Week end reading

The more and more I read articles like this I feel that I should reread the beautiful book The Law by Bastiat.

"One little-known aspect of Shastri is that he could have become India’s first economic reformer."

• Shastri saw that clearly when he took charge of the country after Nehru. Nayar says Shastri was never a big votary of planning. P.N. Dhar, one of the best policy minds of his generation and later a close adviser to Indira Gandhi, pointed out in Indira Gandhi, the ‘Emergency’ And Indian Democracy, his memoir: “Lal Bahadur Shastri, the unassuming prime minister who had succeeded the charismatic Nehru, seemed an unlikely person to face up to the (economic) situation. But in his own quiet way he did initiate a series of steps which would have not only brought the economy out of the existing crisis but possibly put it on a high-growth path in the long run. He wore no ideological blinkers; he saw facts as they were in all their starkness. Chronic food shortages made him shift investment from basic industries to agriculture. Roaring black markets persuaded him to make a relative shift from controls to incentives, and the glaring inefficiency of the public sector made him accept a larger role for the private sector and foreign investment. He also took measures to shift the locus of economic decision-making from the Planning Commission to the ministries and from the Centre to the states. These measures reduced the influence of the Planning Commission—which had developed a rigid, almost doctrinaire outlook on economic policies—and at the same time decentralized decision-making.”

Stunning self-correction

Sentence to ponder over (Fixerpreneurship by Shekhar Gupta):

• If you draw a simple chart of the large companies that have lost the most value on the stock markets over the past three years, you’d notice that almost all of these were doing business on the same cusp of politics, finance and natural resources. To that extent, you have to admit that the market has been the first to sense the rot and has applied a stunning self-correction, severely punishing those responsible for it. Many of those who called themselves masters of the universe until just the other day, flaunting Bentleys, private jets, yachts, Swiss chalets and more, are now hiding from their bankers and shareholders and blaming the “system”. Obviously, there can be no sympathy for them or for their bankers. The small shareholder is always the victim of hype. So the markets, at least, have responded to this multi-layered crisis of governance.

Prof Ajay has very interesting post here discussing about the Indian capitalism and its wings of fire.

Sadanand Dhume point out that unlike India "Japan, South Korea and Singapore didn't start seriously expanding their social welfare programs before they were well into middle-income status—at which point growth had begun addressing the major woes."

Some Links

Laaton ke bhoot baaton se nahin maante

"We certainly do not need The Economist to remind us that India’s “mood is waiting to be lifted”."

The dynastic Congress will shiver and sink if the Modi-Muslim relationship gets recast in this manner, with both sides learning the lessons taught by that wise teacher—democracy.

Great divide between Delhi and Bombay

"I’ve said sometimes that there is a great divide between Delhi and Bombay. In Bombay people think you can make money and they make money through enterprise and with that you can buy some power. In Delhi we think we have the power because we live in Delhi. We have politics, we have the joint secretaries, we have the levers of power. So through that power we can make money by taking bribes, by taking gifts or just by harassing and blackmailing people who make money through enterprise." 


From Shekhar Gupta's speech. See here for full speech.

Of the changing of idea of India

From Mr S Gupta's article in today's Indian Express:

• In the Dalit quarter of Kallupuruwa in Rae Bareli, a woman, a mother of two, is severely indignant when asked if she can feed her children properly. “Of course, we feed them, and feed them very well,” she says, “the problem is, we are not left with enough money to send them to a really good English medium school as the fee there is Rs 300 per child. We send them to the one with 120-rupee fee.” And what about government schools? Urmila smiles that smile of vicious disdain, as if to say, you send your children to government schools. Leave mine to me.

Blinking links

Dr.Surjit Bhalla on says perhaps rightly so "I think a liberal society, which I hope and want India to be, has absolutely no place for reservations of any kind." and "And reservations is not the right policy to enhance the well-being of the poor. Maybe after the noise has settled, Parliament will sponsor the creation of a new Constitution, one based on the principles of rights and justice, and not on the ad hoc principles of state intervention."


Shekhar Gupta explains Mera Neta -dalit, tribal, OBC, upper caste-Chor Hai

Dr. Shubhashis, Research Director,India development Foundation writes something interesting about Indian social science researchers dealing with data:

•  the other issue that was brought up was the difficulty of obtaining Indian data. Any researcher reading this will, I am sure, be able to recall many instances of this. In my own experience, I can think of at least two instances that stand out in my memory: (a) in one I could not get the type of access that a foreign researcher could; and (b) in the other, I got access from the foreign researcher at a time when the government organisation in charge of the data was refusing me access to it! In fact, what has helped research is the Right to Information Act and I know of many academics who have obtained data through this Act.

