Property rights violation in a populist democracy

One of the fundamental roles of the state is to ensure the security of property rights of its citizenry. But we have often seen government sponsored acts of property rights violation. The case of abolishing Privy Purse in India is a classical case, so is the nationalization of commercial banks and acts like land for the tiller, which grabbed land from erstwhile landlords and redistributed them to the actual farmers... In some cases the so called "land lords" were government retirees who invested their whole pension savings on agricultural land... In all these cases the government grabs private property to supposedly serve the public at large. Interestingly, we have only celebrated, and in some cases demanded, such acts… we see them as symbols of egalitarian governance. But more recently, when the ex-CM of West Bengal proposed to use eminent domain act to acquire land from farmers and redistribute it to corporate India (i.e., TATA, whose airline, Air India, was nationalized in 1953 to benefit the Indian populace), there was a furor that resulted in the down fall of the communists’ empire, if you will, in West Bengal. Security of property rights has always been weak in India but as we live in a populist democracy, whenever there is a state-sponsored violation of property rights of the poor there is a lot of noise, whereas any such violation of property rights of the rich (at least seemingly so) is portrayed as a just act, winning votes for the incumbents.

My response to a cheap attempt at slandering Sachin.

One of my friends shared an article that was titled "Ten questions you wish someone would ask Sachin Tendulkar". Given that it was close to the last test the maestro will play, I thought it was related to his plans after retirement or how he was able to achieve all the greatness that he has. But it turned out to be a dull and boring Sachin bashing article from some idiot, who wanted to smear filth over Sachin's career achievements. The Ten questions can be found here - "http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/chunk-ht-ui-bookssectionpage-bookextracts/ten-questions-you-wish-someone-would-ask-sachin-tendulkar/article1-1148968.aspx"

Here is my reaction and response to that idiocy. 

First of all, his article should be called, "Ten questions I wish I asked Sachin"... "I" as in the person who conceived of these dumb questions in the first place... No other true cricket follower will have these stupid questions for Sachin. I dont think Sachin should be wasting his time answering these questions. So, here is my response to all those stupid questions… I guess, any ardent cricket follower will think the same way…
1) Roommate assignment could have been a random occurrence… expecting that an honest person’s corrupt roommate will share with him his dark secrets and evil intents is idiotic. Are you suggesting he is a criminal by association? That is nothing short of profiling used by certain unrealistic law enforcement agencies.
2) If anything, Sachin has been a true victim of poorly judged LBWs. He never once gave the umpire the look after any such bad decision. He respected the verdict and left, sometimes just a few runs short of his hundred.
3) I am sure, Sachin would not have lobbied for waivers. As far as I can remember, it is the government that offered to wave the customs payment on the car that was gifted to him.
4) He is a cricketer, not a politician, at least not yet. And he has done utmost justice to that role. He has done India proud like no other sports person has ever done. That is why he was invited to join the Rajya Sabha. By your account, I think Rekha and Jaya Bachan should also be considered politicians. Are they?
5) He was inducted to the Rajya Sabha based on his cricketing credentials, why then would you expect him to commit more to politics than he does to cricket… Sounds absurd.
6) A good captain need not be an excellent player and an excellent player need not be a good captain… Some like Ganguly are excellent at both, but that doesn’t mean that every great player should be a great captain too… The great thing about Sachin is he happily gave away captaincy to other players like Ganguly and Dhoni, who went on to become great captains. He was often the first choice of the selectors for the captain’s role but he was fully aware of his weakness as a captain and he declined it several times... There have been extremely horrible captains like Azhar who failed to give away captaincy to others. But there are people like Dravid and Sachin who knew that they are not great captains and gave it up happily.
7) The man has amassed 100 international hundreds, and you are complaining about the slow scoring rate for his 100th? You sure do have a very short term memory.
8) He was India’s opener, so why would you expect him to carry on throughout the innings. Tail-enders would hit more winning runs than do openers, so going by your logic an average tail-enders is a greater batsman than an average opener. Wow! Do you even understand cricket?
9) After reading your post, you sure sounded very boring. I had to watch a recording of Sachin single handedly destroying the Australian bowling attack twice in Sharjah in 1998 to bring myself out of the boredom that your post just put me into.
10) Poor you! Did Sachin snub you in any press meeting? Probably the other journalists had interesting things to ask. If you leave your boorish attitude aside and do your homework, you might have better luck next time…

Little bit of history to remind you why Rahul is in politics and why his expression of fear is genuine.

