America and its war track record

Let me start off with saying, I am writing this without carrying out any research…no figures, no numbers and no dates. Just my impression on how successful they were in several of the "Wars" they have been involved in. A few that they have been involved is – Korea, Vietnam, star wars, drugs, illegal aliens and of course terror.

Verdict on each of them – resounding failure.

In Korea, US managed to keep the South and North isolated and it did not make much of a headway in getting the Kims to toe-the-line. North Koreans live disastrous lives and have managed very little beside pick up a nuclear capability from China and Pakistan. Now the South Koreans live in the shadow of this weapon and the world gets routinely blackmailed into providing food and medicines to the North. Not exactly my idea of a victorious end.

Vietnam was unnecessary, unending and unresolved. Today Vietnam is one country, and its capitalist outlook has as much to do with the success of the neighbourhood and the failure of Communism than a tribute to the US soldiers who laid down their lives for nothing. That Vietnam is now a large exporter to the US shows their maturity in managing their affairs.

Star Wars over nuclear weapon armaments in the US and the erstwhile USSR led to amassing of large numbers of weapons by both nations. Numbers are still debated but undoubtedly each country could end the world as we know, single handedly with a handful of them. Why they needed more probably has to do more with supporting the companies that were being paid by the exchequer than a real strategic need. All this brought about the Cuban crisis and major headache of keeping tabs of the warheads after the USSR dismantled. Hollywood probably thanks Reagan for given them this opportunity to presenting rogue nuclear sales in a hundred different ways. But then, that's not such a great thing either.

The drug wars are not yet over. Cartels from Central and South America source from Afghanistan via several known routes, process, package and smuggle them into the US with as much impunity as ever. Sure every few years you hear of a cartel being broken and heads rolling. But the menace is not gone. It has just gotten worse. There are new drugs being created, manufactured and distributed. The cash generated from these sales are possibly fuelling the global terror and more than one country is said to be in the clutches of these drug lords.

Watch any comedy show emanating from the US and the jokes about illegal aliens and more specifically of Mexicans is standard fodder. US has built miles and miles of fences, illuminated the borders, set up check points, tried everything on earth and yet they cannot stop Mexicans from entering their country by road or Cubans by boats. It has reached a state where people are questioning America's ability to survive as an economy if these aliens were not doing the menial jobs in the country. While one could debate how serious US is about stopping their entry, the fact is that a long shared border cannot be secured completely. This seems to be lost on all the Indians today baying for a secure border with Pakistan. If Mexico or Canada had been exporting terrorists, US could not have done much either. The 9/11 perpetrators came from thousands of miles, entered, settled, plotted and executed their plan with precision. They could not manage to stop that either.

The best is of course their "war on terror". Their partner in the war; the very country that fostered the terror. It took them close to six years to acknowledge there is no way to avoid acknowledging and two more to probably take more severe action. For sixty years they supported the various unelected governments in Pakistan unconditionally and did little to support the elected ones in the same way. They watched as guns and funds for the "afghan war" were diverted by Pakistan to its creation, Taliban and did little to stop Taliban from taking over Afghanistan when the Soviets left in defeat. Today with an ill designed plan on destroying terror in Afghanistan it is now letting Taliban take over parts of Pakistan. It is no where close to ending this war with its inability to find any of the following: WMD, al-Qaeda leaders, terror training camps, financing routes, anything that can actually be ended without finding new hydra heads emerging.

As for their role in the middle east goes, the lesser said the better. They have not managed to get Israel to agree to a true peace treaty that will allow Palestine to restart its life. They did not manage to 'get Saddam Hussein" for over a decade even after he tried capturing Kuwait and only caused major disaster for the Iraqi people through Sanctions. Their influence over Iran, Syria et al is less than mine over Indian foreign policy.

All they achieved through all these wars was a large fiscal deficit, an unmonitored economy, demise of manufacturing in the US and the current financial meltdown. A good lesson to learn for the rest of the world.

The "Simi Garewal" Syndrome

I was very very upset and angry after watching the "We the People" program on NDTV 24X7 on Sunday, November 30, 2008. For someone who normally just tells a couple of people, mainly family and friends, this time i actually spent time writing about it in several places on the web, asking for both Simi Garewal and Barkha Dutt's apology.

