Sharad Pawar: India's biggest Venture Capitalist?

Sharad Pawar, India's alleged agriculture and food minister, under whose disastrous rein thousands of farmers committed suicide and food inflation routinely stayed in double digits year-after-year, is many things: mediocre politician, failed minister, past mentor to crooks like Suresh Kalmadi. Now, in the year-end special of Outlook Magazine, respect financial journalist Sucheta Dalal hints at he being India's biggest venture capitalist:

Their inspiration is probably a Maratha heavyweight leader seen as India’s biggest ‘venture capitalist’ (several top companies today were backed by him) and has vast interests in realty, agro industries, media, sports, food, aviation and beverages. He uses the market so effectively that in the run-up to the last election, key party functionaries got stock tips in lieu of cash, with specific instructions on when to book profits. It gave them clean, tax-paid investment income thanks to easy market manipulation.

Read the entire piece.

Democracy 2.0

I recently finished reading Stephen Hawking's new book, The Grand Design. The book is a bit underwhelming, I was expecting more clarity of the fundamental questions the authors (Caltech professor Leonard Mlodinow is a co-author) have been posing. Apart from the profligate universe Mr. Hawking writes about (his theory claims that our universe is just one of infinite number of universes), I was struck by two other implicit themes:

1. The ability of scientists to constantly re-assess their theories and modify them in light of new evidence or advances in other fields of science. Mr. Hawking himself modifies many of his theories from his previous blockbuster book A Brief History of Time (still an endearing read), including a single big bang event as the point of origin of space, time and our universe
   
   
2. The lessening impact of the advances in fields such as cosmology and particle physics on the intellectual life of today. Galileo, Newton and Einstein's theories (let alone landmark advances in other branches of science such as Freud and Jung's theories of our mind and consciousness and Darwin and Wallace's theory of evolution) had a much deeper, far-reaching impact on the intellectual, religious and political life of the previous centuries. By comparison, the work of Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose doesn't seem to set the coffee houses, university campuses and airport lounges abuzz. (Even though Feynman, Hawking and Penrose are excellent
   popular science writers). Is cosmology and particle physics becoming too advanced for modern intellectuals to fathom? (Hawking's latest book contains no single equation, and is interspersed with several lame jokes).

I hope to return to theme b) some time later. For today, I'd like to briefly discuss the first theme.

Shekhar Gupta mollycoddles Sharad Pawar

Shekhar Gupta entertains us with an interview with India’s alleged Agriculture and Food minister, Sharad Pawar. The interview is amusing: not even once does Mr. Gupta quiz Mr. Pawar on agricultural issues or our food security, let alone farmer suicides or the soaring inflation. All Mr. Gupta is concerned about how the business environment in our country, and protecting the fair name of Ratan Tata and Praful Patel, India’s aviation minister. Mr. Pawar obliges Mr. Gupta all the way, at one instance saying:

“Basically as a person who was a chief minister of a state like Maharashtra and who comes from Mumbai, my major concern is the investment climate.”

Mr. Pawar could have easily said:

“Basicaly as a person who was a chief minister of a state like Maharashtra, which has seen the largest amount of farmer suicides, and which has a very large number of poor people who are affected by the soaring prices, my major concern is agriculture and food. Oh, I forgot to add, I am also supposed to India’s agriculture and food minster, so I must be interested. Very interested.”

Of course he says nothing like that.

The only time Mr. Gupta diverts from the line is when he discusses Mr. Pawar’s myriad business interests. Mr. Pawar, as one would expect, dismisses all his connections, at one point even lamenting/claiming that ‘But I didn’t get even a single share’ in Dynamix, a dairy and food processing major in his constituency.

Read the entire interview: it shows how a mediocre politician can become a successful business tycoon and escape any media criticism for his disastrous failures.

Look who has spoken

After weeks of silence on the 2G scam, during which he once again let the policy go adrift and kept the country in the dark, the Prime Minister has spoken:

“I wish to state categorically that I have nothing to hide from the public at large and as a proof of my bona fides, I intend to write to chairman of the PAC that I shall be happy to appear before the PAC if it chooses to ask me to do so. I sincerely believe that like Caesar’s wife, the Prime Minister should be above suspicion.”

Obviously Dr. Singh had to invoke Caesar’s wife and not Rama’s wife Sita, as Lord Ram belongs to staunch-rivals, the BJP. Far from being a masterstroke (as the Congress inner circle believes), the statement further confirms the public’s long-confirmed suspicion that the thugs behind the scam will be free:

a) By focusing the attention on himself, the PM appears to deflect the spotlight from A Raja and the DMK

b) By categorically denying the opposition’s demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee, the PM has paved the way for a further deadlock of the parliament.

The second bullet point worries me. The parliament’s next session in the budget session, and it would be interesting if the Government can get the finance bill through. The CAG report on the CWG fiasco is also expected by then, and the opposition is sure to step up the pressure for the JPC. Something has to give in – the Prime Minister might simply snap and resign, and the country must brace itself for a shock mid-term poll.

As an aside, it is interesting to see how participants of a social institution work in tandem to destroy its credibility. The repeated stalling of the business of the house serves no one’s interest, save the parliamentarians: the allowances and the goodies keep on coming, without any accountability. The only parallel I could think of was sportspeople fixing matches and breaking apart the sanctity of the sport – if you are a Pakistani cricketer, there’s a fat chance you’d be prosecuted for your crimes.