In a recent campaign talk, Rahul seemed to have expressed his fear of being assassinated. The blogosphere was soon flooded with posts and comments ridiculing Rahul. Some wrote that Rahul does not deserve sympathy. I found this lack of compassion very strange. I am a vehement opponent of nepotism of any form, but I believe that you need to give credit to a guy who ventures into politics despite the toll it has taken on his loved ones. Rahul's grandmother was assassinated by her very own security guards who played with him while he was a kid and his father was brutally assassinated within 7 years from the tragic death of his beloved grand mom. Perhaps Rahul was expressing his genuine fears about his occupational hazard. Perhaps, this is also why he was very reluctant to enter active politics until recently. 

I personally think by merely entering active politics Rahul has shown courage. Why else do you think he came to politics, when it took away from him two of his loved ones within a span of 7 years and rendered his mother ill? It is another issue that he might be using his family's tragedy as a sympathy scorer and an eventual vote scorer but remember he is a human being first and a politician next, lets us show some genuine compassion towards his loss, but it doesn't have to be in the form of votes - votes can be cast based on lot of other things than mere compassion.

A little bit of history of the post-Nehru congress party can help one understand that Rahul is into politics less for any personal gain and more for the party's sake.

When Indira Gandhi became prime minister everyone thought that she will be a puppet in the hands of some senior congressmen who backed her candidacy for the prime minister's post... it was understandable because, none of the senior congressmen at that time had a party-wide acceptance, leave alone a nationwide acceptance and by backing Indira, they hoped to gain de facto power. But Indira proved them wrong. She became a dominant force both nationally and internationally. She had admirers even in opposition camps. After Indira's assassination, the congress party was in a similar flux. They had no noticeable leader with a wider appeal. So they had no choice but to call in a totally under prepared and unwilling Rajiv, who was popular among Indian masses, thanks to his family, to take up the top post. He took it up reluctantly, but he was the one who sowed the initial seeds of economic development by abandoning license raj and kick-starting the Indian IT industry.

After Rajiv’s assassination, the congress had brought itself to a similar flux yet again. They had no noticeable and agreeable second-in-line. But thanks to a sympathy wave, the congress came back to power albeit with a minority government and Narashima Rao was reluctantly handed over the PM’s post. Everyone hoped that the Cong government will fall down soon as it didn't have an absolute majority. But Rao was a political genius, who showed to Indian politicians that a minority government can run its full course of 5 years without interruption. Unfortunately, he didn't have many supporters and that only got worse over the years. There was no able replacement for Rao within the party either. So the senior congressmen went back to the "family" to ask Sonia to join politics. If anything, that was the most shameful moment for the congress leadership... in a country of 1 billion Indians they couldn't find one who was not a naturalized citizen? That was only a reflection of how weak and ineffective the congress top brass was.

But ironically, Sonia was able to win back some votes for the congress and put them back to power. But luckily for India, she didnt take up the role, even though she is still the de facto prime minister of India. So now that Manmohan Singh is getting old and unlikely to contest (figuratively speaking… I know he has only been a member of the Rajya Sabha) for a third term, they need a replacement. Sonia, although is at the helm cannot take up the top post (the Indian constitution will not allow it)… so who is next? Is there any noticeable person in the congress who can claim to have a nationwide awareness leave alone nationwide acceptance? Had Mamata Banergee not been ill-treated and kicked out of the Congress, she would have been that type of charismatic candidate with a nationwide appeal… but that is not the case. So, my point is, Rahul is in politics not because he is desperate or his mother is desperate but the congress needs him so badly. In fact, he, I think, is doing the congress a big favor by getting into that role. If history has taught him anything, it is that getting into politics can give him power but at the cost of his life. That is what he stated.

