of individual vulnerability which an Ambani and the rickshaw puller have in common, giving rise to the most fundamental principle — is profiteering on the sickness of other humans ethical?
• Can companies be lauded and individuals be rewarded the best entrepreneurial award for increasing profits on the ill health and vulnerability of people who are struck with the misfortune of falling sick?

Compared to the US, Canada provides universal health care of the same level of quality at one third the cost. Besides, despite being the world’s highest spender on health, with 40 per cent from the government, US has nearly a third of its people denied access to basic care and a longevity of life among its black populations at about 58! The sharp differences between the US and Canada are largely on account of the values enshrined in their respective constitutions. For the Canadian psyche, it is social solidarity, order, peace and good governance, while for the US it is personal freedom, pursuit of happiness and liberty. And while in both countries provisioning of healthcare services is by private providers, Canada insures all its citizens — rich and poor — inpatient care and physician services, while in the US, public finance is only for specific target groups, namely the poor and the elderly.

• Given the widespread poverty, our intellectual traditions and constitutional pronouncements of equality, it is inexplicable as to why public discourse on health systems has not followed UK or Canada and why we are creating a system resembling the US.
• As in the US, we too do not seem to be troubled by accepting a two-tier system, where the rich can access world class health care as per their ability to pay while the poor must rest content with the public health system. This is worrying, because unlike Singapore, which also has a two tier system with the public hospitals providing the benchmark in quality of care, public health care in India is considered substandard as a result of it being underfunded, understaffed and overstretched.
• Is this gradual veering towards the US model a reflection of our Hinduism which is intensely atomistic and where each lives and suffers in accordance with his own karma?
• Is it really true that concepts of equality and social solidarity are indeed foreign and borrowed and therefore not relevant to India as seems to have been pointed out by the then prime minister to a group of agitated women activists in response to his stand on the famous Shah Bano case?
• Clearly, there is an immense amount of conceptual clutter and lack of direction in our discourse on health. In jumping to ideological positions of public is bad, private is good and governments are bad and markets are good, our intellectuals have trivialised serious debate.

The devastation markets have caused, in terms of human suffering and public spending in the US, have not even been studied. Instead, intellectuals have allowed themselves to fall prey to facile arguments for privatisation such as, for example, that in providing choice of private hospitals, the rich will opt out of the public hospitals providing space for the poor!

• Can we then agree that those who cannot afford healthcare should be denied it and allowed to suffer and die?
• Do we believe that all humans are not equal?
• As all philosophical principles remind us, can there be true happiness and, more importantly, social stability in a society where a large number of its members suffer want and disease?
• Is it then not necessary for turning the debate around and placing the principles of social solidarity and public accountability in health getting precedence over privatisation and a further commercialisation of health?

A national consensus on some of these issues is important for clarity in public policy and for instilling values of compassion and concern in our society at large and among our health professionals in particular. The author is with the Indian Administrative Service. The views expressed here are her own. Read comment[s]

Self-interest is not selfishness

MORALITY AND THE MARKET

Gurcharan Das Times of India, Jan 25, 2004

Our animus against Capitalism may have diminished after Communism's fall and some Indians may increasingly believe that markets do deliver greater prosperity, but most of us still think that Capitalism is not a moral system. We continue to believe that morality must depend on religion.This is a mistake, for human self-interest can go a long way to ensure good behaviour. A seller who does not treat his customers with fairness and civility will lose market share. A company that markets defective products will lose customers. A firm that does not promote the most deserving employees will lose talent to its competitors. A buyer who does not respect the market price will not survive. Lying and cheating will ruin a firm's image, making it untouchable to creditors and suppliers.

Hence, free markets offer powerful incentives for ethical conduct, backed by state institutions that enforce contracts and punish criminal behaviour. You don't need religion for morality. Why are there so many crooks in the marketplace? The answer is that in every society there is a natural distribution of crooked people, and the market has its share of them, which is why we need effective regulators, policemen and judges. We should design our institutions to catch crooks and not harass innocent people as we do too often.