NREGA is money down the drain.

Team Anna is deep in crisis

• "Let’s explore this further. Another member of Team Anna overstays his leave from his government job, flunks his employment bond, and is asked to pay back what is due to the government as per the law and procedure; it is still only Rs 9 lakh or so. And what is the answer? It is not that the government’s claim is fake or even vindictive. It is just that, what do my former employers (the Central government in this case) think I was doing? Was I whiling away my time? I was campaigning for the RTI, which is so important for my countrymen. So even if I did not come to work meanwhile, or was effectively AWOL, the government should have the good sense to waive all claims on me. Waive all claims? Use discretion? Didn’t you think this entire campaign was about curtailing discretion, ensuring rules are followed fully and no exceptions are made? And what if lakhs of absentee teachers in our government schools, who the Jan Lokpal is expected to straighten, find similar excuses?"

See here for full article.

Blinking links

Despite PM's vow, govt ignores Chandra anniversary

National Interest: The Officer Raj

NREGA is not GOOD for dalits

My name is RE-FORM, the EVIL NO 1

• "Here are the two questions you are most likely to be asked these days: One, when was the last time India looked so rudderless and angry? And two, do people of India bother about corruption? Hasn’t it just been a way of life for ever? 

• The answer to all this is neither any apologies or promises from the government or the party, nor just locking up people in jail. It is not even the most draconian anti-corruption law and ombudsman ever in human history. You talk about hanging those involved in major scams? The Chinese execute hundreds for corruption every year, including governors of their provinces. Has that ended corruption? Transparency International ranks them higher than us on its scale of corruption: so even here the Chinese are ahead of us! 

• The answer is governance reform. India needs to launch a massive reform in every area where a citizen comes in contact with the sarkar, from getting ration cards to driving licences and passports, birth certificates, property registrations, municipal clearances, tax assessments and refunds and so on. Availability of quality schools and colleges, something the aspirational young Indian and her parents value most of all, hospital beds, has to be quadrupled in the next five years, and a credible programme needs to be launched now. Land records, registrations must be computerised, and a new system ensuring deadline-bound delivery of routine government services must be set up. It is more complex than reforming the economy in 1991, but the gains will be enormously greater. More important, this is the only way to bring back some of the constructive, if competitive, calm we were just getting used to in our society.

Of course from Shekhar Gupta article!!

What to name this post?

From Shekhar Gupta article:

• "You need the NAC to make sure power does not go even to his head, and also to keep him off-balance by attacking his government and policies, and continuing to throw one idiotic law after another in his court. Why blame Anna Hazare when it is the Congress party itself that outsourced law-making to its darbari jholawallahs? This is not a team of modern-day Ambedkars, but mostly of IAS drop-outs and retirees who approach law-making with the “wisdom” of sincere undergrads. You have any doubts, take a look at the draft of the incredibly stupid Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill 2011 (www.nac.nic.in/pdf/pctvb_amended.pdf). A Modi or Togadia can see in a minute the wonderful opportunity it presents them. It is totally violative of the states’ rights, is subversive of the Constitution, and will never pass parliamentary or judicial scrutiny. But it will polarise people on a communal basis just when they seem to be getting over that sad past. This bill will not pass. But if the UPA continues to push it, it is guaranteed to polarise the Hindu vote and give the BJP a shot at power that any appeals to Ram Lalla cannot in 2014. This could indeed become Sonia Gandhi’s Shah Bano moment."

Anywhere but nowhere

SG writes:

……the Congress has nobody worthwhile, the BJP has imploded, the third front is dead, and Mayawati, arre baap re baap... There was a time when the same class was fascinated with Musharraf: so smart, so with it, so confident, what swagger, so articulate, so much “like” us. More important, so unlike our smelly, pot-bellied, crotch-scratching politicians who mostly do not know how to dress or speak English. You know where he ended up as millions of brave Pakistanis took to the streets to protect their democratic rights and their judiciary.

Boliticos: Dirty learning or dirtily doing?

From Shekhar Gupta’s Dirty Business:

• Those running the three main chambers — CII, FICCI and Assocham — would never admit it, but their power is now at its lowest point since 1991. The prime minister rarely, if ever, talks to corporate India. Government representation at the CII-World Economic Forum annual showpiece, the India Economic Summit, has rapidly declined over the UPA’s six years. In fact, the edition last month was the poorest of all. The prime minister of course gave it a pass; Pranab Mukherjee made a brief visit to speak in his stead, and then most of the top ministers stayed away. This year’s summit had probably the poorest levels of interest ever, sometimes presenting empty halls to reasonably serious panels. Similarly, under the UPA, official Indian representation at Davos has steadily declined. At the January 2011 Davos conference India is again the theme, for a rare second time in five years; and yet CII and the World Economic Forum are struggling to get senior ministers to represent the government. It is a strange paradox: 

• And this when almost everyone, from Raghuram Rajan to The Economist to Newsweek rank crony capitalism as the biggest threat to the India story. 

