Who is Scared of the AAP? - The Pelican Brief in India

Recently Arvind Kejriwal was reported to have said "Do not pay electricity bills". That is, this is what the headlines said. What Kejriwal actually said was, "We would do an audit of the power companies. It will take a few months. In that time, people who want to pay their bills can pay. But others have the right not to pay until this audit is done".
What is this audit he is talking about? To find out the details, follow me below:
Delhi has privatized electrical distribution companies (discoms). These have been given licenses, by the Delhi Electric Power Regulatory Commission (DERC) based on the Delhi Electricity Reform Act 2000. Currently BSES, which is a Reliance subsidiary and NDPL, which is a Tata subsidiary hold these licenses. So, they supply electricity in Delhi, not the government.
Now, Sheila Dikshit claimed in August that Delhi residents pay the lowest among metros. She "fudged" the truth here - Delhi power tariff IS actually high - but the government has tried to "subsidise" this cost for low unit users. But note where this "subsidy" goes - the government still has to pay the raised cost from taxpayer money to the private discoms. In other words, Delhi power situation is a corporate windfall for Reliance and Tata.
Per se this may be fine - but AAP (and the BJP) believe that the power companies are gouging the customers. There have been steep hikes in the past two years, with the companies wanting more January 2014. 
Now here comes the crux - AAP wants a public audit of these companies, and has suggested that with this audit's results they can cut down the cost of power.
The corporations do not want that audit. Please read BSES FAQ on this issue (item 8 below). http://www.bsesdelhi.com/HTML/faq_issues.html.
So the power companies are claiming that they CANNOT be audited. 
And they are wrong. They are hoping you won't notice, but the license agreement they signed AUTHORISES the government to audit them using an independent auditor any time the government wants. Here is the license agreement for BSES (clause 7, page 20):http://www.derc.gov.in/Licensees/Licensees/distribution%20licensees/BYPL.pdf

What is amazing to me is the audaciousness with which a company that handles public resources, can claim that they cannot be audited! As an example, this is similar to telcos that handle 2G, 3G spectrum claiming they cannot be audited!
In other words, the AAP is actually asking for something that the government has the right to ask. And the companies (Reliance, Tata subsidiaries) do not want that. They have millions to lose if the AAP implements the audit.
So, suddenly you have scary screaming headlines and PR campaigns on social media smearing the AAP.

Six Rules on Public Protests for Facebook Commentariat

1. DO judge a popular protest by the merits of its demands - not by political alignment. The attempt to impose a political "party alignment" on a popular protest (such as anti-corruption, sri lankan issue or rape protests) makes no sense because the protesters are public, and they may have different affiliations. What matters is their public demands.
2. Do NOT insult any substantial protest by saying "media created it". Media has no capability in manufacturing news with such a massive conspiracy in which thousands of people participate. You are stupid if you think NDTV is filling buses with protesters to get TRP ratings. That is not how media works.
3. Do NOT ask protesters why they are not protesting something else. For example, asking the Delhi rape protesters why they are not protesting rapes in Kashmir is absurd for many reasons. a) That they did not protest something does not mean they agree with it. b) Protests about one issue may actually help other issues and c) Protesters are individuals who feel excited about something. It is not some collective conspiracy.
4. Do NOT ask, after the protests die down why they died down. They died down because all public protests die down at some point. This should be common sense, public has jobs and cannot be out in the streets fighting 24 hours.
5. Do NOT ask, AFTER the protests what they accomplished. That they came out and fought means something. That is the case for anti-corruption or Delhi rape protests.
6. Do NOT look at one individual who shows up in some stage and try to make the entire protest about that person. This is what Arundhathi Roy and Gail Omvedt tried to do for the Anti-corruption struggle; and the Manmohan Singh government did for the Koodankulam protesters. As writer Jeyamohan said, popular protests are usually big tents - they cannot turn away people we don't like, sitting in our couch at home. Do not fall into smear tactics.

If a movement has demands, and the demands are reasonable, then support it. If not, do not support it. All else are distractions.

IPL scandal benefits Indian politicians

Whenever a scandal happens - coalgate, 2G, IPL - a section of media and commenters talk about how this is horrible because people may lose their trust in government or BCCI etc.
It occurs to me that the Indian politician BENEFITS a lot from the public's loss of trust, whatever be the institution. The Indian politician survives on two popular myths:
1) That corruption is "inherent" in India - for cultural, religious or social reasons, and
2) That the situation is impossible to change
It is these myths that the anti-corruption protests challenged. It was not Jan Lokpal that scared these guys; it was the blowing of these two myths. 
A scandal such an IPL, even though it does not have anything directly to do with politics, still BENEFITS the Indian politician, because the public's lack of trust in ANY elite institution makes it easy to force them to give up and sink into apathy. A population that mistrusts any institution also mistrusts each other.
Social mistrust is the single best investment that the Indian political class has. They will try everything to perpetuate it, and have no interest in solving it.
In fact, I predict that they will BUILD entire institutions, and then show that they are corrupt, JUST to reinforce mistrust and perpetuate the myths above. The IPL may just be one such.

Muslim Policemen in Gujarat story - ToI could have wrong data

A couple of days back, I found a Times of India story circulating in Facebook. The story is here:
Gujarat Tops States in number of Muslim policemen.
The story says that ToI filed a RTI inquiry to the Union Home Ministry for the number of Muslim policemen in all states and their percentage as part of the total police force in each state. When they got back the numbers, they found that Gujarat actually had the best stats among all the states for which data was available.
Gujarat, according to ToI, had 47,424 policemen in total. of them 5021 were Muslims.
This story did not pass the smell test for me.
In the past few years, Narendra Modi, CM of Gujarat, has become a controversial figure. He was CM during the 2002 Gujarat riots. Then he reinvented himself as a "growth" leader. A vocal set of supporters cheer him on (such as during the Nano deal). Some journalists have responded by showing that the Gujarat "story" is not without flaws. They cite some numbers, the other side cites some numbers and it is all confusing.
The above article's focus on Muslim policemen in a police force seemed unusual to focus on. I have a hunch that Muslims are severely underrepresented in the police force (as in many other jobs) all through India. I can understand that in different states the percentage will be different. But, Gujarat was the best in representation? Not even second or third? The very state that people were arguing over? It seemed unlikely to me. So, I did some investigation of these numbers.
First, the number of Muslim policemen and the number of total policemen in each state is available in the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). This is a government website. If you click on Crime 2011 in the left hand bar in that website, choose Tables and Go to the Table 17.12, you will find the breakdown of Muslim, SC, ST policemen in each state in India as of 2010.
When people quote crime statistics in India, they use the NCRB data. They supply raw data that you can analyze yourself.
In other words, Times of India need not have filed an RTI query at all. The information was at a Google search away, in a government website.

Now, take a look at the numbers for Gujarat and you will immediately see that they are different from the Times numbers.
                                                     NCRB                                       ToI
Number of Total policemen          71670                                       47424
Number of Muslim policemen      3087                                         5021
The NCRB shows a 4.3% representation in Gujarat, a lot different from the 10% they have from ToI data.
Now, I used the NCRB data and tried to see for a few states, how Gujarat held up to "the best representation. The numbers are below:

State	Population(2001)	Muslim Population(2001)	Percent in General	Size of Policeforce	Muslims in Policeforce	Muslim Percent in Police	Difference(%)
Tamil Nadu	62405679	3470647	5.56	95745	3061	3.19	-2.3
Andhra Pradesh	76210007	6986856	9.16	89404	8933	9.99	0.82
Madhya Pradesh	60348123	3841449	6.36	72505	2583	3.56	-2.80
Gujarat	50671017	4592854	9.04	71670	3087	4.30	-4.75
Haryana	21144564	1222916	5.78	50365	415	0.82	-4.95
Kerala	31841374	7863842	24.69	45003	3567	7.92	-16.7
Karnataka	52850562	6463127	12.22	74699	4796	6.42	-5.80

In other words, Gujarat is not on top, but not on bottom either. It is certainly not the best state for Muslim representation in police force; nor does that representation EXCEED the population percentage of Muslims. Tamil Nadu, Andhra and Madhya Pradesh are better and Haryana is about the same as Gujarat.
It is possible that the NCRB numbers are wrong, and the ToI numbers are right, but I doubt it. The total numbers correspond with other data such as density of policemen in the NCRB data.
ToI should explain why they focussed on this number; and why they did not just pick it up from the NCRB website.

