Category Archives: Politics

Bragging rights for the world’s longest constitution

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Who’s got the world’s longest constitution? Suketu Mehta claims in Maximum City that India’s #1. At approximately 500K words via a sophisticated algorithm known as Back-of-a-Napkin, that sounds about right: Indians took British bureaucracy, mixed in their dilatory sense of time, quasi-socialist ethos and love of jawboning, and inflated government like a puffed puri.

But Alabama is contesting the claim, with more than 740 amendments and 310K words. India’s constitution has fewer than 100 amendments. Anyone know for sure?

By the way, Alabamans may be the most amendment-happy people in the world, but they couldn’t find it in their strict constructionist souls to strike school segregation and poll taxes from their constitution earlier this month. For shame.

Beeb: Bangalore Bigots Ban Bollywood Blockbusters

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VZbanned.jpgIn glossy, hi-tech Bangalore, India’s virtual bridge to the west, decidedly parochial sentiments are aflame. Kannada groups, concerned about the influx of Tamilians, are taking a hard line stand against films made in outsider languages. This includes movies in English or Hindi, India’s two official languages. As a result, Veer-Zara, Bollywood’s current megahit, cannot be shown.

Policemen are frisking ticket holders at the gates as a security measure in the wake of threats to disrupt the first screenings of the film in the city. The film has been screened in defiance of an unofficial moratorium … on new films not made in Kannada, the language of Karnataka state. Police are taking no chances as the threat is real. [BBC]

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Aishwarya may play Buddha’s wife

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Aishwarya Rai may play Buddha’s wife in a biopic coinciding with the 2,550th birthday of the Gautama. The film’s backers have signed up Shekhar Kapoor and should find it easy to recruit Hollywood stars who dabble in Buddhism.

The chance to play opposite Aish would turn me into a monk any day, but there’s a catch:

Buddha’s wife Yashodhara became a Buddhist monk soon after Buddha’s enlightenment… Gautam Buddha… was married to Yashodhara at the age of 16 and he left the palace soon after the birth of his son Rahul… Yashodhara became a nun when Buddha turned 36.

Buddha turning Aishwarya celibate? Methinks I’ve figured out who’s really holding the cards.

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Middle Eastern mutiny

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Robert Kaplan draws a comparison in the NYT between this blog’s namesake revolt and the war in Iraq. He argues that rather than evangelizing instant democracy, the U.S. should temper its ambitions:

… Iraq has turned out like the Indian mutiny against the British in 1857 and 1858, when the attempts of Evangelical and Utilitarian reformers in London to modernize and Christianize India – to make it more like England – were met with a violent revolt against imperial rule… The bloody debacle… did signal a transition: away from an ad hoc imperium fired by an intemperate lust to impose domestic values abroad, and toward a calmer, more pragmatic empire built on international trade and technology.

Kaplan’s description of the British Empire pre-Sepoy Rebellion is oddly enervated. Modernize India? Methinks the evangelicals were mainly interested in conversion. To them, heathen Hindus were the sub-Saharan Africans of the 19th century, a teeming continent of raw material for Christianity. Alexander Pope chastised Hindu beliefs in his ‘Essay on Man’:

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has giv’n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler Heav’n,
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the wat’ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To be, contents his natural desire;
He asks no Angel’s wing, no Seraph’s fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
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Walking the dog

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Slow news day at Slate? An Arab-American finds that a new puppy makes him more palatable to neighbors:

Muslims are prohibited from touching the saliva of dogs. If you do come in contact with a dog, you’re supposed to wash your hands seven times before you pray. Most Muslims will avoid dogs at all cost to stay clean for their daily prayers…

People on the street, in their cars, in the parking lot, and at the supermarket were giving me a new look–a friendly one. Strangers who used to skillfully avoid eye contact now wanted to engage me in warm conversation. Patriotic national hotline tippers, who are usually more concerned about Muslim sleeper cells, now stopped me and cordially inquired about my puppy’s sleeping habits, breed, and big black eyes.

The puppy effect is old news, the author must’ve missed Eddie Murphy’s dog gimmick (and dawg role) in Boomerang. Maybe he should try strolling babies or handing out lollipops and unicorn stickers. It’s a cute story, but the point of civil rights is the freedom to be as punk as you wanna be without being hosed by bureaucrats — the triumph of clean, fair play over arbitrary prejudices.

White House celebrates Diwali

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The White House hosted its second Diwali celebration Wednesday, which is very cool. It’ll be interesting to see how that plays with the evangelicals who equate Hinduism with devil worship. Former ambassador to India Robert Blackwill hosted the party; it was his last day in government, he just resigned as head of Iraq policy due to a staffer abuse mini-scandal.

Dubya and Laura, Karl Rove (who attended last year), and Representative-elect Bobby Jindal were no-shows. One fundraiser said that for Indian-Americans, ‘pay to play’ is all pay, no play; he threw a hissy-fit when Bush attended a Ramadan dinner a few hours later:

Community activists were told that if the President and the First Lady attended the event of one community or nationals, there would be pressure from others. But a few hours after the Diwali event, Bush attended an Iftar dinner hosted by the White House to mark the end of Ramzaan… “We raised millions for the President and the GOP… and this is what we got in return,” the activist, also a physician, fumed.

