Don’t watch the 2011 World Cup

The 2011 edition of the World Cup will begin tomorrow. There’s no excitement yet about the World Cup – TV sales are flat, veteran cricket writer Suresh Menon wonders if there’s a ‘fan fatigue’, and I don’t hear too many conversations about the cup. A majority of the voters, in an on-line poll conducted by the popular  blog Churmuri, confirmed the sentiment: a 56% of the voters said they weren’t interested in the tournament’. Of course, the excitement would rise in the days, once the minnows are eliminated (though at least one minnow, as always, will make it to the qualifying stages) and the qualifying round commences - our hyper-active media will ensure that enough buzz is generated.

I gave up watching cricket on TV three years ago – it had stopped being fun for a long time, but 2008 onwards it ceased even being a decent source of entertainment. The greedy broadcasters and ICC, the  sleeping guardian of the game have together worked hard to ensure that viewers are put-off as much as possible, thanks to a slew of advertisements. Last year SET MAX (the broadcaster of the muck-filled, scandalous IPL tournament) violated one of the most sacred experiences of the viewer: the space between the deliveries, by converting it into air-time to broadcast advertisements. This  year, TEN Sports went one step ahead by cramming the screen with as many floater ad-boxes as possible, when the ball was live. These steps, along with a steady decline in the quality of commentary (I shudder every time when cliché-spewing machines like Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri hold the mike), makes the experience a disgusting one.

Therefore, I doubt I’ll be watching much of the World Cup this year, even though its broadcaster, ESPN-Star, is yet to completely bow to the demands of selling every available slice of air-time and every pixel on the screen. What is it with the Indian media that makes it sell the ? Print newspapers sell their editorial space and disguise news as advertisements, journalists sell their ethics, and cricket channels sell their live-space?

Social Animal with a plastic brain

David Brooks has a superb essay in last month’s New Yorker that explains some of the discoveries in neurology have helped us understand a little bit more of the human mind:

“During the question-and-answer period, though, a woman asked the neuroscientist how his studies had changed the way he lived. He paused for a second, and then starting talking about a group he had joined called the Russian-American Folk Dance Company. It was odd, given how hard and scientific he had sounded. “I guess I used to think of myself as a lone agent, who made certain choices and established certain alliances with colleagues and friends,” he said. “Now, though, I see things differently. I believe we inherit a great river of knowledge, a flow of patterns coming from many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past we call genetics. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago we call culture. The information passed along from decades ago we call family, and the information offered months ago we call education. But it is all information that flows through us. The brain is adapted to the river of knowledge and exists only as a creature in that river. Our thoughts are profoundly molded by this long historic flow, and none of us exists, self-made, in isolation from it.”

It’s interesting to note that three of the ‘vehicles of information’ are experiencing rapid changes, perhaps unrivaled in any time in Human History: cultures all over the world are changing dramatically, the family has transformed itself mostly (e.g. trends towards being nuclear families and changing gender roles), and lot of ‘education’ gets obsolete pretty soon. With an explosion in the information available for consumption, the brain, being highly  plastic, is adapting more rapidly than ever. How would our future minds look like?

Read the complete essay at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/17/110117fa_fact_brooks#ixzz1EDHUdO00

India beats the World

From an ANI report:

According to the data provided by the Swiss bank, India has more black money than rest of the world combined.

The UK has 390 billion dollars in black money, Russia has 470 billion dollars and India tops the list with almost 1500 billion dollars.

(emphasis mine)

Also read: 15 Indians who ‘stashed their alleged ill-gotten wealth in the LGT bank of Liechtenstein, a well-known tax haven nation, 190 km from Munich, Germany.’  The 16th Indian's name can be found here.

Games Politicans Play

Imagine the following game:

1.       Players: A set of privileged players. Being a player in this game is itself considered as an honor and a reward.

2.       Rules of the game:

a)      The game is played at three levels: the first level is termed as a senior level, the second level a middle level, and the third, a junior.

b)      Playing this game well would need the player to spend a significant amount of time and draw attention of a wide variety of critics: thus, expend energy that the player could have profitably deployed elsewhere. There is no reward for playing the game well other than retaining the player’s current level.

c)       Playing this game in a mediocre fashion, e.g. just turning out for the game without performing anything leads to either the player retaining his/her level or earning a promotion to the next level.

d)      Playing this game in a really, really bad manner, e.g. screwing up everything and being a complete disaster leads to at most a demotion to the next level, but does not strip the player of any of his/her honors: you are still a player in the game.