• India’s new billionaires come not from conventional manufacturing, IT or finance businesses, but from infrastructure, real estate and mining, where the state — and politicians — still hold arbitrary powers and, therefore, arbitrage. One land deal can produce more money than a dozen top members of India Inc, so why bother about them any more? This is the economic reason why corporate India feels so lost now. The political reason is simple. It is rooted in the Congress party’s faulty reading of the 2004 verdict as being against the BJP’s India Shining, and therefore against anything and anybody that represents that “fraudulent” idea. The logic being: poor farmers vote us to power, not fund managers. The question we need to ask is: what goodies can you take to the poor farmer, what rights to food, jobs, education, loan waivers if corporate India is not giving you growth, taxes, fiscal space, millions of new jobs? The top leadership of the Congress has to rectify this. It cannot take growth for granted. Particularly not when, disillusioned with policy flip-flops and fearful of a new backlash from New Delhi’s dreaded and now rejuvenated Bhavans, the biggest and finest Indian entrepreneurs are now moving their investments overseas. Tata now has nearly 60 per cent of his turnover overseas; almost all of Mukesh Ambani’s big investments over the next decade ($12 billion) are committed to America. Aditya Birla, Anand Mahindra, Essar, Bharti, are all looking outwards. It would be perilously complacent to mistake this flight of capital for globalisation of Indian enterprise. This is more a case of traditional corporates voting with their feet while the new billionaires of the crony capitalism of land-natural resources-politics get entrenched, hand-in-glove with the many Rajas of our scary new politics.

I do not know how many of you read the Self-Marxist Mr.Aiyar’s 1997 article. If not do read it now. Of course the motive writing of all these stories, yet merely stories have their own motives and purposes. I am posting some excerpts (it’s a must read one!!) from his article:

• We now have a tricameral legislature: the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha and the Confederation of Indian Industry. So it was entirely proper for Inder Kumar Gujral to have sought a vote of confidence from the CII before submitting himself to the House of the People. He was merely acknowledging the growing role of the business lobby in determining the nation's destiny.

• The business politicos (or boliticos, if I may coin a term), like their counterparts in the real game of politics, are a divided lot. They hide their identity behind a welter of acronyms leaving the layman (that is, you and me, dear reader) a little perplexed about who they are, what they stand for, and what distinguishes the one from the other.

• There are three main business lobbies: CII, ASSOCHAM and FICCI. You know what CII stands for. ASSOCHAM is the Associated Chambers of Commerce, and FICCI is the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

• What distinguishes one from the other is not that one is a confederation, the other no more than a federation, and the third a mere association. The rift runs deeper. CII speaks English, ASSOCHAM Indish while FICCI speaks Marwari. (ASSOCHAM also speaks ZEEndi).

• CII went to Harvard; ASSOCHAM stayed at home; FICCI believes degrees are superfluous since accounts are to be carried not digitally but in the head.

• CII uses state-of-the-art computers; ASSOCHAM uses state-of-the-mart typewriters; FICCI makes do with khatas.

• CII wears designer suits; ASSOCHAM wears patriotic bandgalas; FICCI wears dhotis, tucking most of it, like their accounts, out of sight.

• FICCI is Indian in origin. ASSOCHAM was British until the Brits went away. And CII has completed the voyage begun by Christopher Columbus in 1492. Five hundred years late, the Americans have found, through the CII, the route to India -- or, at least, the route to CII.

• As a 60s socialist, I learned to see the CIA's hand in everything. As a 90s socialist, I am learning to see the CII's hand in everything. CIA stands for Central Intelligence Agency. CII stands for Chidambaram's India Inc.

• What unites all three is that they believe the business of business is the business of the nation. CII is downright ashamed of the state of the nation. FICCI funded the freedom struggle and is vaguely proud of it. ASSOCHAM is still making up its mind.

• Therefore, it is the CII which is the favoured son of the first finance minister we have ever had who is ashamed of his nation. Our twice-born finance minister chose the very month in which India should have been (but was not) celebrating the first Asian Relations Conference convention in New Delhi (March, 1947) to announce his life ambition of making India Asian!

