Category Archives: Politics

Tête-à-tête with ‘Mano-a-mano’

Posted on by

Former McKinsey chief Rajat Gupta interviews the man in the perenially blue turban in the McKinsey Quarterly (registration required). I bet he pronounces the name right. It’s two free-marketers talking to each other, the benefit of having an economist occupying 7 Race Course Road.

Singh says his top priority isn’t high tech or special export zones, it’s electrifying villages. He’s talking about the basic heavy lifting of a long-delayed national bootstrap:

We have, for the next four to five years, a very ambitious plan to expand… the availability of electricity to all of our villages…

When I look at countries like South Korea, all children who are of secondary-school-going age are in school; our children drop out even before they complete primary school… we are making, for the first time, the most determined effort to ensure that all our children… in the next four or five years have the benefit of minimum primary schooling.

Beyond upgrading airports, his administration is also spending on ports and railroads:

We are working with the Japanese government to draw up a program in which the freight corridors between Mumbai-Delhi, Mumbai-Chennai, and Delhi-Kolkata can be modernized. Our estimate is that that will cost about 25 thousand crore of rupees [$5.7 billion], and that’s our high priority as far as the railway system is concerned… We also are now in the process of modernizing our seaports.

The Indian government’s policy naming schemes are an odd hangover cocktail of faceless socialist, stymied bureaucrat and shudh Hindi or Sanskrit:

The Common Minimum Program, which is the benchmark for us to assess where we want to go, talks about the navratnas. These navratnas are companies essentially in the oil sectors, the power sectors, which are doing really well…

Continue reading →

The rise of pseudoscience

Posted on by

I am a Deist.  That means that I believe in God whole-heartedly but reject all religious dogma.  My beliefs are a combination of certain elements from Hinduism, Sufism, and Buddhism and I try to pray and meditate daily and abide by a belief in karma.  During the day I am a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life.  I study the oldest life on Earth (dating back to ~4 billion years) in order to unlock the secrets of life, how it began, and how it evolved until the present.  I am an example of how one can embrace God and still believe at the same time that scientific explanations should always trump religious ones.

Over the last two days Deepak Chopra has been making arguments that basically support “Intelligent Design” on the liberal Huffington Post blog (which is an excellent website).  Such an embarrassing event can occur when you have too many bloggers in one space and can’t keep track of it all.  I am not a Deepak Chopra reader.  I find his writings too…elementary.  I don’t begrudge anyone that does enjoy his writing though.  We all have different tastes is all.  Chopra however has a lot of people that listen to him and take his words as “gospel.”  That is why I was pained greatly to read his post.  Here are some “scientific questions” he poses in order to demonstrate an openness to divine intervention:

1. How does nature take creative leaps? In the fossil record there are repeated gaps that no “missing link” can fill.

Wrong.  It is the rock record that is incomplete.  Tectonic activity is continually resurfacing the Earth and destroying the rocks containing fossils.  Nature does not take “creative leaps.”  The biggest such “leap” occurred around 535 Ma at the Cambrian boundary and over the last 40+ years the “gap” has been slowly filled in with solid fossil evidence showing gradual evolution.

2. If mutations are random, why does the fossil record demonstrate so many positive mutations — those that lead to new species — and so few negative ones?

Because organisms with negative mutations die out sooner making their preservation potential less.  Only a tiny fraction of dead life survives the fossilization process without being destroyed.  That’s why you don’t find dinosaur bones in your backyard.

Continue reading →

Stylin’ at IKEA

Posted on by

Remember that ongoing battle between Sikh employees and the NY Metropolitan Transport Authority [see 1,2 ]?  Basically the MTA wanted Sikhs to wear a logo on their turban identifying them as MTA employees so that no passenger would think the train/bus was being highjacked.  Anyways, I thought of that story when I saw this on the DNSI blog:

IKEA’s new Edmonton branch contacted TheHijabShop.com to design and produce a ‘hijab’ – a Muslim headscarf – that would fit in with their current uniform.

When IKEA first approached TheHijabShop.com, their excited team was impressed that an internationally-acclaimed company like IKEA was making so much effort to accommodate Muslims in its workforce.

The challenge for the team was to create a hijab that had the IKEA branding; that was easy to put on without the need for pins – so avoiding any health and safety hazards; and that was something employees would feel comfortable wearing in a working environment, whether in the showroom or in the warehouse. It also had to be compact, without excess material flowing around, and meanwhile sticking to Islamic requirements. [Link]

Obviously I don’t see any similarity between the motivations of the NY MTA and that of IKEA.  I mean nobody could be worried about terrorism at IKEA…right?  No, I just think this is a clever marketing ploy.  IKEA has stores in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E.  I wonder if the hijabs will be for employess worldwide or only in those countries.  Are there other companies that make personalized “religious clothing” for their employees that anyone knows about?  I bet you Abercrummy & Fitch will design some stylish hijabs for their employees next season.  Not.