3.       Question: If you are a player playing this game, what would be your strategy to maximize your payoff?

Applying the basic principles of Game theory, one can conclude that a winning strategy is to be a non-performer: you conserve your energy and it’s possible that you earn a promotion. The worst you could do is to retain your level. Screwing up is a sub-optimal strategy, and playing the game very well is the worst strategy: there’s no gain, but you are sure to spend lot of your time and energy and perhaps make a few enemies.

Such a game was recently played out in wide media attention: it’s called the game of Union Cabinet expansion. Consider the strategy of someone like Vilasrao Deshmukh or Mamata Banerjee. The most flattering term used to describe their performance as Union Minster is ‘mediocre’. Both Ms. Banerjee and Mr. Deshmukh were rewarded for their non-performance: Ms. Banerjee got to retain her high-profile Railway portfolio, where as Mr. Deshmukh got promoted to ‘Rural Affairs’, a department that has the highest outlay in the Union Budget after Defense. Disasters like KPS Gill and Jaipal Reddy were demoted, but are still Union Ministers.

Given such rules of the game, is it any wonder why there is a huge governance deficit? The system discourages your from being a performer, but offers you lot of incentives to do nothing. No wonder people like Vilasrao Deshmukh thrive in our political landscape. At worst, the system also throws disgusting ironies, like Mr. Deshmukh, who led the state with the highest number of farm suicides and is a known protector of a loan sharks, getting to be a Rural Affairs minister.

When politicians play games, we, the people, are the biggest losers.

Update: I showed the above toy game (via e-mail) to Prof. Ken Binmore. Prof. Binmore is best known for designing a telecom auction (without any scams) that made $35 Billion for the British taxpayer.

Prof. Binmore asked me to rewrite the game 'so that there is a reward under (b) other than retaining one's position. Perhaps a large reward, but one that is only obtained with a small enough probability that your analysis remains correct for players who are sufficiently risk averse. You could then ask yourself whether the players who choose the risky strategy do seem to be risk loving in other contexts.'

I did so, and it turns out the Professor is right: the system forces the players in (b) above to seek for rewards (e.g. telecom auctions, defense contracts) outside their stated duties so as to continue to play the game. The system not only promotes mediocrity, it also encourages players to be corrupt.

Who is India’s Hosni Mubarak?

There are many politicians in India who can claim to be an Indian Hosni Mubarak. Mr. Mubarak has tried to present his younger son Gamal Mumbarak as his successor - this alone raises the stake for hundreds of Indian politicians, but most notably Mr. Karunanidhi, who has fathered several children from several wives, and has charted a secure political future for almost all of them. CV Thomas, facing corruption charges and refusing to quit his post, also reflects the virtue of not quitting despite repeated requests.

But to me, the winner of ‘Who is India’s Hosni Mubarak’ contest is Karanataka’s CM, Yeddyurappa. Mr. Yeddyurappa has tried to secure the political future of his children – one of his many children is a Member of Parliament, and Mr. Yeddyurappa is alleged to have eased the purchase of hundreds of acres of land for his several children. He has faced grave corruption charges, braved internal dissent,  and has had to overcome at least two attempts in one year to topple his government. In all these events, his response has been Mubarak-like: I won’t quit. When shamed by a governor sanction for a permission for public prosecution, his response was to back a public Bandh that crippled public life across the state. And recently, he tried to assuage the demands of his opponents by announcing a surprise retirement plan from state politics – a la Mr. Mubarak, who wants to quit by September 2011.

Perhaps we should call Mr. Mubarak the Yeddyurappa of the Arab World.

PS: One thing that sets Mr. Yeddyurappa apart from Mr. Mubarak his is his ability to provide comic relief. Recently, he alleged his detractors were practicing acts of black magic against him. This, from the head of India’s most technologically advance state.

2011 is the new 1989

I am thrilled by the events in Egypt. The protests have intensified, and more than a million people turned out yesterday to protest the 30-year old dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, and by evening Mr. Mubarak was forced to announce his plans of stepping down by September 2011. The protestors would have none of it, and the protests are expected to continue, if not escalate. The United States, ever the dependable ally of despotic regimes, has done an about turn and urged Mr. Mubarak – till Tuesday morning a sweetheart ally of the US – to speed up his succession.

There’s something intoxicating about these events, exhilarating even, as Simon Jenkins mentions in this searing comment:

“What is happening in Egypt is plainly exhilarating to any lover of civil liberty. So too was Georgia's rose revolution, Ukraine's orange revolution, Burma's saffron revolution, Iran's green revolution and Tunisia's jasmine revolution. Few people scanning the pastel shades of designer Trotskyism will remember which were successful and which not, but they made great television.