Now the bigger question is why is it that the congress is unable to field a genuine congress leader as a prime ministerial candidate? And why is it that parties like BJP and CPI(M) are able to keep nepotism at bay and keep fielding new successors for their respective party’s top role?

Indian Undergraduate Education

Indian education system seldom encourages participatory learning. Textbooks are bibles that guide you through your judgment day - the final exam. Questioning (forget challenging) textbook wisdom is considered a blasphemy. I majored in Botany for my undergraduate degree and liked it very much and I very much wanted to specialize in biotechnology for my Masters. But after my three years of graduate education (or the lack of it) at ZGC Calicut (the alma mater of the great of V K Krishna Menon) I realized that I was under-equipped to pursue for any rigorous advanced master’s program in Biology. I still recall a lecture for a plant physiology course during my second year at ZGC. The teacher was explaining root pressure theory and an experiment to prove it. I asked her curiously if capillary force can be an alternative explanation to the results of that experiment... she was angry at me and said something like this "The text book says it is root pressure, so it should be root pressure. If you write something else you will get a zero for your answer". This is just one instance... Educators (lecturers, professors, tutors, principal etc) at ZGC were less of knowledge creators and disseminators and more of self-appointed, draconian disciplinarians. Attendance was a must, students were expected to address their professors as Sirs and Madams, speak to them in a very respectful tone (i.e., not to challenge or question the content or any ideas they expressed), dress “like students” and write down whatever they dictate in class… any transgression was met with “serious consequences”… (the situation was no different (sometimes even worse) in other colleges in India). I considered quitting this program many a time, but a basic undergraduate degree of this sort, even if it doesn’t equip you to get into top any worthwhile advanced master’s program in that discipline, it is a prerequisite for many jobs (even menial ones) in India. On the bright side, once you get this degree you could move flexibly to an MBA, as I did, or a Masters in Computer Application (thanks to the heavy demand for computer engineers in the country). A majority of my classmates that I am in touch with are pursuing CS, IT and ITES careers. Being able to pursue an MBA after this worthless undergraduate degree came as a second lease of academic life for me and luckily I found management education more fascinating, thanks to some excellent professors I had at TKM, who though were not into knowledge creation, were certainly topnotch in knowledge dissemination and held an open mind to new ideas.

I dont say that undergraduate education in India is worthless. I think education happens outside the classroom. My best memories at ZGC had been outside the class room. I did make some true friends, learnt some serious life lessons and interacted with some great minds (Vasudevan Unni in particular). But all of that was outside of the classroom. I missed out on that part. All I was trying to communicate was the quality of the "in-class" experience was not good enough to foster creativity and knowledge creation or to even remotely instill any passion in purist of it. I too hardly met the "student requirements". In fact, I was almost thrown out of college on a couple of occasions due to my supposed "misdemeanor" (as defined by some of the self-appointed, and let me add hypocritical, disciplinarians) in the Men's Hostel - drinking alcohol  But I made good use of the campus life. I still cherish those memories (Playing Bartley in Riders to the Sea, for instance) and I laugh at the idiotic gimmicks of the "self-appointed, hypocritical, disciplinarians"   

Religion in Schools

The role of religion in education is often debated, especially when it comes to primary and secondary education, where the minds of the students are tender enough to be influenced by vested interests. In most democratic settings, both Education and Religion are part of the fundamental rights - the right to education and the right to religious practice. I really value both these rights. The trouble however comes when the two are mixed.