For those who did not see the episode, amongst several luminaries invited to debate, India's options post the Mumbai Siege that began on 26th November, was Simi Garewal. She is an actress from an era gone by and then had a couple of stints on television imitating Barbara Walters. prominent resident of Mumbai though she may be, the person to ask advice on security matters, i thought not. But considering the english news channels had desisted from calling in known faces from the political arena, they obviously ran out of ideas and thought we would all enjoy the views of a Arjun Rampal, Shefali Chhaya, et al. Any way coming back to the event, after the panel made sweeping suggestions about not paying taxes for a year, bombing Pakistan etc. Garewal said, "go to a floor above the sixth in any five star hotel, four seasons or any other, look out and in the slums nearby you would see many more pakistani flags than Indian. We have to show them their place." A gentleman, totally agitated, got up and yelled at her that she was the enemy not Pakistan or the terrorist for making these outrageous remarks. Garewal responded saying "but there are, go and see for yourself". Barkha Dutt had no clue whether or not such flags flew. So she went off on the tangent of saying " they have done it. the terrorists have managed to divide us here." The program went into a break and on return Dutt had managed to get the gentleman to apologize to Garewal. Passionate but nevertheless stupid. (Imam Siddique got in touch with me on facebook after i wrote praising him).

The recount is not the point of this blog. It is the feeling of despair that if Imam had not yelled right then and there, plenty of people in the world would have ended the evening thinking there are pakistani flags flying in the slums of India. they are in fact "islamic flags" found a top muslim institutions. Think of the amount of trouble this could have caused next time communal passions rise in the country.

The things that worry me most is that Simi Garewal and heaven knows how many more people looked out a window in a high rise and thought Mumbai was becoming a part of Pakistan, all these days. If she is a representative of all of them, we are talking of literate, rich, responsible, socialising with muslim colleagues (co-actors), articulate in speech and yet completely clueless. I shudder to think what the rest who depend only on word of mouth and rumours for their information think about the society and its structure.

I am not a poster girl for secularism. I have very few friends from religions and cultures other than mine whom i meet regularly. But most people who know me know that i have very few friends. I discriminate majorly about letting people into my life irrespective of religion, caste and creed. Yet I have read books and watched movies to understand basics like what is the month of Lent, Kosher Food, the difference between the two eids, significance of the 5Ks and such stuff. But such ignorance with arrogance on national television is not only unacceptable but extremely dangerous.

My next concern is how are we going to get the message to people who saw the program but did not read the debates and anguish and anger that followed it. Simi Garewal's PR machinery got into action and got NDTV to say, that she had sent in an apology (did not have the nerve to actually come on television i guess) and an interview in the Times of India saying she stood by what she said except for the flag bit, where she accepts she was wrong. Did all who saw the program, read the interview? Did some people who saw and read, think she was retracting under pressure and had actually said the truth on air? Did some people decide they don't care what is true, i now know where i can find these flags ? How will we ever clear this mess, she created?

Forget about conversions, Hindus are apparently so close minded in parts of the country that they refuse to learn about any other culture. Latika Gupta wrote a very telling piece in the Sunday magazine of the newspaper Hindu http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/11/30/stories/2008113050120400.htm about how Hindu Kids don't seem to know the basics of the Islam religion despite living in close proximity while Muslim Kids do about Hinduism. When Ramayana and Mahabharatha were of the rage in the 90s on television, media had covered enough muslim families that watched the shows with more passion and regularity than my family did.

For all the demands that Muslims and Christians in the country should acknowledge that they belong to the same culture, i think they have. they just don't want to carry it on their sleeves. A article in the magazine Manushi once mentioned that Iranians think their version of Islam is the best and the version in India is extremely diluted. Many converts find that even after several generations the Hindu class divisions don't leave them and they are discriminated against within their community itself . Terms like Brahmin Christians (the first set of people converted in Kerala by St.Thomas were apparently Brahmins and they still call themselves such) and Dalit Christians are completely unknown in most of the Christian World. there is no need for them to call themselves Hindu Christians as was suggested by some luminary from the Sangh Parivar, they are living it.

A start would be for all of us to understand what each of us, our cultures, our interpretation of our religions are and judge each other by that. For that we need to know what the cultures that exist are. Not misrepresentations of the same.

Mumbai and the follow up

I purposely took several days to write this blog. I did not want to jump into conclusions, in a highly emotional response to something that is so serious. My conclusion - we as a country never learn from our mistakes. and this is neither in prevention, action or reaction to any incident.