Blaming Victims in a Just World

An year back, there was an accident in Adyar, Chennai. A couple traveling by bike at 10:30 in the night were run over by a speeding lorry.
The couple were married just over an year earlier; and had left their baby at the parents and gone to visit a temple or church.
The next morning I was in the waiting area of a local hospital when I overheard an young doctor and a nurse talking about this. The doctor said, "So they went at 10 in the night to a temple, leaving the baby. How stupid are they?"
The nurse agreed.
Do we expect people to be run over after 10 PM in the night? Of course not. But this pattern was familiar to me. The doctor and nurse were blaming the victim.
I have come across the blame-the-victim characteristic a lot when discussing politics; but also more generally in life in India. I have also come across it, to a lesser extent, in conservative writing in the United States.
A couple of years back, when race attacks were going on in Australia, against Indians, I frequently saw this play out. A letter in the magazine "Week" blamed Indians for not "assimilating" in Australian culture. Some blamed Indians for talking in local language in public. I wrote a detailed analysis of this behavior here.

Of course, blaming the victim is not new to women all over the world. They almost always get blamed for eve-teasing or rapes. Usually they are accused of having provoked men into such behavior.

Why is there a tendency to blame the victim when something bad happens to people? This is particularly important in India. In our road accidents, pedestrians get blamed almost all the time. Plus we have the "aren't we all corrupt?", "aren't we all racists?" crowd always blaming the victim implicitly.

The Just World Theory

In the 1960s, Melvin J.Lerner, professor of Social Psychology at the University of Waterloo, performed a set of experiments out of which came the "Just World Hyposthesis" or the "Just World Theory".
Lerner's findings, later expanded, show that human beings have the "need to believe in a just world" in-built into their psyche. It develops as a part of normal child rearing and every human being will have it.
What does this mean?
While growing up, we are taught good and bad behavior. We are taught to distinguish between them by a system of rewards and punishments. This enforces a belief in us, as we grow into adulthood, that the world is an environment full of justice. People get what they deserve and deserve what they get. That idea permeates into us.

But, of course, the real world is far from just. Just the number of varieties of personalities precludes a guarantee of justice.
Therefore, when we see something that violates our belief (in a just world), we can only resolve the conflict between
a) what is reality and
b) what is our innate belief
by looking for some way to justify the unjust scene before us.
For example, when we hear about a child getting hit while crossing a road, our trust in a just world is violated. Our mind resolves that by one of the following methods:
a) Blaming the child's parents or the child herself for crossing without proper attention
b) Trying to imagine how we can stop such traffic accidents and thus building an assurance in our mind that we can create a just world
c) By the "separated world" mechanism - we tell ourselves that this happens in some kind of parallel world.

(There are actually 9 different ways in which we try to resolve the conflict, as listed by Lerner)

Now option b, if we act on it, is of course, the healthiest. It improves society overall.
But most people who are conservative or authoritarian or over-religious have been found to go with option a - blaming the victim.
In other words, the predominant tendency in conservative societies such as India is to blame the victim.

Thus the doctor and nurse who were discussing the accident of an young couple were actually shocked by the injustice of happy lives extinguished by a careless driver. But they had the need to believe in a just world. They resolved this by blaming the couple's choice of taking a bike at 10:30 PM.

This has implications for a lot of our public debates in India. We hear about unjust accidents caused by badly designed roads and neighborhoods. Almost every person who drives a bike in India must have met with some accident, minor to serious. We hear about normal people, who are killed or maimed by drunken driving or just reckless driving
Every time, we have to be careful never to blame the victim - for traveling without a helmet, or crossing a city road, or going out in the night. The real villains are the people who drive without respect for pedestrians; and the people who designed these killer roads with no spaces for pedestrians.

P.Sainath is wrong on Jan Lokpal

(Edited to fix link to Sainath's article, on Debojyoti's comment below)
This post addresses a few wrong arguments against the Lokpal process. Many of these are talking points I found circulating in the web. Some of these are also opinions of P.Sainath - the Magsaysay award winner and The Hindu rural affairs editor - who has criticised the Jan Lokpal process in speeches and in an article in The Hindu.

My first article on Lokpal and the IAC movement is here. It has some commentary on Sainath's video speech.

Have Anna Hazare and others worked outside the legislative process?
Argument:Anna Hazare, by his tactics such as fasting, have worked against the electoral process. They have blackmailed the government to include themselves in the legislative process

My response: Nobody has taken away the role of Parliament in passing legislation. The IAC movement or Mr.Hazare himself have not said that they will pass a bill and that should be the law of the land.
Parliament should pass a bill on Lokpal - what Mr.Hazare and others have argued is that Parliament should not pass the draft bill submitted in 2010. Instead they have suggested a different set of provisions for a Jan Lokpal bill.
Is this entirely unnatural or unprecedented? In other words, is it unprecedented for Parliament to consider a law that takes input from non-elected people?
The answer is no. It is neither unprecedented nor unnatural. The much-celebrated Right To Information (RTI) bill was actually lobbied and pushed for by activists. Just last year, the government shelved the plans for GM (Genetically Modified) crops based on feedback from "self-appointed" activists and lobby groups.
This is why the hue and cry about Anna Hazare and others "bypassing" the process is surprising. Do people seriously believe that the laws passed by Parliament on regulating healthcare, education or mining are exclusively created by legislators - without major input from industry leaders or activists? Every law that deals with industry regulation IS being written in consultation with industry leaders.
Thus, the controversy about Anna and IAC creating their own process is ill-founded.

Are Anna Hazare and others self-appointed?
Argument: Who said civil society can be represented by Anna Hazare and the India Against Corruption movement? Who decides that these people are representatives of the common people? Only the elected legislators in Parliament are representatives of the people - not self-appointed leaders such as Anna Hazare.
My Response: This question is a very critical one. It is not an attack on Anna or IAC. The general idea seems to be that the electorate has chosen their legislators. Given that, what authority do Anna and others have to "represent the people"?
The answer is, of course, that feedback on legislation in a Parliamentary democracy can come throughout the law making process. Anna and others need not represent everyone, or even a majority in the nation - all that matters is that they have the right to organize a protest and make their voices heard. Nobody can deny them that right. They have the right to lobby for their cause.
Secondly, they actually did have an alternative bill; and legitimate criticism of the
government bill. Therefore, their "interference" in the law-making process was a pretty serious, legitimate effort.
Thirdly, let us not forget that Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., or Aan Suu Kyi are all "self-appointed" representatives. It is not as if they were elected figures.

Why have a law when people can vote out corrupt administrations
Argument: Sainath says that people have now voted in the recent state elections. That is the real way to influence policy
My Response:
In any society there needs to be a way to influence (non-violently) the course of laws towards justice. Voting in elections is just ONE way of such influence.
Sainath, in his Hindu article, says that the people in different states voted in the recent elections, and that is how people can influence policy or take action against corruption. This is a profoundly misguided way of thinking about a democracy, both theoretically and practically.
Even in theory, a democracy allows free speech and free association precisely to encourage political activity at all times. People have different non-violent tools to choose and to engage in political activity. Should we all vote once in 5 years and then forget about whatever our representatives do in those 5 years? That is a pretty useless view of democracy. I would say this even if our representatives are all doing their jobs well.
Practically, of course, what Sainath says is laughable. He has been spending the past 10 years challenging the government on farmers' suicides. His whole point was that
governments in the state and center were actively adopting policies that CAUSED the suicides. How did these policies happen when people continued to vote in elections?
The answer is that no country in the world has the kind of perfect political system where we can leave our elected representatives without vigilance. Definitely not India.
The Indian Parliament gave us TADA; POTA; the constitutional amendment that has now lead to forcing everyone to be fingerprinted(Aadhaar or UID scheme). The Parliament gave us the very regressive Information Technology Act of 2010.
People should pay more attention to what the legislators are upto; and protest in case they try to pass a regressive law. That is a vital role - in fact, it is a much more vital role than voting. Voting is over-hyped.


Why should the Prime Minister be brought under Lokpal? He will get subjected to frivolous charges
Argument: The IAC movement and the government now differ on bringing the PM under the Lokpal. Bringing the PM under Lokpal will lead to filing frivolous charges against him/her. It will also lead to influencing foreign policy and national security issues
My Response: I frankly do not understand this argument. We are a British-style parliamentary democracy, with a Prime Minister. We are not an American style democracy. The Prime Minister does not have any special powers that other ministers lack. In other words, if we are ok with having a cabinet rank minister being investigated by Lokpal, then how is the PM any different?
The above argument may make sense in the United States, where the President is the Head of State. In India, the PM is not the Head of State. There is no special theoretical reason why a PM should be excluded, while a central cabinet minster is included.
If people said that ALL cabinet ministers should be excluded, then that we can argue about. But that is not what people are saying. They seem to think the PM has some special status.

By the way, I just want to remind people reading this blog - Around 2003, a young PWD engineer named Sathyendra Dubey was killed when he wrote about corruption to higher authorities. Sathyendra was afraid of getting killed, so he sent the letter directly to which office?
Yes, he sent it ONLY to the PM's Office (PMO). Vajpayee was PM at that time. That single letter to the PMO pinpointed Sathyendra for murder. In other words, the letter was leaked from the PMO and made its way to Bihar; and led to Sathyendra's murder.