Some Indians believe Capitalism has been forced on us by the imperial West. This too is a mistake. Friedrich Hayek, the Noble laureate, called the market a spontaneous order — it is natural for human beings to exchange goods and services and in the process every society evolved money, laws, conventions and morals to guide behaviour in the marketplace.These are natural products of human endeavour and were not created by God. Nature's morality in the marketplace begins with idea of freedom, the freedom of the individual to choose to buy or sell any product, or get a job of one's choosing. Both competing and cooperating also come naturally in the market economy.

David Hume pointed out that even two farmers, who do not particularly like each other, will cooperate when it is in their interest to do so. Teamwork is so vital in modern enterprise since everyone is inter-dependent. I think people are suspicious about Capitalism because they mistake self-interest of the market for selfishness. A selfish person transgresses on the rights of others, but self-interest is not a social attribute and can even be practised on a deserted island. For example, if it rains, I will carry an umbrella. Nothing selfish about that. This is why Adam Smith called our desire to buy cheap and sell dear as rational self-interest.

In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, he said that what is rational is not only from the viewpoint of the person involved but also from that of a disinterested observer. Like it or not, India is headed in the direction of democratic Capitalism, and every time an election rolls around, it is our duty to punish those who announce free giveaways and reward those who educate the electorate about liberal institutions like the market. This is how we shall conquer the pervasive poverty that has characterised the lives of the majority of our people in history. posted by gurcharan on Monday, January 26, 2004 at 10:51 AM 1 comments

Worldliness of texts

Starting from Orientalism (1978) through Culture and Imperialism (1993) to the latest Guardian article "A Window on the World" (August 2, 2003), Said declared his preference for multipolarity as a cure for a world, which, thanks to the American hegemony, was becoming threateningly unipolar. Reminding everyone of us that identities, over which so much of blood was being spilt in the world today, were not fixed and unchanging essences, he spoke passionately in favour of a world of "mixtures, migrations and crossings over", but without meaning to empty it, in postmodernist fashion, of all historical content.

If there was one theme which I took home for closer reflection, it was Said's advocacy of the notion of the intellectual as someone who consciously refused any affiliations with power. Intellectual work, he said, was sustained by "openness to occasions and surprises", by keeping alive in us that childlike capacity for wonder. Edward Said, whom the world will miss as long as it slides on in its uneven, unjust ways, had the true intellectual's passion and pluck for self-effacement. HIMANSU S. MOHAPATRA The Hindu Literary Review Sunday, Dec 07, 2003

The Invention of India

Shashi Tharoor's suggestion that the author of The Discovery of India was, in fact, India's Inventor — on which one has a bone to pick with him. He might have meant this metaphorically than literally. Nehru, more than anyone else, may well have welded the "world's most disparate collection of fellow citizens" into a nation. But the danger is that this would be grist to the mill of those who continue to pontificate that there was no India before the arrival of the British. It was, according to them, the subsequent creation of a dialectical combination of the British Raj, the freedom movement and Nehru's superhuman efforts.

None of them care to explain why the hard-nosed men who assembled in the City of London in 1601 decide to form the East India Company. More than a century earlier than that, Columbus had embarked on his famous voyage, not to discover America but to find an alternative route to India! INDER MALHOTRA The Hindu Literary Review Sunday, Dec 07, 2003

Denial and Demise

Capitalism is a flawed economic order that is palpably failing humanity. Is it curable? In his book Natural Capitalism, Paul Hawken seeks to give capitalism a makeover by pointing out that it does not meet its own stated intent of free-market economics. However, he points out, if restructured to do so, if certain products and policies were not subsidised, if sustainability costs were factored in, and if future generations were to be considered, most of our harmful actions would be too costly and therefore would not occur.

What we need is an economy that is in service to people; that enables all six and a half billion of us to exchange goods and services to the equitable benefit of all. Under capitalism, ordinary people are in service to the economy, subservient to it or even expendable. Such compliance should only be expected if the economy were truly for the common good; but it isn't. We have the right to demand a fundamental reversal of priority that changes the nature and the purpose of the economy to one that places people and our planet at the hub of life, not pounds and profit. Such a shift would de facto spell the end of capitalism as we know it.