In each of these cases people burst out in visceral opposition to dictatorship. Driven beyond endurance, they took the last option available to autonomous individuals and marched down the street. The outcome depended on the security and self-confidence of the regime and its command of the army. It rarely depended on the approval or assistance of outsiders. Indeed the most effective weapon deployed against an uprising in a moment of national crisis is to call it a tool of foreign interests. This was certainly the case in Iran.”

Reports also arrived last evening about Jordan’s king sacking his cabinet and promising structural reforms. Given the pace of these changes – the oppressive regime in Tunisia has already been changed and was a trigger for this widespread protests in the Arab World – it is tempting to think of 1989 again, the tumultuous year that permanently altered the World’s political map and prematurely and peacefully ended the cold war. Around 1989, the USSR disintegrated, many despotic regimes in Eastern Europe – most notably the Ceauşescu (Chauchesku)regime in Romania – ended, and Germany unified. These events were again triggered by a set of peaceful, popular mass actions. Looking at the images multitudes of people in the Tahrir square at Cairo, it is difficult to escape a sense that History is being made.

I mentioned yesterday about my dream of seeing a similar popular uprising in India, and also briefly discussed why such an event is unlikely. Also, the Indian economy is growing healthily, and as long as the middle class continue to expand, its members and the elite media won’t be bothered to come to streets and protests, which, anyway, as per a Supreme Court dictat, is  ‘illegal and unconstitutional.’ A 1989-style replication in India would mean one strong trigger that would affect a regime change in one of the states (Bengal? Karnataka?), that would tap the festering anger and frustration in the Indian public. Given the function of elections as a safety-valve to release this angst, coupled with the Indian intelligentsia’s infamous disinterest, makes such a trigger a remote possibility.

Still, there are Black Swans….

A saffron revolution in Mumbai

The recent popular uprising in Tunisia – dubbed the jasmine revolution – and the widespread protests against the authoritarian regime in Egypt have attracted worldwide attention. Ben Ali, the Tunisian dictator, has fled the country, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s thirty-year old rule seems to head to a premature end. (Mr. Mubarak seems much like an Indian politician, wanting to install his son Gamel as a successor). Reports of protests are also emerging from Sudan and Albania, and as expected, China’s dictatorship has reacted in a way it knows best: by censoring the search term 'Egypt', it has prohibited Internet access to the reports of the uprising in Turkey and other Arabic countries.

In this season of hope, it is natural to aspire for a similar uprising in India. Imagine lakhs of protestors filling the streets of Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata, demanding an urgent attention to India’s pressing issues of inequality, escalating poverty, corrupting and a ‘governance deficit’, and asking for more accountability and transparency in governance. Imagine incompetent and vain politicians fleeing the country, and large scale structure changes – including electoral reform –are implemented.

This scenario, though romantic, would be difficult/impossible to occur in India. There are several reasons, though I’d like to mention the only three obvious ones:

•  No single enemy: The thugs and the mafia we elect to govern us are spread across several political parties: each party has its share of crooks and disgusting legislators. There is so much anger in the Indian public’s mind that it is difficult to target one single entity.
•  Elections as a pressure valve: Elections serve to periodically relieve the electorate’s angst. Unlike the Arabian countries, where elections are either stage-managed or don’t occur, Indian  elections are still largely free and fair. People still believe in a peaceful regime change
•  No guiding ideology: There’s no family of political ideas to channel the frustration and the angst into creating credible alternatives. As my co-blogger Vinay Hardikar has pointed out in an insightful op-ed in Sadhana, successful and clean politicians (like Nitish Kumar) are unaware of the role of ideology in shaping public opinion. Without the lighthouse of ideology to guide opinion and formulate political solutions, any uprising is bound to head into a vacuum and thus peter out: remember how the large protests in Mumbai after the 26/11 attacks fizzled out? (True to the Indian tradition, the incompetent rulers whose apathy was largely responsible for the events are rewarded: RR Patil is back as Maharashtra’s home minister, and Vilasrao Deshmukh, disaster-tour-guide cum protector of loan sharks, heads the plum rural development ministry at the center.)

That said, there’s no ban yet on dreaming, and I’ll continue to picture, in my mind’s eye, the protests in Mumbai.
(Note: I edited this post today to include more links and a brief explanation of the censorship of the uprising's reports in China).