Existing laws are enough to tackle corruption
Argument: The Prevention of Corruption Act and other such acts are adequate to prosecute corrupt public officials. Why do we need new laws? We need existing laws to be implemented well
My Response:This argument is very well addressed in the IAC website.
First, the Lokpal is about a process; not just punishment details.
Secondly, existing laws ARE inadequate. There are several reasons for this - one is that CBI's anti-corruption wing actually reports to the Prime Minister. Therefore it has no way to investigate corruption against the ruling party's wishes.
What the Lokpal bill does is, it sets up an independently funded co-equal branch of government. It makes political influence much more unlikely.


The government, its interlocutors and even some well-meaning citizens have muddied the waters about the Jan Lokpal bill. I urge everyone to go through the IAC website and read the actual draft law. It is a critical first move to control corruption.

Did TN swing away from the DMK or not?

There was an article in rediff.com here, a few days back. Titled "Tamizh voter did not punish the DMK. Here is why", it was written by Mr.N.Gopalaswami (a former Election Commissioner of Tamil Nadu) and Praveen Chakravarty.
The article got a lot of comments and I realized its popularity when a friend mentioned it to me in a meeting. I had myself written a comment to that article, buried somewhere - I had argued that the authors were wrong.

This is an important talking point - and we have to be careful about it. What the authors purport to prove is that in spite of the coverage of the corruption cases against A.Raja and evidence of DMK involvement in the 2G scam, the people who vote for DMK continue to do so. But from that, they jump to the conclusion that the TN electorate has not punished the DMK. In other words, corruption is not a big issue in people's minds. Implicitly, being corrupt does not seem to be punished by the electorate.
This is a very serious result, if true.
I decided to do check the numbers myself and analyze the results. This post is a description of that.

The Authors' argument

In 2006 TN assembly elections, the authors say, of every 100 people in a constituency that had a DMK candidate, 46 voted for the DMK.
In 2011, 42 voted for the DMK.
Therefore only 3 people swung away from the DMK; and this is a very small percentage. The authors argue that the election results wound up the way they did, with a massive ADMK win, only because of the alliance between DMDK and ADMK.

Adjusted Vote Share vs Total Vote Share

Here are the links to the wikipedia pages on 2006 TN assembly elections and 2011 assembly elections.

You will see in the bottom of the page, a table with the final breakup of votes. You will see a column called "Vote %" and another called "Adj Vote %".
The DMK's vote percent in 2006 was 26.5%. In other words, out of 100 people who voted in that elections, only 26 voted for DMK.
The DMK's vote percent in 2011 was 22.4%. Out of 100 people, 22 voted for DMK.
This means that 4 voters swung away from DMK in 2011. But what is more important, this 4 as a percentage of DMK voters is 20%.
So 20% of former DMK voters did not vote again for DMK. That is a pretty significant percentage.

But where did the authors of that article come up with the numbers 46 and 42?
They used the NEXT column called "Adj vote %". They used the adjusted vote share, which is the average of the vote shares per constituency.
I think the total vote share is more important than the adjusted vote share. By the total vote share 20% of DMK voters swung away. By Adjusted, less than 10% swung away. I think this is a pretty significant difference.

But let us assume we use adjusted vote shares. All that it means is that the voters of DMK continued to vote for it. That does NOT mean (as the authors imply) that Tamil Nadu electorate had not punished the DMK - people who did not vote the last time, and new voters may have opted for the opposite party, as I will show below.

Swing in favor of ADMK

In 2006, the total vote share of the ADMK was 32.6%.
In 2011, it was 38.4%.
In other words, 6 voters out of 100 swung towards ADMK. The authors have simply not counted this as a reaction against DMK. But, in an almost two party system like Tamil Nadu, the swing in favor matters.

Absolute Numbers
Most importantly, the voting percentage in 2006 was 70%. In 2011 it was 78%. This jump means that the total number of voters who voted for ADMK went up from 10.7 lakhs to 14.1 lakhs. While those who voted for DMK went down from 8.7 lakhs to 8.2 lakhs. Part of this has to do with lesser number of constituencies the DMK competed in (130 in 2006; 119 in 2011). But the difference is just 11 seats. That cannot account for their voters number not even going up with the increased electorate's size (Total votes were 32.9 lakhs in 2006;36.7 lakhs in 2011).

In conclusion, I would say the DMK WAS punished by the Tamil Nadu electorate. I think people are smart enough to realize when they are being conned.

The India Against Corruption movement

(Updated below)
Anna Hazare and team are now working on the draft Lokpal Bill. I wanted to address some of the arguments raised against the India Against Corruption(IAC) movement.
Primarily, Corruption is a systemic problem. It is not something that we have in our blood. The below arguments, instead, address corruption as a kind of individual mind-level thing. That is wrong. It is also counter-productive, because it tries to make citizens feel powerless. That is the goal of these arguments - to make citizens feel cynical and powerless and just give up - while a few people on top can loot the country.

Anna Hazare's tactics

First, Anna Hazare's fast was not a fast to eliminate corruption.
A lot of scorn and disbelief was poured on Anna, because he was apparently trying to end corruption suddenly. The media represented it as a fast against corruption.
But in reality, the GOAL of the fast was very specific - it was to get a few "civil society" members to participate in the drafting of the new Lokpal Bill; and to scrap the government proposed Lokpal bill.
This goal was clearly achievable and they did manage to win it.
The goal was never to "eliminate" corruption with a fast; Anna or the Bhushans or India Against Corruption are not idiots. They did not expect that suddenly all public servants would reform with a fast.
Gandhians are fairly intelligent. They understand how Gandhi used non-violent tactics. Each one of Gandhi's fasts or marches were planned to achieve a very SPECIFIC goal (such as repealing the tax on salt). He never fasted saying he wanted independence.
But thanks to the way we learn history; and the way our media dumbs down issues; Anna's fast was called a fast to eliminate corruption. I think that was a disservice to his fast.

Can we eliminate corruption with a bill?

My short answer would be yes. The long answer is that it depends on what the bill is trying to do.
If the Lokpal bill simply said, "We hereby declare corruption to be a crime. Be gone, corruption" then the above question is valid. But that is not the content of the bill. The bill is neither about outlawing corruption (existing laws do that) or prescribing punishments for corruption (existing laws do that).
The primary purpose of the Jan Lokpal bill is to set up an independent authority on par with the Supreme Court or the Election Commission (This requires an amendment to the Constitution). The bill goes on to specify the powers of that authority; its funding sources and the organizational structure.
Thus the Lokpal Bill is not a "law" in the sense it is commonly understood in India. It is more about setting up a process.
Does the Election Commission eliminate voting irregularities? No, but it brings them down considerably.
This same way setting up a Lokpal structure will REDUCE corruption, over time. That is what the bill tries to do - create Lokpal.
The opponents of Lokpal simply set an impossible standard by asking the question "Will it eliminate corruption". No, it won't - but it will bring it down over time. And that is fine, and better than having no Lokpal at all.

Aren't we all corrupt?

One English magazine ran a story about how we are all corrupt ourselves and so on.
Before I address that specific argument, I want to point out a couple of things:
1. When we had the race attacks in Australia an year back, Outlook magazine ran a cover story saying "Aren't we all racists?". I read through the story; and they were basically comparing the use of fairness creams in India with actual race-based murders in Australia. I wrote a detailed rebuttal of that here.
Whenever someone says "Aren't we all guilty of X?", they are blaming everyone except themselves. The "we" in that question is simply a trick. They are really saying, "I am a nice guy/girl and not guilty, but look at all those other Indians"
It is a feature of predominantly conservative societies (such as India) to either blame the victim or assign guilt to society in a way that is unsolvable.

2. We also have to remember that currently there is a class war going on in India. That fact was laid out in the open from the 2G-scam; the Radia tapes; and Wikileaks exposures. The upper 1% of the country, including corporate media, politicians, and big industrialists are in an alliance to divide the country into pieces and sell all of it.
Thus, whoever asks the question "Aren't we all corrupt" is actually engaged in action AGAINST addressing the corruption problem. The introduction of this "talking point" is a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the criminals.

Now, for the actual argument: No, all of us are not corrupt. I have certainly held no public office, and so I cannot be blamed for corruption. I think that is true for 95% of Indians.
The Lokpal Bill is an effort to address corruption by PUBLIC officials. Because they have the most power, this is the correct focus of the bill. Let us say my apartment complex has a secretary and that person is diverting funds. That is NOT the purview of the Lokpal Bill.
We are not trying to become a saintly nation - we are simply trying to control corruption by public officials.
Again, this argument sets an impossible standard. The pundits are saying this - since we are all guilty of some thought crimes at some point, we should not pass the Lokpal Bill because none of us are pure.
If that is the standard, why have the Indian Penal Code at all? Since we have all stolen laddus from Mom's kitchen at some point, we should not have any laws against theft. That is what this argument boils down to.

