Here I am in the captial trying to get used to way the things work on the other side of Tropic of Cancer and the pseud stephanian lingo.

Missing Home,Missing Chennai,Missing Bombay,Missing Xavier's,Missing Hostel and Missing Dit,Rick,Kausha,Viv,Granny,Chandu,Man(U)on,Abu...and all those with whom i spent some of the most memorable moments of my life in jhaviers hostel/college.

"Vivu

 pratlet
 that was a marxist reading of art i was talking about NOT 'marxist art'.
 thanks for listening hard, and reporting accurately.
 maybe u should apply to TOI!
 :D"
 
Due Apologies brither!

Kunal in his Blog has referred to the Micheal Higgin’s article on how capitalism is best suited for India because of its diverse social structure. Here  is why I think Micheal and Kunal are wrong in their conclusions.

 (kunal's comments are in blue and higgin's comments are in dark green.)

"Socialism has been the guiding philosophy of independent India.With the 42nd Amendment, Indira Gandhi introduced the word in the preamble of the Indian Constitution. Yet the fruits of

socialism in India so far are at best debateable. In short, socialism has not worked."

 

Saying that we had 50 years of socialism is little more than capitalist propoganda.Even Though Nehru with his fabian leanings envisioned india to be a social democracy, socialism simply remained a word in the pre amble.We did'nt really have any land reforms (except in W.Bengal and Kerala ) in the last 50 yrs infact Nehru crushed  the Telangana peasants uprising right after the annexation of hyderabad and even dismissed E.M.S Namboodiripad's democraticaly elected govt. Adding  an extra word in the pre amble or cozing up to the soviet union does not amount to socialism.

 

What we had was a eco-political system which imbibed the worst features of a stalinist state like state capitalism  and license raj to be further compounded by a corrupt and inefficient bureacracy not accountable to the people (a legacy of our colonial past). Indian economy which was mostly dependent on agriculture was largely semi feudal with landlords and the like still controlling most of the agriculture and reaping its benefits.

"Micheal Higgins thinks he know why:"

I am suprised that he thinks,because his ideas dont reflect that he does.

 

"Socialism can be modeled by a simple game: the commons game. In the commons game there are n (n greater than 1) participants. For every dollar that the participant puts into the common pot, the society can buy a public good worth 2/n to everyone. Obviously, if everyone puts in the same amount, everyone gets a good that is worth double what he or she paid for it, which is a really good deal. But the free rider will think: if everyone else puts in their money and I don’t I get the benefits for nothing. Obviously the free rider is a stinker, but these people do exist, and they more likely to exist among groups that feel that they have been abused in the past."

 

Freeriders do exist . They render socialism less effective but not totally ineffective.

 

" India's problem, then is its diversity. There are simply thousands of religious, ethnic, linguistic and caste groupings in India. How can you be expected to cooperate economically with another group when you refuse (for example) to use the same water source as them? The sheer diversity means that people usually think of their own communities first, and others later. This, however is not a sentiment restricted to India, however, its universal:

 

I believe that we humans have an instinct for cooperating with the “tribe”. The commons game came up all the time in our prehistoric past and humans did not have capitalism to help overcome the free rider problem. Think about warfare. People in the tribe had to put their own interest aside for the common good or the tribe might lose to another tribe. But this feeling of cooperation did not extend to other tribes for obvious reasons: the other tribe might be your enemy, either today or tomorrow. Instinctively, we will feel bad if we are uncooperative with our own tribe but less concerned about other tribes.

The conclusion drawn from this theory is that socialism works best in countries that are almost completely homogenous. The Scandinavian countries for example have created seemingly successful welfare states that work. However, a diverse, heterogenous country like India or the US is best off following a free market laissez faire system where everyone's best interests are served by each individual following his personal interest. An Invisible Hand, if you will."

 

Now this part left me confused. I believe this whole argument was way too vague.

And competition on what grounds? In what sense ? how do communities fit in?

 

Till I read this bit in the comment box in Sarika’s Blog

I think the point of the piece was not that "Socialism demands cooperation" while "Capitalism demands selfish competition" but that "Socialism demands selfless cooperation" while "Capitalism allows promotion of selfish interests".

Also as Gaurav said, the Marwari community just proves the point. Marwaris don't run their businesses independent of other communities. They are not an economy by themselves. When someone from their community is in trouble, as you say, they chip in and help him out. But they would not do so for a merchant from another community. The Marwari Welfare State (if I may call it that) does not work for a Sikh or a Parsi, for example. Hence we have a system where the Marwaris look after the Marwaris, the Parsis look after the Parsis (and so on) and in the economic interaction between them, the economy and the country gain.
 

Kunal is bang on when he says that loyalties of most ppl lie with their respective castes and sub castes which has proved a hurdle to implementation of socialism in the country.