• Hacks being hacks, and as such made up, for the most part, of chaps who failed to get clerical jobs at FICCI, perhaps misheard ASEAN as Asian -- I don't know. At any rate, CII applauds the finance minister's decision to make India Asian or ASEAN, whatever, so long as he does not persist with the foolishness of keeping India Indian. They have no use for 5,000 years of identity. What they are looking for is cash in the till. And they have got themselves a finance minister who says he's gonna give it to them.

• Oh! he will, attaboy, he will. For, after all, he went to Harvard.

• "And how will he?" you, as a non-member of CII, ask.

Double strokes- echoed (dis)similar sentiments

A 95 year old hardcore socialist follower Mr.VR Krishna Iyer writes:

• First, to get a Mahatma Mandir built. This, he hopes, would be the starting point of all non-violent movements in the future. Second, he expressed his desire to erect the tallest statue of Sardar Patel, who performed the great task of unifying this country. I think both are great ideas.

• Jawaharlal Nehru was a great visionary who struggled for socialist liberty, a creative dynamic swaraj that was aimed at eliminating poverty, generation of a socialist industrial employment potential, a healthy relationship between agriculture and industry, for Panchsheel foreign policy, for peace in the world, which would look up to Gandhiji’s ideals and vision.

Don’t forget to read Shekhar Gupta's So Nehru killed Gandhi!!!

• “Because, from all evidence, Godse did not kill Gandhi. And you know what,” he continued, “Nehru made sure no post-mortem was conducted on Gandhi’s body. Because he did not want the truth to come out.”“So then, Sudarshanji, who killed Gandhi?” I asked.“Why ask me?” he said, with a smile that was as conspiratorial as QED. “You can see who stood to benefit from Gandhi’s assassination.

• Everybody knows Gandhi was going to make Patel prime minister.”“But, Sudarshanji, somebody did shoot Gandhi in front of hundreds of people,” I asked.“Yes, somebody did. But not saamne se, kintu peechhe se,” he explained. “It was a do-dhaari ki talwar (two-edged sword),” a conspi-racy to give the Nehru parivar unfettered power and to blame the Hindus for killing Gandhi.

IAS=Indian Azadi Service

In a recent Walk The Talk show Mr.Shekhar Gupta asked the new Chief Election Commissioner of India Mr S Y Quraishi:

N R Narayana Murthy is taking the lead in asking for the civil service to be reformed. Out of sheer frustration, he is even asking for the abolition of IAS. He says it has no accountability.

• I beg to differ on that. You can abolish the IAS but you will have to substitute it with some other organisation. Can you guarantee that they will be different?

From AI:

• “The Government of India has released the findings of the first ever survey of the Indian Civil Services. The report titled "Civil Services Survey - A Report" surveyed officers from all 3 India Services (The Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and the Indian Forest Service (IFoS)) as well as officers of 7 Central Services. In total, the Survey covered 18432 officers belonging to the ten selected services. Out of the total questionnaires sent, 4808 officers responded to the survey which is 26% of the total universe.

• The survey was conducted to assess the perceptions of civil servants on 11 major thematic areas including work environment, transfers, postings, integrity to harassment and discrimination. Read the full report online the pdf version of the report here.”

Economically died but politically alive-III

Coomi Kapoor has a piece in today's Indian Express on Mrs. G, but this one, she has subsumed views of few who have commented very gregariously. “To give a cross-section of views by prominent journalists on India's controversial iron lady:” She writes.

Some excerpts:

• "Vir Sanghvi praises Indira for her strength and leadership. He says her critics attack her mainly for her dynastic ambitions and her Left-wing economic policies. The Emergency she imposed, he believes, has been forgotten. Sanghvi credits Indira for keeping India together and gives her high marks for strengthening the electoral process and for her foreign policy.
• MJ Akbar believes that India welcomed the realism of Indira Gandhi after the travails of Nehru's idealism. He applauds her for calling elections in 1977 rather than following the example of so many post-colonial dictatorships in Africa and Asia.
• Karan Thapar opines that Indira Gandhi's imprint is not just resilient, but perhaps indelible. "She is not only the best remembered of our politicians, but also, I suspect, the most misunderstood," he says. He recalls his personal interaction with the Gandhi family and recounts an incident when as Prime Minister, Gandhi wanted to make sure that she was not later than the President in arriving for a screening of the film "The Pink Panther". Thapar's sister remarked in amazement, "She is virtually a dictator, yet she's so particular about protocol and politeness."
• Shekhar Gupta, with a more balanced view, feels that Indira was a different Prime Minister in each of her three spells in office. "She changed and evolved, often for the better, sometimes not quite so. She was "insecure about losing power. The extreme leftward swing in her politics came not from any genuine commitment to socialism, but as an ideological camouflage for a series of dictatorial and subversive blunders which she was to regret later."
• Pratap Bhanu Mehta argues that during her tenure, Indira willfully assaulted every single institution: the judiciary, federalism, the police. She tolerated and created a style of politics that was lumpen at its core; an odd combination of corruption, violence and the use of arbitrary power. Her economic policies were largely a disaster. He adds, however, that she was the last leader who truly belonged to the whole of India. The reverence and nostalgia for her has survived, in part because her personal qualities seem to transcend her politics.
• Tavleen Singh notes that Indira Gandhi was a charismatic politician with an amazing ability to convince ordinary Indians that she was their one and only benefactress. But "when I try to remember anything good she did for India from an economic or political point of view, I come up with a very short list. By 1984, when she had ruled India for over 16 years, she succeeded in turning India into a country in which everything was in short supply and everything second-rate."
• My own assessment of India's iron lady comes closest to those of Tavleen and Mehta."