The Jan Lokpal activists set up an alternative government

The concern was that civil society members "blackmailed" the government to include themselves. Thus they were described as setting up an alternate power center.
I thought this claim is fine in the abstract, but it makes no sense in current India. The Radia tapes and Wikileaks exposures clearly show that we ALREADY have an alternate government in India - it is really the Tatas, Ambanis, a few other industrialists, media persons and then some political families running the country.
Given this situation, I do not see a problem with another power center.


At this point corruption defines India. A few days back I read about pilots getting fake licenses - one of them landed a plane nose first. Corruption is so deep that we cannot trust ANY regulator of the government. Every regulatory authority is an opportunity to make more money and thwart the basic purpose of the regulation. On top of this, we are going to be setting up nuclear plants! And we are going to force all citizens to have Unique IDs! How is this whole system supposed to work when the government is so deeply corrupt?
I would call corruption and criminalization of politics as the worst problems facing India.
It need not be this way. We have strong enough institutions that we could be a nation without any corruption.
Punishment has to start from the top. That is the only way we can clear this mess.

Update:
In response to Sayan's comment citing P.Sainath's criticism of the Lokpal:

The "appointment" problem or who forms the collegium in Lokpal is a question not specific to Lokpal itself. It is a problem with creating checks and balances in any "co-equal" branch.
The Constitution sets this process up for the Supreme Court. The President of India appoints SC judges. By all accounts the SC has a lot of power - and its justices are not appointed by an elected official. The President of India is not elected directly by the people.
For the Election Commission, it is the same case. The CEC is appointed by the President.
The Lokpal creation faces the same problem - how do you choose "independent" people who are not elected directly by the people? You have 3 choices:
1. Have a separate election across India to choose Lokpal appointees. There are countries that do this kind of separate elections for co-equal branches. The United States, for example, has elections for state level judges. Federal judges are appointed.
Is this feasible? Can we afford to implement an alternate representational system? And, I think the biggest fear - will that system be dominated by political parties again?
2. Have the President of India appoint the officers to Lokpal. Again, the fear here is that we open ourselves to manipulation by the elected representatives.
3. Arrive at some other way to determine the collegium. This is the approach the current Jan Lokpal team has taken. They have tried to choose a collegium that is "untainted" by politics; and yet provides the correct checks and balances.
The third approach is similar to creating an "independent" investigative commission by appointing retired HC or SC judges. That happens right now.
There are precedents to the above approach. The National Police Commission recommendations 30 years back suggested a collegium that consists of retired judges, eminent people and an equal set of representatives from both ruling and opposition.

Thus, I want to look at the Lokpal collegium problem as a general problem with establishing ANY independent body. I don't think it has anything specific to do with the arrogance of Jan Lokpal writers.
Given that the bill is being written in conjunction with politicians, I hope that a compromise solution will be found that involves more elected representatives. What we will get is an engineered solution. And that is fine.

Ideally, of course, we should not be so afraid of political parties and people's elected repesentatives. But that is how things have evolved. I understand the ideal that people's representatives should ultimately have real power - but as I cited above, that ideal is already broken by having other co-equal branches such as the SC and EC.

Five questions for India's leaders

Since we are having elections shortly; and our state's ruling family now has the pride of being the "invisible hand" behind the 2G scam, here are a few questions for India's "smarter" political leaders:
1. What do you think Government's role is, in society? Do you think government's focus should be on revenue or in ensuring long-term happiness of citizens?
If a neighborhood has a park, owned by the government; and that park is in a prime area of the city; do you think government should set up an SEZ there and bring more corporations and thus boost revenue? Or do you think the park should be available for the citizens to use?

2. Is due-process more important to you? Or are immediate benefits more important to you?
Let us say that you are offering a piece of government land. A corporation offers to provide a lot of benefits to the local community. Therefore, would you bypass an actual auction or bidding process and make the land available to the the said corporation? Let us say the bidding process takes more time; while the corporation can start providing benefits immediately. What is your role as a minister? Would you make sure due process is followed, or would you "cut" the process short?

3. Are party and the government the same?
Let us say that your actions as a minister affects a corporation. Let us say that corporation donates money to your party. Do you consider it necessary to act against the corporation? Let us then say that your party's success is crucial for the next elections and even for the future of India; and let us say the alternative party is horrible. Would you still act against the corporation?

4. Do you think government should be run like a company? Do you agree with the "CEO" title given to Chief Ministers? In other words, do you think the goals of a company and a government are the same?

5. Do you think political parties are open institutions, that are the first level of defense, when appointing a candidate? Or do you think it is the people who should decide if a candidate is fit or now?
In other words, if a candidate with somewhat shady dealings, was likely to win in a constituency, would you still choose them? Do you think people are the ultimate judge of a candidate or do political parties have a role in filtering candidates?

Those are my five questions for Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha, Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi,Modi and all of the rest. I think answers to these are at the heart of the current "ideology" in India.

Some thoughts on corruption and regulation

Do we require a mass movement?

A lot of people have invoked the vision of a second freedom struggle to eliminate corruption. Taking them at their word, I will try to explain why it is not.

The freedom struggle included strands of reforming our society. But its primary goal was to eliminate a clear "other" (the British) from a colonial role. For most of the leaders, the "enemy" was NOT the British; the enemy was the colonial system itself. But when translated into a mass movement, the enemy was clearly defined.

In the case of a "mass movement against corruption", who is the "other"? The other is all among us. They are naked exploiters of the system, but we cannot really identify them and stage "satyagrahas" or anything like that.

I think this is a core problem of attitude when talking about corruption - the corrupt are not a distinct group of people.

Should India be corrupt?

Why is India corrupt at all?
Most of us born after independence have assumed that this is the natural status of things - that India is somehow "hardwired" to be corrupt. We do not know any other possible way things could have evolved.
If you read the literature on corruption in India, the conclusions are different. The reason, experts say, corruption took hold in India was because India had a huge License Raj set up very soon after independence. This encouraged, in the first 30-40 years, a systemic fault which pushed people to adjust prices through corruption. Thus corruption in India would have been at low levels if the License Raj had not been set up or did not have so much power.
Jitendra Singh of Wharton management says in an interview:

There was a distortion of incentives within the economy, such that people began expending efforts toward fundamentally unproductive behaviors because they saw that such behaviors could lead to short-term gains. Thus, cultivating those in positions of power who could bestow favors became more important than coming up with an innovative product design. The latter was not as important, anyway, because most markets were closed to foreign competition--automobiles, for example--and if you had a product, no matter how uncompetitive compared to global peers', it would sell.

These were largely distortions created by the politico-economic regime. While a sea change has occurred in the years following 1991, some of the distorted cultural norms that took hold during the earlier period are slowly being repaired by the sheer forces of competition. The process will be long and slow, however. It will not change overnight.

So it is possible that we could have evolved to be not so corrupt; there is nothing genetic or core cultural about Indians and corruption.

Will Individual efforts prevent corruption

People have suggested not paying bribes as a means of fighting corruption. This is impractical. I think this is suggested as a means for blaming the victim.
Let me narrate an incident - this is not so much of corruption, but government incompetence:
Me and a friend were coming back from Bangalore. We had booked seats in a government bus. The bus was there. We got in; had nice seats. I settled down with a comfortable blanket.
Well, about half an hour after the bus was supposed to start, the driver came and told us the bus won't go. We were all frustrated and he gave no explanation. It seemed they had a difference of opinion with some body else and they decided to protest by not driving.
We all got down and were madly trying to find some alternative ( me running around with the blanket wrapped around me). An admin guy came and told us to get tickets in another bus. We all rushed to the counter and tried to get the tickets.
There was one guy who was among the passengers - he was yelling at us that we were making a mistake. We should fight for the original bus to go and demand an explanation. If we did not do that they will keep repeating this.
I sympathized with him; but NOBODY else was listening to him. Everybody scrambled for the tickets, and I got mine too.
I felt ashamed of not fighting for our rights for a long time; but then I realized that what was expected was very high.
People respond to incentives. Given between staying and fighting for a bus that may not really go anywhere, and getting back to Chennai for our regular jobs, 99% will choose getting back to Chennai. This is not because we were all craven fools - it is because that is really the sensible thing to do.
(I have successfully refused to pay bribes elsewhere - before people rush to judge)
This is what I feel about regulating autorickshaws or refusing to pay bribes to policemen - these are problems for the COMMUNITY to fix; not for individual people to fight. People will fight for their rights if very fundamental things, such as their property, their family or their own lives are under threat. Let me correct that - they will fight if these are under IMMEDIATE threat.
A long term threat like air pollution in Chennai also affects our family, lives and property. But we are humans - not given to such long term calculations.
(In fact if we all calculated long term, no one will be building anything in Chennai, given that the sea level is supposed to rise by 1 meter by 2030)

Case Study - Regulating Autorickshaws in Chennai

Chennai autorickshaws are unique in their extortion - They never use their government mandated meters. This results in a very complicated issues for the passenger and the driver. The driver has to know the EXACT location where you are going because if they have to drive more, they lose. The drivers are also badly trained but that is another story.
How do you make sure the auto driver uses a meter?
If I want to get from Adyar to Anna Nagar for a function and the auto guy refuses to use his meter, then I will pay him what he asks after haggling. I will not be staging a satyagraha to shame him. My goal at that point is to get to the function - not the solution of the auto problem. I do know that in the long term, this is what auto drivers understand as well. The stakes are all in their favor.