A number of visionaries over the ages have anticipated a new economic order. Marx was badly misinterpreted; Mahatma Gandhi spoke of localised economy, decentralisation, self-organising and self-management; more recently Muhammad Yunus founded the Grameen Bank, the first successful model for microcredit worldwide. Today Bernard Lietaer is one of the leading innovators on the subject of new economic systems. Their contributions are all important. However, the new socio-economic order will be designed neither by one visionary nor by a team of social engineers; nor will it be adopted as a finished product.

It will emerge and evolve from the will and creativity of ordinary people as society as a whole gradually moves towards self-belief and then self-actualisation. At these levels people's tastes become more utilitarian as they no longer have to prove themselves by material or power display. At the same time their vision broadens and their focus turns from self towards the needs of others and the desire to make a contribution to society and all of life. The emerging socio-economic order will be designed for and commensurate with the expression of inclusive, caring and collaborative values.

Sir John Whitmore is a founding partner of Performance Consultants, a business consultancy specialising in coaching and corporate change. www.performanceconsultants.co.uk Resurgence Magazine Online

The Captive Mind

Milosz resisted the ideological conformity that began to spread in Europe after the defeat of the Nazis and the Fascists. His book's title, The Captive Mind, refers to the willingness of the citizens of eastern European countries to accept the official line during the Cold War era. In western Europe too, socialism asserted itself in a more benign avatar, the welfare state that, however, crippled their economies. Nevertheless, the ideology of state dominance went unchallenged until the Thatcher-Reagan years. RAJIV DESAI THE TIMES OF INDIA September i, 2004

Lowest tender

In terms of ‘‘physical and social infrastructure’’ socialism was destructive and evil. Everything we built had a makeshift, shoddy quality as if we were building a temporary country. Whether it was our roads, railway stations, airports or cities socialism’s motto appears to have been: make do at minimum cost. To this day contracts for major public works and buildings are handed out not to the best but to the cheapest. Evidence of this insane approach can be seen reflected in the worst airports in the world and in a road system that mostly washes away with every monsoon. The worst reflection of the socialist approach to building the future is to be seen in our cities. TAVLEEN SINGH The Indian Express Sunday, January 04, 2004 Read comment[s]

Whither European unity?

SHELLEY WALIA
The Hindu Sunday, Jun 26, 2005

I might sound xenophobic, but I am glad at the recent signs of disintegration of the European Union. I have never been in favour of a strong Europe because that symbolises a new round of neo-colonialism and Eurocentricism; something the colonised world would not like to contend with again, though the imperial agenda of the Empire is implicit in the very processes of globalisation.

European well-being does not imply the well-being of minorities and other nations outside it. Suspicion and failure prevail all over Europe owing to a sense of fear at the prospect of a shared future at the enormous cost of sacrificing national sovereignty which will be fully subsumed in a larger vision of a united Europe. National and European bureaucracies continue to behave undemocratically. It is hard to find a medium between common interest and national sovereignty. Europe has to finally go into a protracted spell of introspection.

Re-engaging organised religion

By N. Ravi

The Hindu Friday, Dec 17, 2004

So long as religious institutions were lean and austere, keeping their focus on religious observances and maintaining their traditions, they could make do with the ancient institutional practices and structures. In recent times, some of the more active and ambitious institutions such as the Kanchi Mutt have ventured into the field of education and health, setting up a vast network of institutions. This entry into the sphere of social service is unexceptionable, and is in tune with the teaching of compassion and giving which is central to all religions. Yet expansion in the temporal sphere brings in its wake challenges that overwhelm the outmoded systems of management that are in place.

By the very nature of their office, religious leaders are credited with a certain omniscience, and they have the final say on all matters including mundane matters of management in which they are unschooled. Quite apart from the efficiency issue, the system is also open to abuse. In a milieu of rapid expansion, swelling coffers and unbridled authority over men and the riches, asceticism becomes a difficult matter of personal discipline and commitment. With little transparency and accountability within the institutions, there is hardly any external check on normal human failings. When Lord Acton spoke of absolute power corrupting absolutely, he was referring not to political power but to the power of the popes.

