Two types of innovation

Reading this thoughtful article from Samar Harlankar about technological innovation in India, I began to think what kind of innovation has occurred in Indian politics recently. I drew this list:

1.  Cash for votes (where legislators pledge their votes in exchange of cash – the going rates for MPs has increased between ~450% to ~1500% in 15 years, depending on whether you trust Wikileaks or CPI-M)
2. Cash-bombing (where candidates bomb every voter with cash in exchange of votes)
3. Fiefdom coalitions ( wherein the head of the government absolves himself of all charges of wrongdoings, blaming it on coalition politics, and the parties in the coalition run their own mini-governments)

Why does innovation occurring in technology end up being harnessed (mostly) for public good, where as political innovation is employed to destroy institutions and kill democracy?

No names policy

Yesterday the Maharashtra assembly was thrown into turmoil over this report, which claimed that fraudster Hassan Ali laundered money for three former Maharashtra CMs:

"In those years, especially the late 1990s and early 2000s, the stock markets had huge black money riding on it, which was often untraceable. Ali smartly bought participatory notes which were not required to be registered with SEBI. In the same fashion, some of the money would also come into companies that would have a beneficiary of the politician's family or in some cases, a completely new business entity in the name of a beneficiary of the politician," said a source close to the probe agencies. Through this strategy, Ali is believed to have pumped in money into the businesses of the son-in-law of one of these former CMs."

[emphasis mine]

What do you think is the chance that these three CMs would be named? Last week Tehelka magazine had reported that not naming Ms. Kanimozhi in the charge-sheet was a strong pre-condition for the DMK to re-extend its support to the UPA government. This is what is likely to happen: today’s Mint mentions indications that Kanimozhi, one of Tamil Nadu CM Karunanidhi’s several children and an influential politician, will not be named in the first charge-sheet to be filed in the 2G scam case.  If things get too hot, the NCP would withdraw support from the UPA/Maharashtra government, and then watch things return to normalcy.

Week's reading round-up: 2

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading this week, which might be of interest to our readers:

Alain De Botton is a leading contemporary philosopher, and I highly recommend his book ‘Consolations of Philosophy’ where he writes about six philosophers and their impact on our day-to-day life. In this article, Mr. de Botton writes about how Seneca (who features prominently in Consolations), an ancient Stoic philosopher, came to terms with an earthquake that  ripped apart the Roman province of Campania, in 62 AD. (‘To try to prepare ourselves psychologically for disaster, Seneca asked us to perform a strange exercise every morning which he called in Latin a praemeditatio – a premedition – and which involved lying in bed before breakfast and imagining everything that could go wrong in the day ahead. This exercise was no idle fun, it was designed to prepared you if your town burnt down that evening or your children died: ‘We live in the middle of things which have all been destined to die,’ ran one example of a premeditation, ‘Mortal have you been born, to mortals have you given birth. So you must reckon on everything, expect everything.’)

Recently a lot has been written about Dubai’s fakeness and the culture of vanity it promotes. The most celebrated of the articles, of course, was from Independent’s Johann Hari (which was recommended 15 thousand times on Facebook). Another insightful article on the city recently appeared in Vanity Fair, by A. A. Gill. (“Dubai is the parable of what money makes when it has no purpose but its own multiplication and grandeur. When the culture that holds it is too frail to contain it. Dubai is a place that doesn’t just know the price of everything and the value of nothing but makes everything worthless. The answer to everything in Dubai is money.”)

One of the best modern pieces on the benefits  of solitude came from William Deresiewicz, where he showed how leaders would benefit from solitude. In The Boston Globe, Leon Nayfakh argues that being alone could do wonders to our creativity. (“In the paper, Burum offers two possible theories to explain what she and Gilbert found in the study. The first invokes a well-known concept from social psychology called “social loafing,” which says that people tend not to try as hard if they think they can rely on others to pick up their slack. (If two people are pulling a rope, for example, neither will pull quite as hard as they would if they were pulling it alone.) But Burum leans toward a different explanation, which is that sharing an experience with someone is inherently distracting, because it compels us to expend energy on imagining what the other person is going through and how they’re reacting to it.”)