The guilty will not be spared

Type “The guilty will not be spared” in Google’s search bar and hit enter. Page after page, the search results display statements made by Indian politicians about their colleagues involved in myriad scams:

• Defense minister AK Antony uses the statement in the Adarsh scam
• So does Finance Minster Pranab Mukherjee about the scum in IPL
• So does Sonia Gandhi on the CWG scandal
• So does the tainted Chief Minister of Karnataka, BS Yeddyurappa
• And so on, and on

Y have to navigate to the fifth page to see a non-Indian use the statement. Indian politicians dominate the results: only after page 19 do the results begin to show the usage of the statement by non-Indians.

The latest to use the device was, Prime Minster Dr. Manmohan Singh, speaking about the 2G Scam:

“No guilty person will be spared — whether he is a political leader or a government official, whichever party he may belong to and howsoever powerful he may be.”

Obviously, none of the people involved in the various scams have been arrested, let alone be spared (whatever that means). ‘The guilty will not be spared’ is thus the automatic, robot-like clichéd reply spewed by the Indian politician: it satisfies no one, it serves no interest, and it signals the scum that normal order of looting the exchequer would continue unabated. The statement only underlines the mediocrity of the Indian politician: he/she cannot even think of a new line to defend his/her colleagues.

PS: a close competitor is the ‘law will take its own course’. It’s funny to see how crooks like A Raja use the statement: they are mocking us, confident that the law will indeed take its own course: not only will they walk free (after, at worst, a token CBI raid or perhaps a day’s arrest if the matter heats up), but will continue to be elected, and one day return to the cabinet.

Vilasrao's latest scandal

Quiz: A distressed farmer in Vidarbha approaches a loan shark for a loan. The shark loans the amount to the farmer at the monthly interest rate of 10 per cent. Later, the loan shark and his goons harass the farmer for loan repayment. Two other farmers who’ve taken loans from this shark commit suicide. So does the a daughter of another farmer, unable to bear the consequences when her father could not pay the loan. When the said farmer files an FIR against the loan shark, against whom FIRs are already registered, what do you expect? (Here’s a hint you don’t need: the loan shark’s son is an MLA at the Maharashtra state assembly).

Obviously you expect the police to go easy on the loan shark, perhaps harass the farmers for filing the complaints. This is exactly what happened, with the blessings of Vilasrao Deshmukh, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. When the farmer approached the High Court, the court slapped a INR 25,000 fine on the state government. As the Maharashtra state government’s primary duty is towards land-grabbers, builders and loan-sharks, it challenged the fine. Overturning the fine and slapping a INR ten lakh fine on the government, the Supreme Court said:

“The camouflage of sophistry used by Vilasrao Deshmukh in the instructions given by him and the affidavit filed in this court is clearly misleading. The message to the authorities was loud and clear i.e. they were not to take the complaints against the Sananda family seriously and not to proceed against them.

…

Cases involving pervasive misuse of public office for private gains, which have come to light in the last few decades, tend to shake people’s confidence and one is constrained to think that India has freed itself from British colonialism only to come in the grip of a new class which tries to rule by the same colonial principles.”

How would you expect Mr. Deshmukh to react? The last time he was compelled to react to a public event was after the 26/11 attack on Mumbai, when Mr. Deshmukh was the serving Chief Minister. His reaction then was memorable: as a tour-guide, he accompanied the film-maker Ramgopal Verma to one of the disaster sites, to explain the workings of the attack. No such tours are expected (dying farmers are less cinematographic then terrorist attacks). So Mr. Deshmukh has stuck to the usual: he has dismissed calls for his resignation, terming “These are political things.”

PS: The joker even asked the corporate sector to understand the need for ‘adherence to good corporate governance practices and increased sensitivity to social obligations.’

Are the American People obsolete?

In a provocative essay, Michael Lind wonders whether the American rich need, among other things, the American markets and American labor.

“Offshoring and immigration, then, are severing the link between the fate of most Americans and the fate of the American rich. A member of the elite can make money from factories in China that sell to consumers in India, while relying entirely or almost entirely on immigrant servants at one of several homes around the country. With a foreign workforce for the corporations policed by brutal autocracies and non-voting immigrant servants in the U.S., the only thing missing is a non-voting immigrant mercenary army, whose legions can be deployed in foreign wars without creating grieving parents, widows and children who vote in American elections.

If the American rich increasingly do not depend for their wealth on American workers and American consumers or for their safety on American soldiers or police officers, then it is hardly surprising that so many of them should be so hostile to paying taxes to support the infrastructure and the social programs that help the majority of the American people. The rich don't need the rest anymore.”

While some of Mr. Lind’s arguments feel like satire and some are simply too cynical to warrant a serious discussion, many make sense, especially the one on the lessening importance of American labor, though technology-led innovation is still where the American rich would need the American middle class. Nevertheless, the entire essay is worth reading.

I was wondering how many of these arguments would apply to India. Via gated communities, exclusive schools and foreign hospitals, the Indian rich have successfully insulated themselves from rest of India, but they still need ordinary Indians as protectors (army and the police), the market and a supply of labor. There’s an additional need: since most rich Indians are politicians, or owe their riches to the rent-seeking system our politicians favor, they also need ordinary Indians to vote them (the rich) to power.

One would expect that being elected by the poor would make the rich sensitive to the concerns of the poor, but as the experiences in the past two decades have shown, being elected to power (even to the position of a petty MLA) is a ticket to unimaginable wealth. The Indian democracy thus becomes a system where the poor elect the rich to protect and enhance the interests of the rich.