Rule of Law and the purpose of Court

In an interview with Shekhar Gupta the eminent liberal lawyer Fali S Nariman said something which is alarming to legal community in India and their commitment towards rule of law the whole that operate in any country at the expense of tax payer’s money.

Shekhar Gupta: How do you reduce the workload on them?

Fali S Nariman: Very difficult. Because we entertain everything and I don’t blame them. Today the greatest problem with our courts, High Courts particularly, is the problem of caste. Because if you are such a such caste lawyer before such a such caste judge, you will either lose or win depending upon your caste.

Shekhar Gupta: Because they gave the political class a handle.

Fali S Nariman: Yes, they said you wanted us to do it. Quite frankly the law minister looked, if I may say so without meaning nay disrespect, a bit foolish when he had to withdraw the bill about protecting judges. All parties across the board said ‘No,no. No exemption for anybody. Let them disclose then we will see how it is to be done’. Infact, I think we have today the need of a judicial ombudsman, a judicial ombudsman, above the Chief Justice. Yes, maybe, above the Chief Justice.

Conclusion is yours!!

God had decided to place under a terrible rain shadow

Shekhar Gupta has two quite interesting article on new India and old election. In the first article he writes: 

“Chandrababu Naidu was once the darling of reformers, of free-market economists, the Indian and foreign media and of course the larger, liberal intellectual class. All of which, he now tells us over a multi-course and fiery coastal Andhra meal, were the reasons why he lost power. “I got so obsessed with praise from all of you, that I lost contact with people,” he says. And then goes on to explain with the sort of candour and articulateness you wouldn’t expect from an Indian politician, particularly a regional, third-front type: “I became a nationalist, a statesman, and got obsessed with that image. I forgot my villages, the voters, and I will never make that mistake again. Five years out of power have been terrible. I have really suffered and struggled.” He then unveils his modified “reform” thinking. Pro-market reforms, he says, must continue, but you can’t wait for trickle-down as “I did the last time.” Reform will create wealth, he says, but the state must distribute it immediately. His solution, however, is more immediate than you would have imagined: he carries an ATM machine with him and tells voters how he will give cards to all the poor so, once a month, all they need to do is push the card into the machine, and Rs 2,000 will come out, and this is how. At a fairly energetic campaign meeting in the heart of Nellore that has at least a dozen OB vans (all from local, Telugu channels; most of them owned by politicians) in attendance, he gets a response when he explains his cash transfer scheme. As he would, at least initially, from reform economists who have been asking for just this in place of the usual government schemes for years. Except he wants this to be in addition to all the rest, including NREGA. And from where will he get the money to finance these? Naidu has some ideas that come straight from hell. 

Chiranjeevi, whom we catch up with in Palakollu, his parents-in-law’s town, not far from coastal Rajahmundhry and one of the two constituencies he is contesting from. He invites us to dinner at one of his friends’ (a film producer) plush home but turns up himself only well past midnight, fresh and on-the-go as if another day’s work was just about to begin. He is too simple and uncomplicated to be a politician yet. Born Konidela Shiva Shankara Vara Prasad to a police constable, he says he changed his name to Chiranjeevi after a dream. Then, having spent more than two decades thrashing the baddies and inevitably destroying all evil, he has now jumped into politics, with pretty much the same intention. But he acknowledges real politics is not like the movies and the victory of “good” over “evil” is not pre-ordained. He admits he has not been able to build a real organisation, is not sure if his politics is anything like the Robin Hood socialism that many of his movies portrayed, but between Chandrababu Naidu and Rajasekhar Reddy he seems to know who is the greater “evil”, even if he won’t say so in so many words.”  

The second part is here.