My disgust in the state of affairs stems more from my absolute rock bottom opinion of the bureaucrats in this country. i wrote a blog way earlier on the issue of setting the bureaucracy right. the level of apathy, corruption and arrogance that they have is amazing and i think any country that tolerates that, is doomed. Politicians are definitely culpable but take into consideration that they are only work for maybe three years in each of their terms. also most of them have little clue on what they are upto...looking for clues and suggestions from the bureaucracy. why would i expect that a A Raja would know the ins and outs of spectrum auctions. I only want him to be smart enough to recognize who does know the ins and outs and get help to make up his mind.

We have seen again and again the bureaucrats sitting on files of importance until they are pushed to a corner where there is no option but to act. we saw it in kargil, when information on incursions were not followed through and today a decade later we see them not acting on information, infrastructure, any thing. only thing they worked hard on was to ensure that the defence, paramilitary and police services get paid lower than they do. if they are that worried about the chain of command, let them come forward today and take the flak also.

If the politicians do not want Police Reforms, i am reasonable sure that a large part of the police don't want it too. cases like Arushi Talwar's clearly show how the UP police, so used to sitting around taking bribes had no clue on how to conduct a murder investigation. in numerous riots, they have shown themselves to be partisan. So much so that a national political ty cannot recognize a non-partisan investigation conducted by Hemant Karkare and labelled him as politically motivated. it took his death to show them otherwise but i am yet to hear an apology from them. But in some ways i don't blame them. they are probably used to meeting with the corrupt ones because the others have little need to meet and socialize with their political bosses. A police officer who attends a party in an illegal pub and then says he left it before a gruesome murder occured in the public view can become the commissioner of the police of major city, only in India. A police officer who refuses to follow the political diktat is hounded for life only in India.

The same is true of the rest of the country. with the civil bureaucracy getting away with all but murder, the rest of them start to believe that they need not follow separate set of rules. so you have a "ketchup" colonel, a fanatic colonel, a spying general and so on. I have seen middle level defence officers sit in my parent's drawing room defending Bindranwale and his followers. It was only time that a Purohit had to happen who possibly did more than talk.

we as a civil society are also culpable. In a country that finds it difficult to find good candidates for the police force we create circumstances where the requirement for traffic policemen is as high as the need for NSG. After all road accidents are india's largest killer not terrorism. if each of us kept to our lanes, waited for pedestrians to cross, crossed roads as pedestrians at the zebra crossing, did not over load our trucks, or travelled in trios on two wheelers, we would need lesser cops on the road monitoring us. For heavens sakes, we need a cop to tell us to wear helmets which is meant to protect our brains not his.

we are happy to circumvent every law when it suits us. i have had colleagues who say, if you reach an airport with minimum time gap, you don't have to go through the security procedures. when a flight gets delayed, we all believe that no terrorist could wait for a delayed flight and hence carry out a farce as a security check. When you hate a new neighbour, you think nothing of calling the cops to say he abused your wife/daughter. I have heard of cops getting paid off to continue to participate in such harassment until the person leaves the neighbourhood.

While politicians may want to control the electoral rolls, all the mischief in this end is from bureaucrats. if they carried it out honestly and efficiently there would be no need for people to go and submit their voter id forms several times. after three attempts at getting it, i have decided to give up my voting rights until the PAN card becomes my voter id. each time i try an idiot sitting at the other end decides that a single woman cannot possible be owning a house and hence changes the gender to male. i am reasonable sure that the local mla and mp were not involved in this. i am sure they don't even know i exist, and i prefer it that way most of the times.

this whole inefficient system of bureaucrats briefing the politician inadequately leading to inaction, paralysis and a constant draining of the economy of funds has to stop. politicians come and go. the common link is the bureaucrat. i think we should target them and shake them out of their peaceful slumber.

If we want change, we need to change all aspects of our current system.

We need to stop misusing the systems.

We need to question and refine the systems.

We need to participate and make all parties accountable for what they are responsible.

lets all use the Right to Information Act to see how long the defence secretary and the finance secretary sat on files of national importance and urgency and how long the respective ministers did. let us force the local authorities to perform. let us keep tabs on how often the local police carry out their strategic exercises and practice new strategies. until they practice they won't even know what they need. let us push for them to actually get more equipment. let make sure they get it at the right price at the right time. let us force them into action.

India, News Channels and American Elections

Congratulations Obama. You did good. Of course until 3 months ago i was sure that Americans will refuse to vote in a woman or a black. Turn of events especially the financial crisis pushed people over completely. Good for them.

But i still see that women are not free to become the leader of the free world. So one can be a governor or a senator but the moment you want to be the pres/VP your clothes are a question, your background is a question, your kids are analysed, your beer drinking style questioned, your laugh mocked.