In many settings religion does play a vital role in education. In a country like India, blame it partly on the lack of good public educational system, most privately run educational institutions have a religious affiliation. I do not see it as a problem. If we consider education as an essential service to humanity, then the religious institutions (not religions)that, at least in paper, claim to be dedicated to the service to humanity are more likely to end up starting schools and universities.

Unfortunately, the involvement of religious institutions in educational systems come with a premium - vested religious interests start making inroads into structure and content of the educational lives of campuses.

In my case I had by primary school education from a CSI Mission school in Ooty, Secondary education from a Catholic school also in Ooty, Bachelors degree from a Hindu college in Calicut and MBA from a Muslim run institution in Kollam. In all these places there were elements of the respective faiths pervading into everyday educational life, if not in curriculum (which was often controlled by the secular state) certainly in other ways of educational life. In my primary school it was the "Jesus is the King" prayer song followed by the "Fun - Sunday School" Everyone knows what goes in those Fun Sundays :). In my secondary school it was my deeply religious Zoology teacher who said in a hushed tone after teaching evolution theories, "Dear students, these are only meant for the exam... in reality we all know the origin of life on earth"(the "we" in this case was those students he was able to convert to his faith :). Things were not much different in my Hindu college - An arrogant Hindu Fundamental principal (fortunately he was there only during my last year) was hiring former ABVP cadres(The student wing of the RSS, so to say) as lectures - anyone's easy guess as to what impact that would have had in the campus. My Muslim MBA institute was doing it differently - they had separate prayer rooms for Muslim students. Every Friday a bus was arranged to take all my Muslim friends to the nearby Jumma mosque. Whats more, our class timings were adjusted on Fridays to accommodate the schedule of the Mosque goers.

Here is a link to an episode from the Simpsons. It is a satire on how Religion is sneaked into classrooms by vested religious interests. Check it out.

Another amazing lesson in the sociology of laws from The Simpsons

Jan Lokpal supporters should definitely check this out...

http://www.videobb.com/watch_video.php?v=LIpEpLFEEvjc

Its episode 20 of season 21 from the Simpsons. It is about what a draconian law might end up doing to the society. I strongly believe that a corruption free society is utopia - arent we all corrupt at some level?

It is practically impossible for a wayside tea shops and street hawkers to legally operate in our country - they survive by paying some bribes to the poorly paid cop, who lets them have a livelihood at a minor premium. If the draconian law prevents the badly paid cop from getting his cut, he will try to put the poor hawker out of business (as the law would require) and thus rob him of his livelihood, prompting him to move towards some anti-social path.

That doesnt mean that corruption isnt to be dealt with. My issue is with the sort of red tape based corruption that stifles growth to meet some government official's or politician's private benefits. A starting point to addressing corruption is not to formulate a draconian law but to design efficient systems that suggests reliable turnaround times for bureaucratic matters and incentives for the bureaucrats to stick to those turnaround times.

A renewed BSNL customer care is an example of such a system (at least my recent experience indicates so) Further, it might also be useful to compartmentalize bureaucratic activities into two (not more) - the ones that receives service requests from the people and the ones that deliver service requests to people.

Reducing the interface between the ones receiving service requests and the ones delivering services and motivating both to stick to turn around times would reduce the incentive and the propensity to engage in corruption, as the ones taking the request do not have anything to do with (ability to influence decisions) the final outcome, but they have the incentive to pass on the request quickly. That's my tuppence worth on this issue.

Social Movement Lessons from The Simpsons

The Simpsons never stop to amaze me - this time it's Lisa Simpson starting a micro media movement... Great lesson for social movement students :) An absolute 'Must watch!' It is episode 22 from season 22 - "Fraudcast News"

After you enjoy watching the video, read the following article (Carroll & Swaminathan, 2000) from the American Journal of Sociology on the Micro Brewery Movement in the US. I am sure you will see what I mean :)

http://www.sociology.psu.edu/graduate/Fall%202010%20Prosem/Readings-McCarthy/Carroll%20&%20Swaminathan%202000.pdf