• First, it is time to re-examine public and political attitudes towards religious leaders in general and time perhaps that veneration and deification yielded place to a more critical examination. However strong the faith, one cannot take the almost reflexive position that a religious leader can do no wrong and search for other reasons and conspiracies to explain away serious allegations. A religious office has to be clearly separated from the person occupying it, who may be saintly or may be wholly undeserving of respect and trust. And followers of a tradition or members of a sect ought to realise that the defence of the faith calls for defending the doctrine and protecting a religious institution rather than an individual religious leader personally.
• Second, the rules of engagement of religious leaders in the political system need to be understood clearly. The point to be noted here is that religious leaders entering a political debate would be treated with the same attitude of respect or irreverence as the other political players and their followers can hardly expect them to be shown any special deference.
• The third critical issue relates to the structure and regulation of organised religion whose vulnerability to corruption has been recognised in the theology of many faiths.

Crisis of representative democracy

By Neera Chandhoke

The Hindu Saturday, Jun 19, 2004

"Sovereignty," wrote the great defender of direct democracy, Jean Jacques Rousseau, "for the same reason as makes it inalienable, cannot be represented; it lies essentially in the general will, and will does not admit of representation: it is either the same or the other; there is no intermediate possibility." Following Rousseau, critics of representative democracy focus on the fact that the sovereignty and the autonomy of citizens is diminished considerably when they delegate the power of representing their opinions, their needs, and their interests to someone else.

However, despite oft dire warnings that indirect democracy compromises the basic normative premises of democracy, it is representative democracy that has come to command the world ever since the institutionalisation of democracy itself. Of course there are very good reasons for this, the primary reason being the sheer size and complexity of modern societies, which renders direct or face-to-face democracy a remote possibility. Therefore, for better or for worse, representative democracy has become synonymous with democracy itself.

Representative democracy in essence calls upon a third set of political agents to mediate between the first two sets of political agents — the citizen and the state. Despite the fact that a number of organisations claim representation, it is the political party that has emerged as the prime mediator between the citizen and the state. I raise this point in the general context of the influential thesis on the `crisis of representation', which challenges the capacity as well as the will of political parties to perform their job: to represent the interests of the constituents and to oversee the production of policies that ensure that something is done about pressing problems.

The shift from political to civil society organisation has been heralded for a number of reasons.

• For one, the practices of civil society organisations promise an exit from centrally controlled, bureaucratic, hierarchical, and oligarchic party structures solely preoccupied with winning the next election.
• Secondly, it is presumed that a multiplicity of agencies in civil society are able to respond immediately to problems and issues that require swift resolution, because they are notably free from rigid and tiresome constraints that characterise older forms of representation.

Whether civil society organisations do not suffer from the same problems that bedevil political parties is however another debate.

Tolerance and growth

CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA

The Economic Times MONDAY, JUNE 14, 2004

The British historian Paul Johnson has created a minor flap in desi circles with a controversial theory to explain India's economic boom. The catalyst, Johnson wrote in a recent article in Forbes , is tolerance. All societies flourish mightily when tolerance is the norm. And India is a good example of this because. “It is the nature of the Hindu religion to be tolerant and, in its own curious way, permissive.”

Johnson didn't stop there. The article had several other contentious assertions. In what appeared to be a thumbs-up to Hindu nationalism espoused by the previous dispensation, Johnson also took a swipe at the country’s Congress legacy, arguing that “under the socialist regime of Jawaharlal Nehru and his family successors the state was intolerant, restrictive and grotesquely bureaucratic. “That has largely changed (though much bureaucracy remains), he wrote, and the “natural tolerance of the Hindu mind-set has replaced quasi-Marxist rigidity.” The eminent historian appeared to have based his theory on just the latest growth figures.

From all accounts, Congressism and/or Hindutva had less to do with growth than plainold economic reforms. But Johnson writes, “India’s economy for the first time is expanding faster than China's. For years India was the tortoise, China the hare. The race is on, and my money’s on India, because freedom--of movement, speech, the media--is always an economic asset.” Were Indians any less free and any more shackled in the Nehruvian days when it's 3 per cent growth was mocked, ironically, as the ‘Hindu Rate of Growth?’ And does China, galloping at 9-10 per cent now, have the freedom of movement and speech now?