I would be less concerned about it if Indian television news channels did not ape the american ones blindly. Why do they believe that i am interested in Hillary Clinton's laugh? or why would i be upset that Sarah Palin spent 150,000 dollars on clothes. Given that Obama has spent 530 million and McCain 250 millionon the campaign, this sounds like a paltry sum. If it were India the next few years of the government would be spent by the MPs and Ministers looting the country to make good this amount. hopefully that is not going to happen in the US.

News channels in india spent much of 4th and 5th November tracking the american elections. Was is paucity of news or their impression of how indian public looks at the event, that drove them to do this?

my own impression, nothing that Obama does for the next few months is going to pay off, if they ever do. Its pretty much going to be each country for its own. And when people are used to the new economic situation, they will care for a different set of things and the muck will never be cleaned up completely. only get a new paint of coat or a carpet over it.

I am sure the news channels will spend tons of time telling us what they believe he should do. That is going to be another bunch of waste of time i am not looking forward to.

nuclear deal and fallouts

best time to see opportunism at play.

the congress believes in it, mostly
the bjp will believe in it, if it were signing
the upa partners believe in staying in power, the deal can go any which way
the left can only see US as a evil power. All else is relevant
the bsp cannot see a way to take credit, so lets get out
the sp can see a way to take credit, so lets get in

Grow up guys.

Marketing lessons for religion

A major issue that I have had debates on with two sets of people is "religious conversions".

The argument usually made against religious conversions is that while Hinduism does not allow for conversions, Christian missionaries with deep pockets are making serious inroads by converting tribals in India to Christianity. This, coupled with Muslim boys and girls who "bewitch"Hindus to fall in love with them and force them to convert before marrying, will lead to Hindus becoming minorities in this land where Hinduism was born.

There are several arguments against this but i will keep to the logical ones not based on emotions.

First, Hindus in modern India like to co-opt religions as part of the uber-umbrella that is Hinduism when they like. So suddenly Buddha (who was against idol worship and ritualism and priests) is considered a reincarnation of Vishnu; Animists who pray only to nature are Hindus because amongst the thousands of gods and godesses Hindus pray to, there are also fire, earth, wind, peepul tree and so on. So while a person who is an Animist may not think of himself as a Hindu, a Hindu looks on him as a co-follower. While converting, the Animist is now taking to a god with a human interface for the first time. To the onlooking Hindu, he has betrayed Hinduism.

Hinduism believes you can only be born a Hindu never become one. The Puri Jagannath temple even believes that a Hindu can only be born in India and hence recently disallowed i think Hindus from Malaysia to enter the temple. There are tons of examples of some classes of the society still being unable to enter most temples in the country. So on the one hand you want the purity of the Upper Caste Hindu genes to be preserved exclusively. On the other, you want those whom you keep at a distance by brute force or extreme rudeness, to accept the treatment unquestioningly. Is this possible in an enlightened world? Or is that why you would prefer for some people to remain uneducated, unenlightened and oppressed?

Thirdly, the debate is still on about whether the "Varnas" in Hindu society were meant to be permeable or not. Could a Vaishya's son become a warrior and be called a Kshatriya? Did it start that way but then become impermeable? Did the "upper" castes prefer it to be impermeable so that their children could inherit the benefits that accrue to them? Banished people constituted the "untouchables" but did it necessarily mean that their kids would have such bad genes that it would be better to assume he/she should also be banished from the day they were born? If one had to change that aspect of Hinduism, how would one do it? In today's world why does it suit people to continue with these classifications? if one can answer these questions honestly, maybe one could work towards making it a more equitable society.

Fourth, is brute force is an answer at all to stopping conversions? Will some one seeing his or his neighbour's home being burnt down, move from ambivalence to pro-hindu or anti-hindu? Or do such acts just satisfy the hunger for violence in a bunch of people who have adopted this as their pet issue.

I think Hindus should look at this from a brand managers point of view. You had a great brand. Monopoly share - mind share and market share. But now the share is eroding. It is not yet reached serious proportions but the erosion is visible. So what do you do? Run to the government saying stop imports, increase duties, make it essential for government agencies to buy my product or burn down your competitors warehouse or kill your competitors sales man.... or do you relook at the product and say why are people rejecting it? How do I improve it to make it attractive to more people. How do I retain my customers if converting new customers is not an option? Or should i relook at the various segments and decide that the 80% who are happy with the product are better than the 20% who crib the most and let them switch.