This is why community organizing is important - in any community, there are people who are generally more concerned with such issues. In Chennai, there is an autorickshaw passengers association. They are trying to influence things, but I don't see much success. But the solution definitely lies in that direction; not in individuals protesting.
Ideally, given some funding, all that you have to do when a driver asks too much money, is to call some number and leave them the auto registration number. Then they take care of all the legalities of punishing the driver. You only have to show up as a witness.

When I was in Philadelphia, I worked on an elaborate website for reporting complaints to the Philadelphia Parking Authority who regulated taxis in the city. There were elaborate rules for recording complaints; for holding hearings; and punishing the drivers including an appeals process. It was very easy to report complaints. Each taxi actually had a phone number listed for reporting complaints.
(Again, I am not saying we should build a website)
But in Philadelphia, this was the city government's function. In Chennai, it IS the Corporation's function, but they are not doing anything about it. I am guessing this is the least of their priorities - because auto drivers are a special interest group. Given a special interest group and a amorphous set of citizens, the interest group will always win.
My point is that there are pretty rational explanations why the auto drivers behave the way they do; and there are ways in which you can combat them without holding a freedom struggle. Individuals refusing to pay over meter charge will not help anyone.

Blogging Block

I have not blogged for at least a month. One reason was my efforts to write a big one about the "Aadhaar" project (National ID Card project) and what it means to us.
But there was also one other reason. I had a general chat over IM with a long-time friend yesterday. I ranted and raved about the state of the country. At the end of it I realized I had a nice editorial to write.
So here are my excerpts from the IM; and some additional comments.
My friend asked: What about blogging? Why are you not feeling motivated?
My response went on and on:
Too many scams; and now the mask is ripped off.I dont feel like there is anything new to say. Right now the Radia tapes and the scams and Binayak Sen's conviction basically show the ugly naked face to everyone.
Till now there was some belief that we are heading towards some manageable state.
But now I am sure that there is actually an elite which is consciously pushing the country towards some policies; and the Karunanidhi family etc are very well entrenched. If you protest they can put you in jail for pretty much anything.
If there is one thing I learnt studying the Aadhaar Law, it is this - we need an Indian Tea Party [I am referring to the American crazy libertarian, anti-government movement called the Tea Party]. Basically laws are passed by our representatives;
and these laws have consequences. But much of these are not debated and pushed in.
Then we are accused of breaking the law.
One example is Chidambaram's recent statement about Binayak Sen's conviction
He said that there is the rule of law and they have to go through due process and appeal.He said that is the only way.But he missed the point. The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act was passed by all these states and it is plainly unconstitutional.
And so now we have a law that goes against the constitution and the minister is telling us we should obey it
My friend: You think the case against Binayak Sen is fraud?
Me: I dont know, but it is two things. It is guilt by association and should not be treated under sedition. Secondly the judge's comments seem to mean that the judgement was meant as a deterrent and not as a particular sentence for Sen's crime. That is shocking. He is almost saying that because Maoists cause killing and you are associated with them indirectly, this will send a message to everyone not to link with them. That is a very shocking judgement.
It violates all sense of balance
My point is that Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha matter. They pass laws that are sometimes crafted by special interests. The most important laws are passed without debate or interest and then people only realise the laws' effects much later. Such as Sen's case. Now anyone who has "Das Kapital" in his home can be arrested and sentenced.
Take the UID modification in 2003 [ I am referring to the change in the Indian Citizenship Act, 1955, that enables compulsory registration of all citizens]. We are only now realizing its implications. When we object, we are violating the law; and they tell us to obey the rule of law.
My friend: ok
Me: Parliament matters. But nobody knows the effects of its laws including the morons who pass them, I suspect

My Friend: Do you know the conditions when the bill was created and passed?
I mean, why did they have a need for that law.

Me: I think they push these through because the police want it in Maoist states but it will be good to do some research. I suspect that other states then adopt them too
That is how the line between a police state and a democracy blur.
There are 1000 different stories there. If u had a journalist staff you could just spend days covering the chennai city budget or laws in state houses or parliament and so on.
For example I found a depressing story in the Hindu that our military and top diplomats are trading visa favors from the US for influencing policy in India
The US consciously promotes that. That was one story and no one commented on it; no ripple.
Our population is under informed and no one is taking up the job of informing them.
The media is mostly corporatised. There is a crying need for independent media
Someone who can cover stories at city level, parliamennt level. I wish there was a Tea Party in India. Just to yell "tyranny" every time.
CNN-IBN in India telecast a story about lobbying. They solicited user comments via twitter during the debate. Most of the comments were supporting lobbying.
Then one guy got the screenshots from the television and website; and looked up the twitter accounts. They don't exist
IBN team was doing this themselves in trying to influence the debate because they are corporate owned and they like lobbying. That just completely depresses me.
These are smart people who think we are all idiots.
At this point in India, no information is available to most people.

My friend got tired of me at this point and left the IM. But not before the damage was done; I may start blogging again.

Rapiscan systems - the Other Corruption

Usually when we say a politician is corrupt, we think about money exchanging hands. Not a lot of thought goes to other forms of corruption - such as power-brokering or abuse of power.
The central government in India is enormously powerful - the simple edicts that bureaucrats pass from their desks actually have consequences.
When we suffer a major erosion in our rights, it is fair to question the motivation of those powerful people in the center.
One such step is coming our way - in the form of the Full Body scanning machines, the Secure 1000 created by Rapiscan Systems.

The news story in Economic Times is here.

The article takes a kind of positive line with the "Indian-born" Deepak Chopra, owner of Rapiscan Systems. Economic Times is usually deferential to big corporations.

But what the article is really saying is that the Indian government is all set to unveil full body scanners in Indian airports. There has not been any debate or news about this (except for the fawning coverage of ET).
In a country that is now seeing major abuses of power by government officials, the LAST thing we need is airport officials videotaping passengers' "near-naked" walk-throughs and publishing it in the internet or threatening passengers with such images.

A few passages from an informative commentary on the "Secure 1000" scanner from Rapiscan:

Scientists from the University of California have publicly challenged the safety of the devices. The U.S. Airline Pilots Association, warns the TSA that they have offered no credible specifications for the radiation emitted by these machines. The USAPA has determined that frequent exposure to TSA-operated scanner devices may subject pilots to significant health risks. The long term health effects of these technologies remains unknown.

However, The Food and Drug Administration has responded to concerns by announcing that the potential health risks from the Naked Body Scanners are "minuscule."
A Matter of Privacy

A full naked body image is produced by the Backscatter x-ray producing virtual strip searches without probable cause which opponents claim are illegal and violate basic human rights, arguing that the scans are a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano ensured passenger privacy and affirms that the images are permanently deleted immediately once viewed and are never stored, transmitted or printed. However, TSA officials admitted that the scanners are required to be capable of saving images for the purpose of evaluation, training and testing. Concern over the possibility of leaked images was further stressed when leaked photos documented by gizmodo.com were made public on their site. The images were from a Florida courthouse scanner that may have illegally saved 35,000 images.

So, the Indian government, which faces no comparable threat as the USA; whose officials and elected leaders are abusers of power; is now contemplating getting a machine that will show naked anyone who tries to fly.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this purchase (and the resulting windfall for Rapiscan) happens not just because of the absolute need for it; but because someone up there has been perfectly lobbied by Rapiscan. It is one of our "industry-friendly" masters who has taken this awful decision.

As I said, there is corruption and then there are power abuses. Installing full body scanners in airports is a complete power abuse by the Indian government.

