Of that interesting reading

In this worst of the best Session of parliamentary mess in India what can one expect to respect the ruler whom we elected knowingly or unknowingly. The answer is nothing. Stop reading the political economics columns for a while to really kind of ponder about what is happening behind the door. There is no many harsh statement on many things. It become a sort of habits that many people just say what they would not have said if they really thought through it with commonsense.

I am not the one who recommends every time when Narayan Ramachandran writes about anything that he think is good to tell others about it. But this article is really worth spending your time perhaps I strongly recommend any one who is interested in the subject of invisible hand or the markets in society. The piece is absolutely excellent.

Why Amartya Sen likes Prof James Buchanan's theory of public reasoning?

Meeting different people is not all that bad even if some one is really thinking differently about them. I had brief opportunity to meet Prof Sen early this month. He had mentioned about one of his new article and that is the one I am citing here. It is worth to read the entire article for the below para alone.

• "Public reasoning is not only crucial for democratic legitimacy, it is essential for a better public epistemology that would allow the consideration of divergent perspectives. It is also required for more effective practical reasoning. It can bring out what particular demands and protests can be restrained in interactive public reasoning, in line with scrutinized priorities between a cluster of quite distinct demands. This involves a process of “give and take” which many political analysts, from Adam Smith and the Marquis de Condorcet in the eighteenth century to Frank Knight and James Buchanan in our time, have made us appreciate better."

At least a generation gap the ATM revolution took place in India compared to America.

Atalji's wise words: "Tragically, morality and ethics are at a discount in politics today, not only in India but countries across the world." 

New Finance Minister's new mantra: "I would like to make it clear that the burden of fiscal correction must be shared, fairly and equitably, by different classes of stakeholders. The poor must be protected and others must bear their fair share of the burden. Obviously, adjustments must be made both on the revenue side and on the expenditure side." 

Niranjan of The MINT wonders whether Finance Minister is musing to increase the tax bases?

Instead of making useful sense of argument, they start fighting among themselves (1, 2) from the day one. The case in point is the review committee constituted for revisiting cartoons in school textbooks. Don't forget, all in the name of poor 'dalits'!!

Symptomatic of a common disease in the economics

Professor Jean Drèze whistle with professor Basu’s new working paper (PDF) released in the Finance Ministry. Both of them seems to be missing a very relevant fact that any attempt to address the corruption is required strengthening of institutional mechanisms like police, enforcement system etc. Beside, there should be strong security system established to protect the persons who report after bribing. Otherwise, given the present conditions, we do not know what will happen to the bribe givers and reporter!!

                          

I wonder what would he meant when he uses the words like “common sense”, “morality” etc since he and his alike minded persons are largely away from the meaning of that words!! 

Here are Prof.Jean's argument on morality and commonsense.

• Basu’s argument is all the more puzzling as the paper ends with a plea for acknowledging the role of values and ethics in eradicating corruption: “if we want to really get at corruption, what we need to build up are values of honesty and integrity in society”. Well said. But how is the legalisation of bribe-giving supposed to help in building up such values?
• In fact, once moral considerations are introduced, the initial argument breaks down once again. Is the legalisation of bribe-giving supposed to make it less immoral? If so, that would tend to encourage, not discourage, bribing. If not, why would anyone blow the whistle after paying a bribe? That would be like drawing attention to one’s own immorality. Possibly to deal with this, Basu suggests that bribes might be “reimbursed” to bribe-givers if they blow the whistle. That would indeed give them an incentive to blow the whistle — but this suggestion takes us further and further away from anything like the real world.
• It may be argued that paying a harassment bribe is not morally reprehensible in the first place, because the bribe-giver is a victim and the bribe is an act of self-defence. I am not persuaded. When you pay a harassment bribe, you abdicate your duty to use other means to resist the harassment, not only for yourself but also on behalf of others who might face the same situation. You also secure an advantage for yourself, vis-à-vis others who may not be able or willing to bribe. This does not sound particularly ethical.
• If you find all this heavy-going, just think about it from a common-sense point of view: does it make sense to fight corruption by making it easier for people to blow the whistle on their own acts of bribe-giving, so that bribe-takers are deterred from asking for a bribe in the first place? Ethical issues aside, this is quite a fanciful idea, even if it is certainly possible to think of situations where it might work.

The process of morality in men

Whether one agree with Vijay Nagaswami or not for the below paragraph, I entirely agree with the conclusion.