What ever the solution, introspection is the first step. If Hindus don't have the courage to do that, they will become minorities in this land in the next 3-5 centuries and will deserve it.

The Politics of Agriculture in India

Having worked on three projects in the area of agriculture spread through the country, i could not help noticing the condundrum that is our country.

It is acknowledged that over 70% of India's population depends on agriculture. That should make them the largest votebank that exists in the country. Politicians should be bending backwards to make them happy. But that is not what is happening. The politician and the bureaucrat get together and support traders. So a farmer HAS to sell in specified markets at prices often rigged by the traders. Support prices are announced way after harvest, leading to distress sales by the farmer (who has no holding capacity) and a windfall for the trader who sells to the FCI. Imports are made late after the consumer is fleeced by the trader and when there is a bumper crop, export is not opened until the traders mop up the market at dirt cheap prices and then sell at higher profits in export markets.

In a span to one year, if I can spot the trend how is it that the farmers have not? Or if they have, why are they not protesting more vociferously? I do not buy the argument that the illiterate farmer in India cannot distinguish between good and bad. They have always managed to get rid of any politician that they wanted to. Bureaucracy is tougher.

So why is the Indian farmer suffering instead of making the politicians suffer? They are making rational choices in their crop selection, so why not in policy makers? Why has farmer leaders have limited circle of power? Why has no body managed to get all farmers and farming communities into a single powerful platform?

Opportunity and Moral Fibre

Very recently, a senior leader of a national political party blamed another party which has been in power for the majority of time in this country for having corrupted the system so much, that his party members also have become corrupt. In most circles, persons with such high ‘external locus of control’ are looked at as losers. Being able to take responsibility for your actions is imperative for growth. I believe in holding my own destiny. I believe in doing what you know is right. I believe in having morals.

Moral fibre comes from within. It is then built by the family and society we live in. Some people don’t have corrupt impulses, some people control such impulses and some give way to the impulses. In the same situation of being homeless after a natural disaster, some would share the food they found with others so all are a little nourished, some may want more food than was their quota but hold themselves back bearing with their hunger and still others grab food meant for others.

Take two simple examples. While I had used private couriers to send documents, I had never sent gifts. The first time that I did, I did not know I had to attach a list of contents and sure enough some small toys I had put in – worth maybe Rs. 50 did not reach the addressee. Some tapes of classical music in the same package did. Clearly, there was someone at the courier service, waiting for the opportunity to meet a rookie like I, had no qualms about opening my package, removing what he wanted and sending forward what he did not want. An honest courier would have made me make the list, sign it and then have collected the package for delivery. On the other hand, when a neighbour’s kid threw out a ball, a construction worker working on an under-construction building picked it up, rang the bell and gave it back – saying, “my kid’s asleep. If he had seen it he would cry to return it since he does not have one. Could you please be careful while playing with the ball?” Whose child is likely to be taught right from wrong? Whose child is likely to grow up honest? Multiply the sums involved by a million and the issue remains still the same.

The true test of moral fibre is opportunity. Everybody can call themselves honest if they have never had the opportunity to steal. It is only when you are exposed to the opportunity to steal will your true values stand out. The fact that everybody who has the opportunity does not use it to benefit his partisan needs, is the only reason that the society still survives as a society. That the one who restrains himself is looked upto and the one who indulged himself is denigrated cannot be held against people.

Look all around you. Whom do you respect? You may at some level admire the skill and guts with which a corrupt person functions, but do you respect them? To be respected you need to be worthy of the respect. You need to be seen respecting those with morals. You need to have morals. You need to take yourself beyond avarice and above temptation, how ever hard that may be. You need to be able to believe in yourself to be able to provide yourself all that you want, through honest means. You need to respect yourself.

You also need to reject from your fold those you know to be corrupt. You need to stand for a society that takes action against the corrupt. You need to take action against the corrupt.

Elitism in Academic Institutions

A couple of years ago, the government made moves to remove what it called “elitism” in academic institutions. I began to wonder if such a thing existed, especially in the graduate and post graduate level. As some one who went to a definitely non-elitist school and then to “elitist” one, I thought it would be good to look at the concept closer. In this article, I ask and answer several questions that arose in my mind. I look at all elitism that is possible in an academic environment.

First question to answer is “what is elitist”. Some of the synonyms provided for the word by Microsoft include exclusive, discriminatory, selective, restricted, limited, superior and snobby. I did not search further and decided to go with that.