Pawar proves my point

In my earlier blog I had connected Modi, Raja, the Telecom scam and the Nano car deal to a general confusion between "corporate friendliness" and corruption. All that you have to say is "create jobs" and you can justify any corrupt practice.
After liberalisation politicians have figured out how to make money and gain power while appearing to serve the nation at the same time. That is by saying they support individual businessmen and then yell that they were "business-freindly" when caught.
Being corporate friendly is NOT the same as being MARKET-friendly. Government leaders are expected to maintain a fair market - that is, to be MARKET-friendly. The market has buyers and sellers. Leaders are supposed to look out to BOTH their interests.

Instead what we have is CORPORATE friendliness - which translates to accepting money from corporations and then shilling for them. That was my point in my earlier blog.

Now, within two days of writing it, I found the BEST example of that in an Economic Times link today. Here is the link to the original story:
Pawar turns crusader for India Inc against Centre

As investigating agencies turn the heat on business groups over issues relating to corruption and insider trading, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar cautioned the government against “targeting” corporates without “adequate” reason.

He said recent developments that have triggered corporate disaffection with the government could have adverse implications on the coalition’s stability. More crucially, he went on to suggest that if this persisted, big corporate houses could shift their loyalties to the Opposition. “This will not augur well for the government,” Pawar is learnt to have said.

On Monday afternoon, Pawar raised the issue at a meeting of UPA leaders and warned that there was a “growing feeling” that the government was no longer “corporate-friendly” and had stopped having a “soothing effect” on companies.


The agriculture minister, who is known to be industry-friendly, is learnt to have presented this issue of corporate disaffection as one that affects the sentiments of the share market. Fluctuations in the capital market would affect the average investor, said Pawar, whose own tenure at the helm of consumer affairs over two stints of the UPA has witnessed volatile commodity market fluctuations.

Read that and weep.
So Pawar thinks the government is not corporate-friendly if it investigates wrong doings.
Note how the Economic Times frames this - read the title of the piece again. "Pawar turns crusader for India Inc against Center". Pawar is NOT crusading for India Inc - he is "crusading" for a few rich businessmen.
Secondly, Pawar is right that this may turn some corporations, the party's big donors against the ruling coalition. That is bad for the party - but NOT for the GOVERNMENT. The party is not the government in India. Something like this, although bad for the party, is actually good for government, isn't it?
So, that is what we are dealing with here. Pawar is obviously proud of his "industry-friendly" title, helpfully provided by the Economic Times and other media. What he should be called is "the corrupt agriculture minister". Replace "corrupt" for "Corporate friendly" in the above article and you have an accurate picture.

Politicians now actually have an excuse to claim they are creating jobs or they are corporate friendly - when actually what they are is simple: they are corrupt.

2G, Raja, Modi and Greed

(Updated Below)
Ever since the 2G scam broke, I have been waiting for Narendra Modi, CM of Gujarat to say something about it. Then in a seminar, he was asked what he would have done if he was PM. Very original question. And he answered,"It would not have happened."
The reason I was waiting for Modi (or anyone in the media) to link between Modi and 2G is this: Minister Raja's claims during the 2G scam, his justifications and his mentor Karunanidhi's justifications seemed to be the SAME one's that Modi's defenders used during the Nano factory offer in Gujarat.
The rest of this essay will make that connection; and I will try to explore the philosophical underpinnings of the current mess.

Nano and 2G
What is Raja's crime according to the CAG? Raja bent the rules of allocating the spectrum; and favored certain businesses. This caused huge losses to the government - but the important part is that Raja violated the rules to favor certain companies.
But Modi did the SAME thing when he sought out Tata's Nano. He favored a SINGLE company, Tata, and showered a lot of government favors on tha company so that the factory will relocate to Gujarat. Why didn't ANYONE talk about corruption then? In fact Modi is hailed as a pro-business messiah.
Modi justified the handover of no-bid favors to Tata, a single business, as creating jobs and encouraging investment. Raja said he had acted according to policy - but the CAG report showed that he and his department had bent the rules to favor some businesses.
Modi's actions caused losses to the state of Gujarat too - there has just been no auditing of those losses. Raja could be prosecuted because he is a member of the executive. Modi, as the elected leader of a state cannot be. That is the only difference.

Crony Capitalism

Corruption has always existed in India. But in the last 20 years since liberalisation, politicians have come to realize that they have a MORAL argument FOR corruption. Modi's actions or Raja's can now be justified because showing favors to individual businessmen is now called "pro-business". It magically creates jobs.
I wrote a long article detailing the economics behind this here.
To favor INDIVIDUAL businesses is NOT pro-business - it is anti-business. By favoring Tata and showering a lot of favors to him, Modi has made it difficult for OTHER auto companies to thrive in Gujarat. 20 years back this will be called corruption. People will suspect that Modi took a bribe. Now, instead, Modi is called pro-business or business-savvy - even though he is neither.
This moral justification is now used by almost every politician. There is a justification of corruption of this form. Media seems to be convinced that Modi is pro-business - but the same standard should be applied to Raja too.

States are now expected to compete for business, and offer wild concessions to businessmen, offer public land and build roads for private businesses and so on; Raja simply did the same thing. His department "competed" for certain providers; and favored them. What is wrong with that? I think he was creating jobs; "creating wealth" as they call it now. We should make him Gujarat's CM.

The Government as a Corporation

Linked with this is the idea, that has gained traction in media over the past few years - the idea that a government should be run like a corporation. I remember that Chandrababu Naidu called himself CEO of Andhra. Modi is called the CEO of Gujarat.

When your government is confused with a corporation, your government leaders think their goal is maximise revenue. Hence the justifications for "bending" the rules; or justifying stunts such as Modi's.
There are several important reasons why a government should NOT be run like a corporation:
1. A government's role is ensure happiness and a level playing field for its citizens. That is its goal - not maximising revenue. Revenue helps, definitely, but there are higher goals for government.
On the other hand, a corporation's role has very little to do with happiness. The goal is maximising profits for shareholders.

2. A government leader's SPECIALTY is not in running a company; or to determine how much profit can be obtained. That helps, but their specialty is always in human relations or law. Thus, leaders who THINK they are running their government like a company almost always fail; they make short term decisions (like Modi). They fail because their role requires a different specialty.

3. Thirdly, and this is important for later, a corporation has no transparency requirements. It need not be a fundamental feature in a corporation. But in a government, transparency helps.

By confusing government and corporations, in ALL three of the above, government leaders in India have started acting like corporate leaders.
1. They think it is ok to bend rules to bring in revenue; they forget that their oath binds them to manitain the rule of law. Their oath has NOTHING about revenue.
2. They think they are, indeed, the best judges of maximising such revenue, even though they are not qualified.
3. They tend towards less and less transparency


This constant emphasis on revenue and a corporate picture of government has subverted the original intention of the Constitution or the leaders who formed modern India. Politicians now seem to have bought into a worldview of neo-liberal thinkers.
Earning extra money through cronyism used to be called corruption earlier; but now it is corporate-friendly. Even if you are "honest", you tend to make all the wrong decisions because of this worldview.
Then ultimately, your ministers do the same thing and you have a bunch of scams.

A government leader's role is to take the set of laws you have and apply them uniformly. It is not to speculate about how much revenue the government can additionally earn by bending those laws. The laws are there for a reason. They provide a level playing field in the market. If you think the laws are holding you down, change them through the legislature. Do not violate them and then talk about how it helped create jobs. That is not your role.

The Angst of Sonia

Sonia Gandhi complained that leaders have become more greedy. Manmohan Singh seems to be saying the same thing.
I don't think greed is the issue here. Why should government leaders be less greedy than any of us?
What we have now is a more subtle form of corruption. When magazines talk about corruption, they paint vivid pictures of suitcases changing hands. That is not how it works now.
The benefit for favoring certain businesses and bending the rules is to gain a powerful presence in the table. Raja or Modi need not get money transferred to them. They just have power, a power that is almost as sexy as currency. Karunanidhi has it. Jayalalitha has it. Maran has it. What these people have done, is they have gone and identified themselves as entrepreneurs. They consider themselves businessmen and women. And they think that is the ultimate career goal for them. Not being just an executor of laws.
You cannot fight this by appeals to personal quality. I don't think Karunanidhi or Jayalalitha are greedier than your average guy on the street. They are just in the wrong profession. Or the profession has bent to them.
If we fought tooth and nail and made the laws and the systems transparent enough; and in many areas, remove government power, then they will just move to professions more "natural" to them, such as owning and running companies.
We may even gain some benefit from that.

Update I:
I posted an update to this article called "Pawar proves my point" here.