However the kind of diversity Kunal is assuming is some sort of a diversity among the equals which exists between mercantile communities(/castes)

While Caste is undoubtedly the fundamental characterstic of Indian society, it is not merely a diversifying factor but rather a power structure. So when we talk about pitting communities against communities(basically in Indian context reduces to castes against castes), we should understand that there is no level playing ground. Its free but definitely not fair. How would landless labourers,tribals and others belonging to lower end of caste spectrum compete against a politically and economically powerful lobby like say Thevars in Tamil Nadu or Marathas in maharashtra. 

 

Free trade has unfortunately benifitted only landlords,rich farmers and like by favouring the cause of large land holdings and further with world bank loans offered conditional to removal of land ceiling act causing a great harm to the cause of land reforms. It is a little complicated to be explained here in detail but you can check out http://www.cpim.org/marxist/1998_03_marxist_agri-utsa.doc

 

And Kunal, There is absolutely nothing wrong with fat pay packets . I wouldn’t mind a 7 figured salary either. But advocating an economic model solely because it suits our own selfish needs ignoring larger issues is in my opinion ethically incorrect.

 

"The new state would be a modern democratic state with sovereignty resting in the people and the members of the new nation having equal rights of citizenship regardless of their religion, caste or creed."

--Jinnah to Doon Campbell 21st May 1947

Impending elections can do wonders to a politician.Barely a few weeks after the elections in Bihar were announced,A seemingly hardliner like L.K.Advani ,seems to have shed all his extremist tendencies to the point of hailing Jinnah as a champion of secularism.With muslims accounting for over 16% of Bihar's population,even a small change in voting patterns can alters BJP's fortunes drastically.

Some of the highlights/outcomes of this statements are:-

1) Even BJP and Advani conceive this peace process in a certain sense, as Irreversible.

2) After all those years of villiasing jinnah, We have come to point where we are actually acknowledging each others version of history.A huge leap ahead,especially after 58 years of manufactured histories,half truths and propoganda.

Congerss on its part was'nt exactly very wise in its reactions(can someone please tell abhishek sanghvi to shut up).But then we should'nt have really expected anything better.Congress is'nt exactly particularly fond of jinnah and especially after all these years of potraying him as a villian.The comments made by congress high comment(right from arjun singh to ambika soni) are neither too well informed nor would they help boost our ties with Pakistan.

Now coming to Jinnah,Was Jinnah secular?Did he dream of a Secular Pakistan?

Jinnah started his political career first as a congressmenn,then as dual member of Congress and Muslim League and after a few years in political oblivion ,as a staunch muslim leaguer.Jinnah was'nt exactly a religious extremist or even a staunch muslim by any standards.A westernized lawyer who enjoyed his scotch,ate pork,was extremely fluent in english and could barely speak Urdu or Arabic(His first address to nation regarding partition was in engligh).

His reasons for leaving congress and later joining the league was more out of personal ambition than ideological differences.While Jinnah himself never denied the personal motive involved(“No,I was not single handedly responsible for partition,My secretary and type writer were involved too),There was a certain sense of widespread apprehension about the future of minorities(especially with regards to their cultural identity) in an Independent India which was shared by Mohamed Iqbal among others. His fears were’nt exactly unfounded.Especially taking into account the Anti Urdu riots of 1860’s,shuddi and sanghatan movements which followed the khilafat movement and even Jinnah himself had to often bear the sight of congressmen washing their hands after a handshake with him.(Even now ,we rarely acknowledge Urdu as an indian language.)

Did these fears justify the partition or even the direct action day?Well,Id like to leave that for another day.

Once again,Jinnah's vision of pakistan was very different from the direction Zia ul haq gave it in 1970's. He envisioned Pakistan to be a secular,progressive muslim state in the lines of turkey.Infact to an extent,during the post partition riots,he is quoted to have said "Id rather be a protector of minorities(referring to hindus and sikhs) than a governor general of a muslim state."

Things were'nt all that bad for pakistan till Zia Ul Haq came along and shariatised the pakistani law.It had a booming economy back in 1960's.Even South Korea is supposed to have replicated pakistan's second five year plan.Somehow Jinnah never really had the vision to implement or enforce land reforms,which gave rise to a highly feudal society.But then once again, its irrelevant to our present discussion.

Coming back to point no 2,Somewhere down the line improvement in peace process might(/should) herald a new era,bringing fresher and newer perspectives in history.Where we acknowledge our past mistakes and understand their compulsions better. Even though, I guess it would some time before we get some perspective on issues like Kashmir and Nagaland. But it would definitely a break away from the tradition of painting history in black and white and the notions of Good Congress,Bad Muslim league and Indifferent Communists.

The 138 year University of Bombay is among the oldest and easily among the top three universities in India for Undergraduate studies.

And how exactly does the university award its brightest and best economics students?

By getting the Third Year Economics papers corrected from Literature and History professors and making sure that the best of the lot get obscenely low marks letting go of their LSE conditional admits.