Next question is “are the IITs and IIMs elitist”. If I take the definition as given by the synonyms, yes it is but the exclusivity or selection or limitation is based on intellectual and managerial ability and not on economic, caste, religion, region or any other parameter that a politician understands well and employs to identify his target segment. The process of selection is far as I can see do not go out of the way to exclude anybody on the basis of anything but their ability to crack the JEE or CAT and ability to handle an interview and GD.

Walk through the campus of any IIT or an IIM – the first thing that strikes you is that the students all look similar. When I visited IIMA six years after passing out, I thought if I kind of screwed up my eyes I could actually see my batch all over again. Later with some friends, I mentioned this and everybody agreed they had noticed the same thing. We even joked that the Profs probably have dies (like an assembly line) and every body chosen needs to fit into at least one of these. But the IITs don’t see their students until they join the institute. So how does the phenomenon happen? The only common factor here is possibly the above average intelligence and ambition. The other invisible factor is the social structure one is brought up in.

Take two women’s colleges in Delhi. Both get students from similar backgrounds, both are popular hunting grounds for the guys, both have much more academic discipline than the co-ed Hindu College I went to. Yet, in the three batches I saw at IIMA, one was well represented and the other never. It is not that girls at one college were incapable to getting to an IIM, a lot of them did not even try. The same college has several illuminaries in the political, activism and literary fields. The point is, if your school or college does not have the environment that encourages you to take the toughest exams in the country, you may not contemplate trying. If you don’t know people who have taken these exams, if you don’t know people who can tell how they did it, you need enormous amounts of awareness, intelligence and ambition to be able to make it to these institutions. It is not the institutions that stop people from applying or joining but the fear of competition. The elitism is then simply based on being able to take on the pressure of proving yourself.

After starting naukri.com, I came across thousands of resumes. I did not research them but a pattern seemed to emerge that I privately called the TamBram Cutting Edge. The Tamilian Brahmins seem to be right at the cutting edge of the most happening intellectually challenging careers. About 15 years ago, a Tamil magazine had lamented that once upon a time the Civil Services was dominated by Tamilians and today they make up hardly a fraction. But at IIMA and later I realized that Tamilians are obvious way ahead of the others. As the sheen of an IAS job was wearing away, they had taken to MBBS, B.Tech, C.A and MBA courses with a vengeance. In my batch at IIMA, about 20% of the students and 30% of the girls were Tamil Speaking, most of us from middle class families. You have to agree that’s a lot in a country that has over 30 languages. In 1997-98, when companies were starting to implement SAP and needed Chartered Accountants trained in SAP, the only resumes I saw were of TamBrams. When I commented on this, my non-TamBram friends said, they were not surprised since the TamBram Diaspora was either setting the trend or spotting the trend faster than the others. But if they are found in large numbers in IITs and IIMs and also other places, is possible to call all these institutions as elitist or discriminatory. If there are more applications from Chennai than from Patna for the CAT and the reverse for the Civil Services Exam, are the institutions responsible for the same?

At IIMA, I remember a Sunday morning breakfast conversation, when a classmate, male of course, propounded a theory that the institute set a minimum limit on the number of girls to take in. He went on and on and on until I said, if there was a limit is was possibly an upper limit to ensure that guys like him got in. We all laughed and went our ways. But when I see how many girls apply and how many make it, I think the ratio is higher than the boys. As much as I would love to see more girls there, I don’t find enough girls in my neighbourhood or social circles even wanting to prepare for the CAT. Again, I would hold the parents and schools and colleges that did not build the ambition in these girls to try for these spots responsible rather than the institution.

If you are not a genius, these institutions can be very hard on your egos. Most of the students who join these institutions have “led the pack” all their lives. Suddenly there are 150 others, who are all bright and as used to being considered the smartest around as you were. Then you realize that not everybody (and possibly you) can be top 10 (the relative grading ensures that). The first two terms are spent just coping with this realization for a lot of people. Some cope and some don’t. Every few batches there are cases of a person cracking up and leaving the institute. Even amongst those who stay and complete the course, some realize that if they work very hard they may reach close to the top. Some decide it is not worth it. Even with the students who joined the reserved seats (whom you recognized from their CAT roll number and not always otherwise), there was no discrimination in terms of interactions or grading. There have been people of all backgrounds detained for non-performance. If there were group projects to be done, groups would be made based on intellectual capabilities and friendships that made for good grades and easy work sharing. Some logical elitism here but definitely not institutionalized.

I think I have answered my own question on what kind of elitism these institutions have. Based on intelligence, ambition, perseverance and not much else. That leads me to the next question “Are such institutions required”? My unequivocal answer is yes.