Nano - I told you so

A couple of Nano cars have caught fire and I just feel like I have to pint out this long article by me an year back. The article argues that by taking the success or failure of Nano as a product AWAY from Tata or the market; and instead subsidizng the product heavily with taxpayer money as Gujarat does - is actually a violation of sound economic policy.
Let me quote from my article:

There are people who argue that job creation is primary goal. Some guy even calculated that in 10 years the government of Gujarat would get money back from the Nano plant because of tax payments by employees. But there is a vital flaw in such arguments:
What if the Nano is a failure?
Let us say that some design flaws make Nano a failure. Can the Gujarat government assure that the Nano will be a success? They can't - the factory is not even in their control. They have not studied the market or discussed the quality procedures or the thousand other things that can go wrong with a product. By tying themselves to a single businessman's product, the government has committed taxpayer money for something it has no capability to ensure or manage.
Instead sound economic theory requires that the Gujarat government create conditions for manufacturers in general and then wait for business to flourish.

I am not saying that the Nano WILL be a failure. Given the amount of propaganda surrounding it, Tata has ensured its sales. But, for Gujarat to have tied itself with that car and committing taxpayer money to a product that they have no control over is WRONG.
It means individual profits and socialized risk. That is what it is.

History, Race and Politics

A couple of years back, one of my friends wrote a post on logic, science and nature. I commented on that post and in the ensuing discussion, my friend mentioned that the Rig Veda could be 6000 years old! You can read the whole exchange here.
To support this he mentioned a few authors.
I also used to participate in debates in the forum at karuthu.com. Most discussions veered into history automatically. I noticed that people had lots of historical theories of themselves. One guy posted an image of a Babylonian bronze statue and said it looked like Thiruvalluvar and therefore Dravidians were Babylonians or some such weird theory. Many of the forums devolved into wild theories about Aryans and Dravidians. (Many of these threads are still active in Karuthu - for three years!).
I have always wondered about a couple of things:
1. Why do people have a need to invent dates more and more ancient for their cultures? I read a Tamil language history book long back which basically said Tamils were some of the earliest descendants from apes, and they were the first civilization. It also linked with the debunked "Lemuria" continent and so on. And this is a history book. Of course, Hindu fundamentalists keep tracing their history to Harappa, even though that civilization shows no traces of ancient Hinduism. Tamil fanatics trace to Harappa too.
2. Why do people think a thousand years is a short time? The Rig Veda's earliest parts are dated to around 1200 BC. Isn't that ancient enough? Why dump another 5000 years on top of it?

History is a Science
I believe one of the reasons we see this kind of extensions to timelines is this: people think anyone can reason out history. That is, the perception is that History is not as exact a science as, say, Physics. I don't think a non-physicist would go in and say one day, "Oh, special relativity is really wrong.". They don't dare to because in their minds Physics needs rigour and mathematics.
On the other hand, the way we are taught History, historians seem like a bunch of imaginative people who can just sit around cooking up theories. We do not see any rigour in History, even though historians go through as much peer review as other scientists.
(If you want to explore rigour in history, just take a look at the books dealing with Microlithic era(Later Stone Age). The level of detail and scholarship is amazing).
If we are asked about specific heat capacity or photoelectric effect, we do not volunteer our own theories. We refer to text books.
The text books say that the Rig Veda is 3000 years old. Why don't we just accept that?

History and Identity Politics
There is of course, another reason, the primary motivator: amateur intellectuals in India are not really happy about our present condition. We tend to glorify our past so that the recent humiliation of colonialism goes away. We blame our present condition on obscure historical roots and try to trace history to a "Garden of Eden" long back.
I noticed that RSS and VHP supporters think we were enslaved a thousand years back - that is, even before the British, they say, the Muslims were "occupying" our country. Thus their freedom struggle started in 1000 AD, not after 1857.
Believing this is a stretch - because these people are corrupting the definition of colonialism. The British were colonialists, who (because of reasons related to economics), kept the relationship suited for exploitation. The Muslim invaders, on the other hand, were basically migrants. Their system of exploitation was no different from, say, the Mauryans or the Guptas. India had endured such waves of migration - the north-west border was porous.
To call Prithviraj Chauhan's fight against Ghazni as a freedom struggle and equate it with our fights with the British is just not accurate.
Yet this myth has a very profound impact for Hindu nationalists. It fueled crazy acts such as the Babri Masjid demolition.

The Tamil Political Tool
One of the worst uses of history as a political tool was the Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) propaganda in Tamil Nadu.
when I was in college, I asked one of my friends what he wanted most to clean up the country. He said he wanted to clean up the Aryan people from Tamil Nadu.
I was surprised by this, because I had no idea what he meant by Aryan people. Then one of my father's colleagues visited home and ranted for a long time about how Aryans worshipped Vishnu, while Shiva is a Dravidian god. A brahmin friend of mine said he wanted to learn German because that is where Aryans were from!
Now, if you took any standard reference book (such as Romila Thapar's Early History of India), you would understand that Aryan is a language grouping. For example, Hebrew is an Aryan language. NOBODY would call Jews an Aryan people. In fact six million Jews were killed during WWII because they were considered NOT Aryan.
Both the term Dravidian and Aryan are used as language groupings. Yet nobody can deny that they have been used as racial terms - without any basis.
I have read several books on Tamil History. Anna, a former CM of Tamil Nadu wrote an entire book on the "Aryan Maya". Almost none of these people were historians! That is, these people were doing the same thing that Hindu fanatics were doing - using History as a political tool, and basically revising history to suit their needs.


Race as a Social Construct
Modern historians consider Race as a social construct. Romila Thapar calls Race as an European concept.
Let us think about that for some time.
When people talk about race, they usually mean biological distinctions - when we call white people or black people as a "race" we mean they are identifiable by looks. Or atleast we imply a genetic distinction.
When Karunanidhi talks about the Tamil "race" he is not talking about Tamil speaking people. When the DK leader Veeramani or Periyaar talk about the Dravidian "race" what they mean is a biologically distinct set of people. If they just meant Dravidian language speaking people, there is no reason to exclude Brahmins from it.
Yet, NO such biological distinction exists in nature.
The whole idea of a biological race - whites or blacks or mongoloid or semitic or Aryan is a concept created by European society in the 17th and 18th centuries to deal with differences. It has no independent "scientific" meaning.
The only meaning race has is as a social idea. Because we all believe in race, it has an effect on society. It has no independent biological role.
Mind you, I am not saying that the caste system is good (people tend to make such jumps in reasoning) or that the Brahmin caste is an innocent bystander. By all means, let us condemn the caste system; let us undo this brahmanical order. But let us look for sociological reasons for such differences (if at all we are concerned about the origins). Caste has an independent social meaning - it is not necessarily identical as race. If you picked up a standard sociology text book, you will see that caste system is given a separate section. That is because it is a unique oppressive system.
The idea that "race" exists is very deep in our psychology. The first time I read about race being just a social construct, I had difficulty assimilating what that means. I had been trained to see the world as composed of different races, some of which "achieved" while others were also-rans. It took me some time to get my brain around the fact that this whole view is a myth.

Are Indians system-blind?

(Updated below) Update II
This is going to be a long post.
Let me mention a few incidents:
1.In Vijay TV talk show Neeya Naana, they were discussing government staff behavior in the passport office. A lady said that the staff are very rude and abuse public all the time. The host Gopinath said that Indians accuse Indian government staff of rudness; but will stand in line silently if they are abroad. I have heard this before - that the same public who drive badly and are impatient in India, will behave well and be patient abroad.
Gopinath was implying that the public were to blame for this - that we have two standards of behavior.
But, if Indians behave well abroad and not so well in India, does it mean that something is wrong with Indians? Or does it mean that something is wrong with India?

2. In every campus interview students ask a standard question - why is your company not creating products for India? Why are you in IT services business? Why are you not serving India? This common complaint is asked in different ways by many people.
The assumption is that the way Indian companies behave has something to do with the NATURE of the business owners (they are not sufficiently patriotic).
It does not seem to occur to anyone that if companies all the time rush towards IT services, it must be because the commerce system is PUSHING them in that direction. That is, a set of tariff laws, calculations of profit margin and the way international capital is mobile, pushes IT companies in India to operate in a certain business model. It has nothing to do with the NATURE or personality of business owners.

3. A few days back, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine - he operates an electronic dealership. He mentioned that his staff keeps switching jobs; and that they expect a payscale in parallel with IT industry payscales. He thought this was because of the "attitude" of Indian labor. He said they were too arrogant and expected the moon.
I explained to him that if labor expected a suddenly increased payscale, it was because we have an IT industry that operates on very good margins and is on a boom cycle. Since this industry is in booming in the same city, It is easy for employees to learn software programming from some training centres and quickly double their salaries. That is, labor was being pushed towards IT because of the inflow of IT business to India. That meant that employers like my friend were facing the same pressure from the market.
That is, it was not the "attitude" of Indian employees that needs to be blamed - there is a perfect systematic reason for that "attitude".

In each of the above examples, and in many other scenarios, Indian opinion seems to tend towards blaming people and attitudes than the interacting systems that operate on people and cause certain behavior. It seems, as a whole, Indians are system-blind.