(Im not kidding or putting up conspiracy theories here.This piece of news is confirmed by a highly influential faculty member from St Xavier's College,the chief constituent college of the University of Bombay)

Waned to write on the rejection of EU constitution by France.But I guess I cant say it better than N Ram.So here is a link to his editorial in today's edition of The Hindu.

http://www.hindu.com/2005/05/31/stories/2005053101941000.htm

I've completed three weeks at ISI.

Check out Rahul's blog if you want to know more about the place.

Spent the last weekend at Kausha's Place.

Check out his blog...his article on the champions league final is zimbly brilliant!

"Results for T. Y. B. Sc. held on MAR 2005

The result of seat number 82 is Passed with First Class
Congratulations"

Im a graduate .........Finally!!!!!

The Manmohan Singh govt has almost completed an year at the centre.While the Hon'ble P.M likes to give his govt a rating of 6 on 10 i would'nt give it more than 4.5/5 on 10.Want to know why read on.

To start with the cabinet,none of the cabinet minister have achieved anything commendable.But to be fair enough,its barely been an year and it would be too much to expect miracles from them in such a short period especially considering that they are not called the Benny Hinn ministries.

However im told that Mani Shanker Iyer has done a decent job so far as the union minister for petroleum.Tho i dont have any fundas on that ,but the person who told me this happens to be a close relative of a BJP bigshot,so i might as well take his word for it.

Laloo has as expected used his ministry for purely PR purposes.Taking erratic and useless decisions and shooting his word off at every given oppurtunity.Even the Justice Banerji report on Godhra rights seems quite politically motivated and unbelievable even though i wish it was true.His sole achievement as the Railway minister remains the completion of the Jammu udhampur railway line.

Shivraj Patil has proved to be a big dissapointment.Even though he hasnt been in news for the last few months,but his performance in the first few months was bad enough to give him a rating of -5 on a scale of 1-10.if you want to know why scroll down till you reach the review i wrote six months back.

Renuka chaudary as the tourism minister once again did nothing susbstantial other than organizing farcical events like the ladakh festival which are aimed to promote her and the kitschified idea of india rather than tourism as such.I think its the high time she should realise there are more israeli backpackers visiting india than french millionaires.Ok,Im not asking her for legalise marijuana posession in order to appeal to them but basically by using this very irrelevant fact im trying to say that to rather than try and build more luxury resorts aimed at highend tourists and organise stupid festivals they should concentrate more on providing basic tourist infrastructure like standardised rates,tourist grievance cells,cleaner modes of transport and address issues like overcharging of tourists(esp by cabs,hotels and shops) which are more important to an average tourist.

While Natwar Singh after giving initial hiccups to the foreign policy has changed for better in the last few months or atleast apparently so considerin that our talks with China and Pakistan were labelled as sucesses.I think it was partly because he took a backseat to Dr.Manmohan Singh(wisely and rightfully) during these talks.While the Srinagar Muzzafarabad bus route is a feather in his cap,it would be hard to ignore that that a poonch muzzafarabad bus service would have been a better idea considering that it was poonch which was mostly adversely affected by the sudden and unwarranted partition of Kashmir.

While Arjun Singh ,the champion of detoxification and desaffronisation somewhere down the line in his attempt at holier than thou secularism forgot that some of the most violently conconted parts of history text books were written during the congress regime.

An excerpt from the fourth std textbook on shivaji of the maharashtra board

"You can't have your own nation without your own religion and your own language."

Before you scream Shiv Sena let me tell you that this textbook was written and published way back in 1991 when congress was in power in maharshtra as well as in the centre.
And it was during congress regimes all the while when glorious essays dedicated to savarkar appeared in the Ncert/State board textbooks completely ignoring his communal leanings and his alleged involvement in the Gandhi assasination.

And that apart,he seems to forget the equally important(if not more) functions of education ministry include providing accesible and quality primary education.Any thing has been done in that front sir?

And finally coming to Dr.Manmohan Singh.For the first half,he seemed quite well intended and ineffective.But over the last few months we have definitely seen him grow more assertive.While he was under a lot of flak for being too much under Sonia Gandhis shadow(including from me) lets look at some of the important decisions taken by the PMO over the last few months.

1)Impostion of governers rule in Goa and Bihar

2)Asking Shibu soren to step down in Jharkand

3)Upholding the autonomy of E.C.

4)Giving C.B.I the go ahead against Mayawati and Shahabuddin

None of the above decisions would seem particularly remarkable. It could be argued that any sensible person would have done the same. But it would be hard to ignore that they were in direct conflict with congress's own political interest.And somewhere down the line they all the indelible Manmohan stamp on them.

But then there is a lot to be achieved.It would be highy desirable if he shows enough will to ask Laloo,Jagdish Tyler and Taslimuddin to step down.If he gives C.B.I then permission to proscecute Capt.Satish Sharma .If he initiates an impartial enquiry into 1984 riots(im not talking about nanavati commission here).

Am i asking for too much?