At school level, children hardly ever get to choose their own schools. Their parents decide the school and therefore the future course of your life. If your school does not believe sports are important in life, and you did not pick up a tennis racquet until you were twenty, you may never discover if you could have been playing against Steffi Graf. The same logic works academically also. Schools need to be able to identify student’s strengths and build people’s ambitions based on it. A schoolmate of mine took science (that is practically mandatory if you are considered bright). Today he is a successful copywriter in an ad agency. When we met recently he said our English teacher had told him that he would do better if he took languages and social sciences but he refused and struggled with the science subjects and often thinks of her now with respect. What we needed in the school was elitism not based on marks but on strengths. What we needed was a system which by class 10 would help a person identify what (s)he is really good at and make the choice of subjects a reflection of choice and not necessity.

In the school I attended, which was government funded, I also saw economic elitism. Until I was in class 8, I had classmates who came from all parts of Delhi - the slums to government colonies to Saket to Greater Kailash. By class 10 most of those who came from slums were gone. There may have been bright students from amongst them, but I don’t think the school had any scholarships or even counseling sessions with their parents to retain them in school. By class 12, the separation was complete – Science and commerce sections had 90% of the middle and upper middle class students and the reverse in arts. At naukri, two out of three peons who trained themselves using the office computers to become data entry operators were from other branches of my school. One of them is now comfortable with programming and modifies programs to manage the billing system if IT is too busy to handle it. This is what got me thinking about my school and its format. Obviously with the right incentive and environment, he would have done well academically and who knows may have cracked the JEE. If the school had been based on intellectual elitism, the school would have identified him and helped him grow. A school system that depends completely on marks and not on the IQ of a person, will be based on economic elitism. And mind you, all this happened in a school in the heart of Delhi, literally. Can we expect any better from the interiors of the country where there are hardly any schools, teachers, or teachers who teach at the schools?

At college level, when you choose your college or subject again your own socio-economic circle makes a lot of difference. Most people today, thanks to annual published surveys on colleges country wide, know the top two or three colleges in the metros. But how does a person who does not live in Delhi, know which are the good colleges in Delhi for a degree in Mathematics. He asks someone he knows who lives in Delhi. I know someone who joined a fairly useless college in South Delhi when she could have joined the best, simply because the Uncle who lived in Delhi told the parents that the best colleges are too far away and this is good enough for all of us. I am sure that a few of the students from the college she joined have done well for themselves and few from the best have failed in their careers or lives. While an individual can independently achieve his targets, if he sets his mind to it; but his targets get higher if he is surrounded by people of equal or higher intellect. You need competition to grow. Roger Bannister could not break the four-minute barrier to complete a mile until he positioned someone close to the end whom he had to overtake, and then could he break the barrier.

You may get a complex after being surrounded by people who are smarter than you but you will also come out smarter. But what is in it for the smartest guy in the group? That is why in a mixed IQ group, the higher IQ guys join together. Only then do they get the stimulation and growth that they need. That is why the old adage, tell me your friends and I will tell you who you are. That is why the institutions of higher learning try and identify the best brains and put them together. That is what a test like JEE and CAT try and do. Which is why doing away with these tests is actually detrimental to the country. In order to improve the education standard at the higher levels, interaction of the faculty of the best schools and the other schools should be encouraged, so that the knowledge that is transferred is improved. Having one good teacher here and one there or one good student here and one there will not raise the standards. In order to be able to compete with the best, you have to be with the best.

Next question, will increasing the number of seats in all these institutions make the country one of smarter people. The answer I believe is no. Let me hypothetically and very simplistically define my position. I do so with no malice towards any institute and with some deference and loyalty to mine. There were 3 IIMs with 100 odd seats in each until 1985. People who got into IIM Lucknow that year, would have otherwise gone to other B-Schools. Let’s say IIML had not started that year but those 50 seats were increased at IIMA. (Let’s also agree that there has existed a ranking of these institutions forever. When I first heard of an IIM, I was in class 8 and a cousin who had just finished his B.Tech from IIT, Madras told me the place to go to next, was IIMA) So instead of 150 seats being offered at IIMA, 200 would have been offered. Lets say 220 offer letters went out. Since IIMA is ranked the best in the country, most of those offered would have accepted the same. So the IIM ranked last would have taken the people who joined IIML. Further down, some B-school at the bottom of the totem pole, would have got students, that it last year believed were not management material. The students in that school will get an opportunity to learn business management, but will still not get the excitement and learning that they may get, arguing in an IIM classroom. Their MBA degree may get them a better job than they may have otherwise got, but not necessarily. Companies today ask for a C grade MBA for field sales staff positions, which twenty years ago, a non-professional graduate was considered capable of handling.