Continue reading →

Our Parents Shrugged

Posted on by

Between the Ayn Rand discussion Manish’s post kicked off a few days ago and the fisking of Dr. Patnaik cited on IndianEconomy.org, I figured I oughta finally commit to a post that’s been rattling in my head for a few months – the startling parallels between the fictional, dystopian economic world Ayn Rand outlined in Atlas Shrugged and real life Indian history.

Now although I’m one of those Desi dudes who cites Atlas Shrugged as an all-time favorite, I’m far from a Randroid. I readily recognize that getting too literal runs headlong into a more, uh, empirical assessment of the human condition. But, I’m also more than willing to give Rand credit – especially writing in the 1940s and 1950s – for being more right than wrong about some of the biggest issues of the day. Doubly so because, given the intellectual zeitgeist of the time, Rand was decidedly a contrarian. The example of the License Raj – India’s economic regime “progressively” enacted a scant few years after Atlas Shrugged was published (1957), and to some degree of Intellectual fanfare, gives us the latest, almost depressing example of how Indian fact can be more extreme than Western fiction.

In the novel, a key milestone as the world plummets into dysfunction and chaos is the passage of the innocuously titled Directive 10-289 by the government. It opens with a rather lofty goal –

“In the name of the general welfare to protect the people’s security, to achieve full equality and total stability…

Continue reading →

Hold that Tiger

Posted on by

Ananthan recently penned this fascinating post on the Tamil Tigers’ cemeteries (see photos):

The LTTE is a secular organization but up until the early 90s it seems that dead cadres… were all cremated according to Hindu practice. In the early 90s this was changed to burial…

… the use of these graveyards, similar in style to those used by militaries in the west, helps to confer legitimacy to the LTTE. The Tigers are often dismissed or denounced as unthinking, purposeless terrorists; established memorials help to combat that view… Cremation doesn’t leave any tangible, visible evidence of those who have passed, burial does…

The Maaveerar are celebrated on November 27th, officially remembered as the day in which the first Tiger died… in Sri Lanka the ceremonies take place in the Tuillum Illam. [LTTE Leader] Prabhakaran’s yearly speech is delivered and broadcast through loudspeakers in all Tuillum Illam.

… the practice of burial is rationalized with the opposing beliefs of Hinduism…

Read the whole thing.

Continue reading →

Radio killed the video star

Posted on by

A de Menezes update: police and military radios both were on different frequencies and apparently didn’t work underground. It’s shades of 9/11.

Police marksmen and army surveillance teams following Jean Charles de Menezes onto a Tube train could not receive orders in the vital moments before he was shot dead because their radios did not work underground… The undercover officers sitting alongside Mr de Menezes are understood to have decided he was not a threat, but they could not get this message back to Gold Command at the Yard nor relay it to the marksmen.

As the firearms officers ran into the station they are believed to have been out of touch with everyone else involved in the operation. It has been disclosed that the two groups involved — one from Scotland Yard and the other from the Army — were using different radio networks as they trailed the innocent electrician from his home on July 22. Officers on the train are understood to have decided that from the way Mr de Menezes was dressed, and that he was not carrying a bag, he was not about to blow himself up. [Link]

Active suspects should never have been let onto the tube in the first place:

One of the troops who accompanied the Yard marksmen on to the tube also reportedly told military chiefs that the armed police arrived far too late and should have intercepted their target outside Stockwell Underground station, in South London. [Link]

Continue reading →

My eyes “gleam” when I think about being arranged

Posted on by

Okay.  This one is for you dozen tipsters who are jonesing for our take on this article about “”love-cum-arranged,” marriages that appears in today’s NYTimes. 

Yawn.  Haven’t I read this article like a dozen times before?  It’s always half of an article where they drum up the angle that they wanted to write in the first place instead of doing any real reporting. 

These young people may have come of age in an America of “Moonstruck” and “Dawson’s Creek,” but in many cases they have not completely accepted the Western model of romantic attachment. Indeed, some of the impetus for assisted marriage is coming from young people themselves – men and women who have delayed marriage into their late 20’s and early 30’s, said Ayesha Hakki, the editor of Bibi, a South Asian bridal and fashion magazine based in New Jersey.

“That has been the most remarkable trend,” Ms. Hakki said, citing the example of a male acquaintance, who, after dating on his own, turned to his parents for guidance.

As Madhulika Khandelwal, a historian who has studied Indians here, said, “Young people don’t want to make individual decisions alone.”

[cough]-bullshit-[cough].  It’s not that young people don’t want to make “individual decisions alone” and have decided that their parent’s “guidance” is best.  No.  It’s that they are giving up and no longer want to fight “the system.”  Ladies in their late twenties can only pursue self-absorbed or commitment-phobic guys (and there is nothing wrong with being commitment phobic ) for so long before they throw in the towel and opt for “traditional,” by default.  Likewise, guys are forced to deal with women who are too neurotic to date mostly because their parents are breathing down their necks to get married.  We (Indians raised in this country) turn to our families for the exact same reason as someone of another culture would turn to their’s, except for the fact that there is more pressure to turn to them. This article and others like it always seem to dodge the truth in order to accentuate the exotic “embrace” of our culture.  What the article describes is more than just being set up on a “blind date,” which it compares it to.  Lots of cultures practice the art of the blind date, whether through family or friends, and it isn’t particularly newsworthy.  When journalists single out Indians they do so with the implication that the family’s fingerprints are all over the entire courtship process.  If that is the case then explaining it away as a willing “return to tradition” makes my eyes roll.  Here is some more bullshit:

The embrace of more traditional habits is apparent in other ways. Weddings are often elaborate and last three or four days. Families of the betrothed often still consult a Hindu astrologer who schedules wedding ceremonies according to the stars. When Anamika Tavathia, 24, was engaged to a young Indian she met in college, his family visited hers to propose on his behalf and the priest determined they should marry on June 26 of this year between 10:30 and 11 a.m.