• Lawrence Kohlberg, who described the process of moral evolution as going through six stages during the process of human growth and development. In the first stage, fear of punishment and the need for obedience guide moral development. Next, the child enters the second stage which is driven by a hedonistic orientation, where anything that satisfies self-interest is considered right. These first two stages are referred to as the Level of Pre-conventional Moral Development. As the child enters adolescence and begins to relate to peers and adults, the stage of interpersonal concordance (behaving in a manner that pleases others and increases acceptance by them) takes over. With further understanding and growth, one gets into the stage of law and order orientation, where one respects and obeys rules and regulations for the larger good, to ensure the smooth progress of society and social life. These two stages are called the Level of Conventional Moral Development, after which one enters the Level of Post-conventional Moral Development, which is predominantly an adult activity. In the latter level, the individual's approach is more principled and based on rational understanding and choices, and progresses to the fifth stage where the orientation is predominantly legalistic. Morality, in this stage, is understood by appreciating that rules and regulations are like social contracts that can be negotiated using democratic processes like compromise and consensus. Finally, one enters the sixth stage, driven more by abstract reasoning, where universal principles of justice define one's internal moral code.

• More important than whether Kohlberg was right or wrong is the understanding that higher levels of moral development take place within our minds and cannot be blamed on globalisation, Internet, television or government. Unfortunately today, by virtue of the pace of social change, our approach to our morals is dictated by fear and prejudice, and not introspection and thought. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who studied the impact of culture on morals and morality, identified five fundamental moral values that can be considered universal across cultures: care for others, fairness, loyalty, authority and purity. However, in contemporary life, we tend to be obsessed most about purity — predominantly purity of our sexuality and of Indian culture. Maybe the moral of the story is that we need to shift our focus a bit, and reflect on other parameters as well, all the time remembering that we can blame no one for our ‘ moral turpitude' but ourselves.

Do political exercises connect with a moral evaluation?

The former Governor of West Bengal Mr. Gopalkrishna Gandhi has an interesting piece in which he eloquently expresses his views on “respect” and “belief. What struck me more in his speech is that, this line “political exercise that may or may not be connected with a moral evaluation”. Because “moral evaluation” is not just a cup of tea you may think? It has different connotations in ethics of once behaviour in both public and private life. Moreover, it is the “moral evaluation” which gets long life in the history of mankind. In fact even once own life time to remember their conduct of day today life.

Few excerpts:

• Respect is either there or not there. You cannot have gradations of it, like Respect Vibhushan, Respect Bhushan, Respect Shri. Respect is Respect.

• Respect does not come from reasoning. Respect comes instinctively from the thought. “Here is one I respect.”

• Many holders of high office are elected to them. The process of election is now used skilfully by the electorate as a political exercise that may or may not be connected with a moral evaluation.

• Several enter the fray because they command resources, not because they command respect. They command loyalty, they command obedience, they command admiration, they command fear. And because after commanding all these, they still want to command respect, they get their followers to try to commandeer it. But people, simple people, are able to perceive the intrinsic quiddity or thingness of a person almost by instinct, just as they are able to tell a good potato from one that has gone fungoid.

• C. Rajagopalachari never contested or won an election in independent India, but public respect for him was strong, whether he was in office or out of it (which was most of the time). The same was true of his exact contemporary, ‘Periyar' E.V. Ramaswamy, whose ‘office' was none other than affectionate esteem. Stalwarts of our freedom struggle such as Nehru, Patel, Rajendra Prasad and Azad, and towering personalities like Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Babasaheb Ambedkar apart, post-Independence Chief Ministers such as Gopinath Bordoloi of Assam, Nabakrushna Chaudhuri of Orissa, T. Prakasam, K. Kamaraj, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, Gobind Ballabh Pant, C.N. Annadurai, and Jyoti Basu are among those whose incumbencies in elective office had little to do with the intrinsic respect they commanded across political divides and across the country. It is immaterial that Jayaprakash Narayan did not hold elective office. He held a respect which the spontaneous title — Loknayak — symbolised.

• Nothing in creation is flawless, except perhaps forgiveness by the person entitled to forgive. (Forgiveness is different, we should note, from pardon). But the judiciary's mandate is not to distribute forgiveness, it is about determining culpability and where required, convicting and sentencing the culpable.

• Nothing in creation is infallible, not even forgiveness. In the dispensing of justice in accordance with a differentiated code of defining and evaluating liability, this institution too can err.