Many Republican desis attended, and the mithai and samosas were ordered from the same New York midtown restaurant, Bukhara Grill, which catered Salman Rushdie’s wedding and is a favorite of Bill Clinton’s. Great food is nonpartisan, time for a pilgrimage:

Dhandu Ram is the man behind the tandoor at Bukhara Grill in New York. He is a master tandoor who hails from Rajasthan, but got his training on the job at the famed Bukhara at the Maurya Sheraton in Delhi… As a tandoor chef, Ram is the star attraction at Bukhara Grill and agrees that more respect is given to chefs here… He points out that a tandoor chef generally gets a green card because this is a task that no one else can really do.

Update: Someone who once worked for the host of the party chimes in on Daniel Drezner’s blog:

Blackwill is an incredibly brilliant thinker with absolutely no interpersonal skills… I never saw Blackwill touch an employee other than to shake hands. His manner is such that embassy staff wondered that he could have fathered three children… He sleeps four hours a night… By the time I’d arrive in my office at 0730… I would find between 20 and 30 e-mails from Blackwill, time-stamped from 0330 onward… he was always a decent human being. I think his major fault was that he simply lacked empathy toward other human beings…

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The India-China Gap

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The latest TCS article on India v. China comes out pretty optimistic about India’s prognosis – TCS: Tech Central Station – The India-China Gap –

Despite the record of the recent past, there is reason for hope that the economic gap between these rivals will soon diminish. On the one hand, India may advance in relative terms through no fault of its own. This is because China’s storied economic growth is likely to falter under the weight of a massive default of the banking system or from political pressures arising from restructuring of state enterprises. On the other hand, India’s leaders are becoming aware that their own economy can move forward more rapidly by undertaking meaningful and aggressive reform. For example, India scores well in the area of macroeconomic conditions where restrained monetary expansion has brought inflation to a record low 2.5 percent. China’s battle with price instability has seen swings from high inflation in the mid-1990s to its current troubling bout of deflation.

Call me a skeptic but I’m personally not that hopeful about the nearterm. The previous article on the sad plight of Varanasi silk weavers is another little datapoint that adds to my fear that –

Both populaces are fed up with their respective governments. But I can’t help but feel that for many Indians-still-in-India, their disillusionment is with the *current* government instead of a deeply shaken belief in the ability of government to solve problems and make things better for them. The question is between 2 different governmental initiatives to create wealth rather than between government and non-government. The Chinese, by contrast, seem much more willing to throw caution to the wind and embark on decidedly non-governmental initiatives. A young 20-something Chinese person fresh from university is more likely to see his livelihood being made in creating a new garment factory or a construction business vs. many Indians who still harbor a post-colonial distrust towards business. A 20,000 person shoe factory breeds awe in China but a type of anti-globo-inspired fear in India.

Tyler Cowen – should you give to beggars?

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I promise this will be my last knee-jerk crosspost of material from Marginal Revolution. There’s so much of it and it’s such great quality. But today, Tyler gives us the economists-eye view of a question that has plagued Desi’s for generations – Marginal Revolution: Should you give money to beggars? –

In Calcutta I confront this question every time my cab stops. Put aside the usual debate about selfishness and altruism, assume you will give something away. To whom should it go? Why not give it to the gentleman sleeping under a piece of cardboard who is poor but not begging?

Tyler’s answer elegantly waltzes between Game Theory, Public Choice, and classical economics all in the space of less than 200 words. Fantastic.

The sorry plight of Varanasi weavers

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Varanasi

As someone who collects and wears saris eagerly, I was surprised and interested to learn that international trade with China has severely affected the artisans who create the iconic Benares/Varanasi sari;

“With our business coming to an end my six children have turned into beggars,” says Razia Biwi, wife of a silk weaver in the northern city of Varanasi. “They move from door to door with a bowl each and eat whatever the kind neighbours give them.”
The Varanasi silk industry is in turmoil.
For centuries it has produced exquisite handloom silk. Of India’s 10m weavers, this city – also known as Benaras – in Uttar Pradesh boasts nearly 13%.
…The problems started in 1995, when demand for Varanasi silk suddenly dwindled.
There was a sudden influx of Chinese silk traders, who imported cheap yarn to the local market.
They even competed against Varanasi traders by hiring local weavers from the city.

The extreme poverty has caused some to resort to drastic, disturbing measures; Ghulam Rasool of Kotwan sold his two-month old child to a wealthy family “where he would get his daily meals”. Rasool’s choice got some attention;

Their story touched the village and with its help, along with police intervention, they got back their son along with a sum of 10,000 rupees ($220) compensation from the government.
Rajan Bhal, general secretary of the Varanasi Cloth Industry, says: “This was one isolated case in the entire town where the government came to the family’s rescue.
“The government otherwise seems uninterested in reviving this traditional art in the city.”

I’ll never look at my saris in quite the same way again.

via the beeb.