Lastly, an interesting piece by Tim De Lisle in More Intelligent Life wherein he compares Ryan Giggs, the veteran Manchester United footballer, and Sachin Tendulkar. Mr. De Lisle, who has extensively written about cricket before, suggests that attributes like passion, commitment and vision have hugely contributed to the seniors’ stunning success. (“Most of us hope to grow old with dignity. Giggs and Tendulkar both started showing dignity before they grew old: no scandals, no shenanigans, no sex texts. In a petulant age, they show grace under pressure. Neither has much to say, which can be dull for fans but makes sense for them and their teams: their skills do the talking. In “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, the meaning of life was 42. In football and cricket at the moment, it seems to be 37.” )

PS: This series is inspired form Chandrahas Choudhary's The Middle Stage, a blog that I highly recommend.

Cash for votes: in Parliament and polling-booths

The India Cables, accessed by The Hindu via WikiLeaks, confirm many of the self-evident truths Indians know about their politics. Cable 206688 describes, in simple and chilling detail, how Azhagiri, one of Tamil Nadu CM Karunanidhi’s several sons, distributed cash:

"8. (C) After long relying on political muscle to enforce his will in Madurai, Azhagiri has added money to his arsenal and is using it to a degree previously unseen in Tamil Nadu. Azhagiri's approach debuted in the January assembly by-election held in Thirumangalam near Madurai, which he managed for the DMK. This race was marked by unprecedented bribes to voters (ref A). M. Patturajan, the former Mayor of Madurai and a confidant of Azhagiri, told us that ""it is no secret at all, Azhagiri paid 5,000 rupees (approximately USD 100) per voter in Thirumangalam."" S. Kannan, a mid-level Congress party official in Madurai, told us ""the 5,000 rupees per voter in Thirumangalam changed everything,"" noting that previous bribes to voters had topped out at 500 rupees. S. Annamalai, Madurai editor of The Hindu, also confirmed the 5,000 rupee figure, telling us that all of his employees who live in Thirumangalam received the money."

Letters received in today’s Hindu confirm these stories. The cable also details politicians in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, including the Home Minister PC Chidambaram, allegedly distributed cash to lure voters. This Tehelka story lists even more incidents.

Given that our voters expect money from politicians to vote during elections, isn’t’ it ironical that the same voters are perturbed when our legislators accept cash to vote in favor/against governments during trust votes? The 2008 price for a MP was a paltry 10 crore per vote in trust motion (as per WIkiLeaks). The 1993 price of a MP vote (as discovered during the JMM MP bribery scandal) was approximately 2.2 crore – a rise of just ~450% in 15 years. Voters of these MPs should have therefore demanded that their MP maximize his/her returns by auctioning his/her vote during a trust motion, and then distribute the gains more evenly to the voters. Voters need to be better educated to be aware of their new rights in today’s market-driven democracy.

History of Business in India - 1

I have launched, with my friend Mr Kaushik Sekhar, the course “History of Business in India” at the University where I teach.

The students took their time in joining up but at the end of the second week we had 26. Encouraged by the response we are going full steam and have,by now, covered ground from pre-historic times to the beginning of the 19th century. Since most students come from families doing business for generations, the course sort of provides them with a mirror to their own roots and identity. We are trying to give them an objective orientation to the ‘Indian’ way/s of business and trying to nudge them to develop the right attitude to the ‘Indian’ way. While integration of Indian Business with the world has to be encouraged, our students, when they make their careers, should not be indifferent to their roots and traditions, nor should they look at the past as cumbersome baggage.

Week’s reading Round-up - 1

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading this week, which might be of interest to our readers:

a)      Kaushik  Basu’s  review of economist Arvind Virmani’s works

b)      ‘Suddenly Susan’, a nice piece on author Sigrid Nunez’s experiences when she lived in with Susan Sontag’s son, sharing an apartment in New York with the legendary literary critic.

c)       An insightful essay, that reviews four books on the last wall street crisis, by Jonathan Kirshner. The author also describes why we can soon expect the next crisis. And while on the financial crisis, Michael Hardt argues for ‘reclaiming the common in communism’.

d)      A report on the conditions in one of China’s largest electronic gadget manufacturing firm, that contains this chilling paragraph:

The nets went up in May, after the 11th jumper in less than a year died here. They carried a message: You can throw yourself off any building you like, as long as it isn’t one of these. And they seem to have worked. Since they were installed, the suicide rate has slowed to a trickle.

e)      Lastly, Tehelka has a nice pictorial summary of the 2G scam.