• Nothing in creation is constant or uniform, either. So the judiciary and constitutional bodies and commissions are a terraced palate, where fallibility is a fact as is dis-uniformity.

Very rightly:

• Respect is often linked to admiration for skill. There is respect for a great musician, a dancer or sculptor, an actor or a sportsman because that person has honed a great skill to near-perfection. There is one unfortunate accompaniment to skill-based stature, however, that can rob it of its appeal. And that is the price tag that goes with high-calibre skill. Be it in sports — cricket in particular — or in music, or in the visual arts, the interplay of money with standards threatens respect for those persons endowed with skills and, in fact, with the place of skills in society.

Whose morality is this?

There is a reported news on “Dr Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras, reader and chairman of Modern Indian Languages at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was suspended for having consensual sex with.. “rickshaw puller”. This is high time for Section 377.

I am posting the full article below for record and readers ready reference

Whose morality is this?

February 18, 2010

First Published: 23:28 IST(18/2/2010)

Last Updated: 23:31 IST(18/2/2010)

Saleem Kidwai, Nivedita Menon, Mary John, V. Geetha, Shilpa Phadke and 13 other teachers and academics from universities across India.

We, as teachers and academics from universities across India, read with outrage and dismay that Dr Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras, reader and chairman of Modern Indian Languages at the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) was suspended for having consensual sex with someone of the same sex within the privacy of his home.

What made the press report that came out on Thursday in certain sections of the media particularly shocking was that there were either cameras placed by students within Dr Siras’ house or television reporters got into the house and made a video film of the alleged incident that was then passed on to the university authorities. The university authorities instead of going by the constitutionally recognised right to privacy within the four corners of one’s house have instead chosen to act against Dr Siras.

The outrage of the university authorities is deeply misdirected. Instead of suspending Dr Siras, they should have taken stern and serious action against those who so blatantly took on the role of playing moral police with no regard whatsoever for Dr Siras’ constitutionally recognised right to privacy and dignity within his home and the university.

What is the ‘gross misconduct’ for which Dr Siras has been suspended? It is not a crime for an adult to have consenting intimate sexual relations with another adult. It is not an offence for an adult to have consensual sex with another adult in the privacy of his home. Dr Siras, in line with the judgement of the Delhi High Court in Naz Foundation, has also committed no legal offence. On the other hand, he is the victim of multiple offences — his house has been entered into without his consent and his intimate life has been filmed without his consent.

The press reports repeatedly allege that Dr Siras was having consensual sex with a “rickshaw puller”. Is the occupation or implied class status of the individual involved the reason behind the accusation of ‘scandal’ and ‘outrageous’ behaviour? If so, then the AMU administration is violating the tenets both of India’s Constitution and of the ethics and values of an institution of higher learning with a history as long and distinguished as AMU which was built precisely to end discrimination on religion, caste or class.

One has to remember that it was only last year that Chief Justice Shah and Justice Muralidhar, in holding Section 377 inapplicable to consenting sex between adults in private, came up with the important distinction between public morality and constitutional morality. As they noted, “Moral indignation, howsoever strong, is not a valid basis for overriding individual’s fundamental rights of dignity and privacy. In our scheme of things, constitutional morality must outweigh the argument of public morality, even if it be the majoritarian view.”

If the Naz judgement with its stress on constitutional morality is taken seriously, the immoral actions will be not be Dr Siras’ conduct but rather the actions of the university authorities in suspending him for the expression of his constitutional right, the actions of the media to blatantly invade his life as well as the possible involvement of students of the university.

This incident follows a series of events that mark the shrinking of spaces of freedom and dignity within India’s institutions of higher learning. It is imperative that we protect institutions that should be bastions of building inclusive and democratic cultures for generations to come from narrow-minded moral policing of this kind.

This is the full text of the petition letter

The views expressed by the authors are personal

Whether government is moral or immoral?

Williams says “In thinking about questions of morality, my initial premise is that I am my private property and you are your private property. That's simple. What's complex is what percentage of me belongs to someone else. If we accept the idea of self-ownership, then certain acts are readily revealed as moral or immoral. Acts such as rape and murder are immoral because they violate one's private property rights. Theft of the physical things that we own, such as cars, jewelry and money, also violates our ownership rights. 

You might as well join in the looting, including the current looting in the name of stimulating the economy”.