Evidently, Johnson's objective was to show that bigotry and intolerance, especially in Islamic countries, is a dampener for growth. But even there, the theory does not hold consistently. In our own neighbourhood, Pakistan, not exactly the embodiment of tolerance, is growing despite its ills (sure, helped by vast infusion of capital). The Hindu Republic of Nepal isn’t growing as much. Surely, there’s more than one explanation for economic growth.

Western lifestyles

By P.V. Narasimha Rao

The Hindu: Monday, Mar 22, 2004

The first and second World Wars were fought mainly between white nations. The conflict had now to be, logically, between Western and non-Western cultures since the cultural dimension had played an important part in empire-building. This automatically brought on the questions of colour and race, taken simply as a means of easy identification. The result is that mankind is riddled with multiple prejudices that become concomitants of the erstwhile white man's burden.

Samuel Huntington, while offering his theory of a clash of civilisations, also predicted that problems of stark and sub-human poverty of the twentieth and earlier centuries might not persist in their previous form. This prediction may not be far wrong. Hereafter poverty will increasingly take on a highly disguised appearance, much more difficult to detect and address; it may even look as if it has actually gone down both in developed and developing countries.

This change has come and is coming from Western lifestyles; it is so attractive that it is sure to engulf almost all societies. It is a system of usurious loaning in which a person is able to line up important consumer items all at once and set up his home establishment just as a person who has spent his own money and bought each single item separately. There is nothing to indicate that one of them has to pay for his purchases almost for the rest of his life. Life-style obstacles are thus removed at once and a veneer of equality is created. This appearance tends to divert the attention of the middle class from real economic issues to a considerable extent. Yet the scourge of increasing disparity in the world does not go away.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie...

JAIDEEP MISHRA

The Economic Times Monday, August 08, 2005

There is both a greater degree of optimism and a marked expectancy of heightened demand, across segments and industries. In fact, the very degree of interventionist policies and regulatory incursions may well depend on how one reads the underlying message in confidence measures. The benchmark was set by Keynes, English aristocrat and economic adviser extraordinary. He called for a loose fiscal policy, of a tax and spend stance, never mind expectations.

Back in the halcyon days of the thirties, Keynes maintained that it was “too complicated” for entrepreneurs to routinely calculate short-term expectations de novo. In practice, the reasoning went, producers’ forecasts are generally modified in the light of day-to-day results rather than in anticipation of prospective changes. And as for the long-term, the guru dismissed all prospects of producers being able to make a list of every possible future outcome, assign a probability to each item on the list, and then calculate an expected value. So, the reasoning went, long-term expectations cannot be rational.

Reliable knowledge of the future cannot be had. We cannot make “calculated mathematical expectations” of future values, preached the great man, who, incidentally, made a killing at the bourses. Of course, firms did invest in fits and starts, broadly anticipating the future, but these would more likely be the result of “animal spirits, a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction.’’

This can mean a rollercoaster of commitment decisions. Of expectations generating waves of pessimism and optimism, and hence by implication, waves of greater and lesser investment spending with all its attendant economic disruptions and dislocations. It may mean long periods of under-investment and a sheer lack of jobs. Hence the prescription for expansionary budgetary policies and public works.

The fact is that in the decades since Keynes, the Keynesian consensus on expectations and economic policy making has lost its former sacredness. It is now widely accepted that economic actors can be quite rational indeed. Also, expectations, far from being exogenous or outside the system, are actually “embodied” in norms, practices and everyday actions. So expectations, instead of being disrupting and disorienting, actually tend towards coherence and co-ordination. In this scheme of things, the thoughts and actions of economic agents self-select “fit” expectations, and weed out “unfit” expectations. The whole process is inextricably linked to the market.

It may still be the case that big economic agents having discretionary power may have a disproportionate affect on the market and, as a consequence, generate perverse and quite incoherent outcomes. But in the context of competitive scenarios and stable rules for market participants, the case can be made that the correspondence between expectation and realisation can be close. This is why the economic reforms process must continue to deepen and widen the markets for land, labour, capital and knowledge.

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.