This fall is expected to be an unusually busy wedding season in Indian communities, because many couples postponed weddings last year when many days were deemed inauspicious.

Continue reading →

Bread? I’ll take cake.

Posted on by

Amit Varma, writing at promising new The Indian Economy blog, points to a much needed takedown of an anti-market, left-wing OpEd by a Dr. Utsa Patnaik.   As with many ideas of this sort, Dr. Patnaik starts with a rather broad, well-intentioned need / desire to save the poor –

THE ARGUMENTS for a universal, not targeted, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act as well as for a universal Public Distribution System (PDS) are far stronger than most people realise. Rural India is in deep and continuing distress.

National Employment Gaurantee?   Universal Public Distribution?  Eek.  Someone’s been lifting lines from Orwell, Marx, and Rand .  The fisking, authored by Aadisht Khanna, summarizes Dr Patnaik’s argument thusly –

* Rural India is facing an employment crisis
* This is because of the economic policies pursued in the past fifteen years.
* The proof of this is that people are eating much less grain.
* The assertion that people are eating less grain is borne out by data from the National Sample Survey, which measures consumption and expenditure across India.

Aadisht’s response?   An important lesson in economics & statistics – not all products rise monotonically in consumption or production given increasing incomes & productivity –

 There is a decline in rice and wheat consumption, and also in the consumption of dal… But at the same time, the consumption of other stuff has risen- milk, vegetables of all sorts, meat of all sorts (though fish has shown the most dramatic rise), and most notably eggs- the consumption of those has doubled.

And this suggests something that you would expect a Professor of Economics to know- the consumption pattern looks suspiciously like that of Giffen goods.

… What’s the classical example of Giffen goods used in economics textbooks? That when your income rises, you buy less bread and more meat- exactly what we see happening in rural India from 1988 to 2000.

Then again, I suppose that if your goal is to make the case for a “new deal for the rural poor” replete with a messianic role for left-wing econ professors, then perhaps statistical anomalies like Giffen goods are a bit of a godsend.  Too bad for the poor – the bureaucracy and tax burden will have to grow until they go back to the past & eat more dal.

Continue reading →

Spy vs. spy

Posted on by

The de Menezes case has turned murkier: the stakeout guys now blame the shooters for the mistake. The surveillance team noted that de Menezes did not look Ethiopian like their suspect. And the police say the undercover cops who trailed de Menezes onto the train would not have been there if they thought he was packing heat. So it’s still baffling why the shooters pulled the trigger.

… members of the surveillance team who followed de Menezes into Stockwell underground station in London felt that he was not about to detonate a bomb, was not armed and was not acting suspiciously… The two teams have fallen out over the circumstances surrounding the incident, raising fresh questions about how the operation was handled. A police source said: ‘There is no way those three guys would have been on the train carriage with him [de Menezes] if they believed he was carrying a bomb. Nothing he did gave the surveillance team the impression that he was carrying a device…’

For the firearms officers involved in the death to avoid any legal action, they will have to state that they believed their lives and those of the passengers were in immediate danger. Such a view is unlikely to be supported by members of the surveillance unit. [Link]

When filling out your biodata, remember to replace ‘wheatish’ with ‘IC3’:

The first man who was supposed to identify the suspect admits that he was relieving himself behind a tree but saw enough of Mr de Menezes to tell commanders that he was an “IC1” — the description used for a white North European and nothing like Hussain Osman, the suspected Ethiopian-born bomb suspect awaiting extradition from Rome. [Link]

Continue reading →

Really Stuck on Shiva

Posted on by

Over in the tech world, a debate rages over the naming of Really Simple Syndication, a format which lets you subscribe to multiple blogs and receive regular updates. Some say its orange button is ugly, its acronym too geeky for your grandma to grok. They suggest the simpler word ‘subscribe’ or, perchance, ‘feed.’ Others say that people learn acronyms all the time: XP, BMW, CYA. (Disclaimer: I’ve written a blog editor and prefer non-technical terms.)

What few are saying is that the little saffron RSS button really freaks out millions of desis all over the Net. It’s the flip side of the cultural hijacking of the swastika, and the acronym makes it looks like a donation button for right-wing Hindus. Godse would be proud.

The Internet standards groups are getting ready to roll out their next proposal, Very High Performance. In retaliation, India has released its version, Konsistently Krunk Kaching 

Continue reading →