System Blindness and the Indian Psyche
Sudhir Kakar, in his landmark work, "The Inner World", linking anthropology and Indian psychology, says this:

Hindus share the belief that the legitimacy of social institutions lies in the dharma they incorporate rather than in utilitarian contractual agreements and obligations. ....
Moreover, it is generally believed that social conflict, oppression and unrest do not stem from the organization of social relations, but originate in the adharma (not dharma) of those in positions of power. Institutions in India are thus personalized to an extent inconceivable in the West; individuals who head them are believed to be the sole repository of the virtues and vices of the institutions. ....
Many are the poignant stories of simple farmers in the early days of British rule who responded to an act of injustice by government officials by spending their all in the vain hope of reaching the Queen and gaining her ear, at Windsor.
Any tendency towards social reform in India moves not to abolish hierarchical institutions or to reject the values on which they are based, but to remove or "change" the individuals in positions of authority in them. When an institution is not working, it is taken for granted that the power-wielders have veered from the path of dharma.

The quote talks about Hindu world view, but applies to Indians as a whole (because it is a cultural than a religious world view).
So, when faced with some social structure that is broken, or when faced with a certain group of individuals who behave a certain way, as Indians, our first tendency is to blame the individuals themselves than look for systematic reasons for such behavior.
This explains each one of the items I described above. It also explains why, when faced with a broken system like our incredibly bad driving in Indian roads, we look to blame the drivers themselves, rather than look for systematic reasons why people drive badly.

System-blindness in Driving
In the case of driving, we can see that the Regional Transport Offices (RTO) are not monitoring driving schools closely, nor are they applying very strict criteria for proof of learning from the public. We learn to drive mainly from an utility point of view and do not learn that driving has a social dimension. This fault squarely falls on the RTOs. Note that I am not saying that RTOs give licenses to wrong people - almost anyone can learn responsible driving, provided there is someone to teach them and there is time to learn.
The other side of this equation is the regulatory system - we do not have enough traffio police and the police available are overworked. They also tend towards corruption.
Instead what are the consequences of blaming the individuals who drive in our roads, and not looking at systemic reasons?

The Consequences of System-Blindness
Most of the time, blaming individuals means that we can never correct the situation - unless everyone in India becomes a saint, we cannot have a good society. Thus, right away, we have blocked an effort to correct the situation.
Secondly, blaming individuals all the time,means we OVEREMPHASIZE punishment for deviation from our laws - but not enough emphasis is placed on learning. As we saw in the above example, the learning angle of RTOs is entirely lost - we instead concentrate exclusively on regulation by Traffic police.
Thirdly, blaming individuals in the Indian context implies a kind of self-loathing. Most of us must be familiar with this - when you blame a politician (as I did in my post on Rahul Gandhi and the Mumbai Attacks), the instant response is that we have to blame ourselves (one of the comments says that).
I think we are all familiar with this pattern - when Ramalinga Raju was arrested, rediff published an "open letter" from some moron, (the article is here) - in which the guy compared Ramalinga Raju's crimes with people who were not swiping ID cards properly at Satyam. The article ended up saying we all have ourselves to blame.
After the current spate of attacks on Indians in Australia, Outlook has published a highly confused feature article saying "Aren't we racists too?".
The tendency is to spread blame around so generally that we cannot take any action to correct anything.
This "blame ourselves" cry usually comes because people do not differentiate actual crimes against the law from individual moral issues. But it also happens because people fail to realize the interlocking systems we live in and instead focus on individual behavior.

An Example of System Blindness - Indian Politics
One example of system blindness caused the exclusive focus on voting in last parliamentary elections.
There were heavy drives in the English media to go out and vote. Aamir Khan spoke about the importance of voting. When just 45% of Mumbai voted, there were castigations of the public.
What is the logic behind such focus on voting? The prevailing idea, as explained by the movie "Yuva" ("Aayutha Ezhuthu" in Tamil) is this: if we distinguish between good and bad politicians and elect only candidates based on "merit" then we can change the system.
I have a fundamental issue with this idea - it assumes that the current crop of politicians are bad. It thus blames our ills on a group of people's nature.
Most of our politcians are well educated - some of them are lawyers. Do we know if the constituencies of such ostensibly "good" candidates are well developed?
The answer is, of course, that there seems to be uniform ineffectiveness from our legislature, irrespective of the education or sincerity of the representatives.
Why is that?
Secondly, it is close to impossible to fight an entrenched political party's candidate. We think it is possible if everyone votes for the "good" candidate. But it is not easy to figure out a good candidate for anyone. This whole idea may have worked if we were in a community of a hundred people. It will not work in the current scenario.
So, let us take a step back and see what is wrong with the election system:
1. Political parties have zero inner party democracy and have managed to circumvent such democracy requirements. It should be upto political parties to figure out the good candidate - not just the general public.
2. The election process SHOULD FORCE public financing for campaigns - that is the only way to level the playing field so that entrenched parties do not dominate.

Both of the above are NOT going to be solved just by voting. It requires a campaign to change the system. Thus, it is neither the public's fault that we elect "bad" candidates not is it the politicians' fault that they are ineffective. We need to change certain aspects of the political system for any meaningful change.

Why are We System-Blind?
From the reason for Indian IT's focus on services to the emergence of South India as an IT destination to the collapse of Indian sports in the Olympics, everything can generally be explained by looking for systemic faults.
But in this article I seem to be blaming Indians in general for system-blindness - isn't that itself wrong?
There are certain reasons for our overlooking systemic faults. These are:
1. We are a conservative society, till now. One of the hallmarks of a conservative society is assigning blame to individuals for systemic issues. It is a way of looking at the world.
When the current credit crisis started in the United States, American conservatives explained the crisis by blaming it on black and Hispanic households, who could not repay housing loans. That is, they blamed the minorities for overreaching and being greedy.
On the other hand, liberals, who looked at the same crisis, explained it by tracing it from the credit default swap mechanism initiated back in 2000. They linked it to the complex derivative trading rules in Wall Street and even on the way compensation packages worked in the finance industry.
You see the difference? Conservatives blamed individual "attitudes" and liberals blamed ceratin features of the system.
In India, we, as a conservative society, blame individuals more than systems.

2. The second is the cultural reason that I quoted earlier in the article (from Sudhir Kakar). The way the concept of dharma works in Indian society, we are tuned to see individuals operating in dharmic or adharmic mode than systems that offer incentives or disincentives.

There are perfectly rational explanations for the reasons we focus on indviduals - but it is a weakness in our society.
One of the ways to change this focus will be through education. In the long run, if we guide our educational systems towards civic lessons and explain the interlocking economic and political systems that govern us,then we can expect future generations not to play the "blame ourselves" game.
Implementing the 30-year old recommendations of the Police Commission Report or Education Commission report; and cleaning up campaign financing will go longer to establish a sane society.

Update I
When I talk about a "system", I am talking about a set of procedures, laws and other mechanisms that offer incentives and disincentives for people to behave in certain ways. Such an idea of a system is used by economists all the time. The market is one such system. These incentives and disincentives need careful consideration and are not obvious all the time.
A few years back a law was introduced to make Rape punishable by death. Women's activists objected to this law. At first sight, it seems like they should support it because the law would act as a deterrent against rape and hopefully reduce it.
But there is a hidden effect of such a law - it means that a rapist is more likely to kill his victim for fear of exposure. This is the reason why women's groups objected to this law.
Almost all the time, we ARE operating under a set of interlocking systems. We are just blind to this process. I am NOT talking about creating a NEW system, or even a SINGLE system.
Many times what we require are policy tunings to get a desired behavior. Those policy tunings in the public sphere can be effective only if we understand what is being done.
The National Police Comission report was released 30 years back. It talks about separating the state police departments from under the state government (and thus, the ruling party). It talks about creating a separate governing body (like the US Department of Justice). One of the recommendations is that the governing body be a council involving a couple of Opposition party members and retired judges.
Such a tuning would have effectively prevented the abuses we see now from ruling parties. It is obvious, in Tamil Nadu, that Jayalalitha's dragging Karunanidhi from his home at midnight would never have happened if the police was under a separate governing body.
This is what I mean by a systemic knowledge. There is so much analysis done in television and the media during election time; it all focusses on personalities. If going out to vote is important, I think agitating for the implementation of the Police Commission report is more important and will change the system faster.

Update II
One of the main reasons to emphasize systems is that the alternative explanation - that Indian middle class is bad is just a cop-out. That just avoids argument. The explanation is also contrary to common sense - why should Indians behave well abroad and not in India? Further, why do we think that Indians are somehow uniquely corrupt?
It makes more sense that we behave the way we do and our politicians and businesses behave a certain way because that is the way incentives lie.