Will decreasing fees get more people to join these colleges and get smarter? I don’t think so. If institutions are clearly defined as intellectually challenging, followed by a high probability of a successful career, people make an effort to stretch their pocket as much as possible. Look at the hierarchy one sees in the choice of an Engineering School. The high priority schools are not the most expensive - IITs, RECs, some select University Colleges like in Bombay, Delhi or Banaras. Somewhere down the line parents and children take a call whether the Jhumri Talaiya University engineering degree that costs Rs. X is better or the Private College A in Bangalore costing Rs. NX better. Nobody who can afford NX goes to JhTU if PCA is considered better and everybody who can afford NX competes and only some of them make it to PCA. So the elitism continues to be intellectual at one level or the other. People join places that are tougher to get into and tougher to complete, because it gives them better dividends, whether or not it costs them more. In fact, people are willing to pay higher fees at a tougher college, for the privilege of being practically tortured. What else explains people paying close to 40 lakhs to do a one year MBA at INSEAD. Imagine the stress of a two year program condensed into one!!

Is it possible to create new institutions of high standards? Yes it is. It is not essential to destroy an existing institution to do so. You need to provide the best infrastructure, which will attract the best brains amongst the students and faculty. That would improve the research done at those institutions as well as opportunities to explore for the students. Most universities in the country are crying for funds. Governments should devote more time, energy and funds into making one or more of them magnets for talent. Take for example, the Allahabad University. I am told (I was too young to see and understand) from a center of excellence in the early 20^th century, by the 1970s following delayed exams and other such issues, employers in their advertisement would clearly say “persons with Allahabad University degrees need not apply”. Today, it is definitely not a scholar’s pilgrimage. A good university in Allahabad would serve all of UP and may be even further.

I think people in general see through motives behind such moves and not surprisingly the minister who propounded the need to remove elitism was shown what people thought of it, in the very next poll. India is a country that has admired intellect since time immemorial. The focus needs to be on raising the standards of all institutions rather than diluting existing standards.

A practical solution to the Great Indian Mess

India has innumerable problems and I doubt if the readers of this magazine need to be reminded of all of them. But in the recent years, especially the hue and cry over raising prices of petroleum products and the proposed amendments to the pathbreaking RTI Act led me to believe that a serious start needs to be made in bringing in more transparency, productivity and accountability in all public arena and those who are performing their duties need to be rewarded the most. This paper tries to bring in one solution in the process Clean-up being attempted by various NGOs and Civil Society organizations.

India is a land of a billion people. How many of us pay income tax? Apparently less than a million and a half. Most of the corporate assessees would be headed by individuals who are personal income tax payers. So you can say, that the contributions of 1.5% of the population make up Rs. XX crores that is XX % of the direct taxes collected which is XX% of the total collections.

When the prices of petrol and diesel were raised in June 2006, I received mails from round the country calling for protests in various ways. It was also highlighted that petrol cost less than Twenty Pakistani Rupees in our neighbouring country. Without getting into the politics of whether the Indian economy should benchmark itself against the Pakistani, I raised just one issue. Assuming most of the money collected through the duties, that make up 50% of the petrol price we pay, was spent on subsidies and other “beneficial” projects, and the duties were reduced or withdrawn, where will the difference be made up from? Most probably the same cash cow - the honest income tax payer who earns by cheque, pays by credit card therefore contributes the most towards service tax, sales tax, education cess and the works. At least the duties on petro products meant that the guy who imported his Ferrari without paying the duties or always buys an Esteem an year by paying cash from a friend who uses his car for two months or who says his plot in Vasant Vihar has bad Vaastu and hence was sold for only half the price that the market thinks it should have got, all give something towards the government kitty.

But the fact remains that despite paying taxes honestly, most of us do not feel proud of doing so simply because we don’t see it being used honestly or productively. The RTI Act was a move towards trying to ensure that the money is deployed as it was said it would be. Yet, it still does not give the tax payers a say in where they want their money spent. Sure we would not know the nitty gritties of the strategic plan to make India a super power, but in the twenty years that I have heard of the plan I still don’t see it in action. Some of the European countries like Italy give the tax payers an option of saying where they would like a small portion of their taxes deployed –renovations of heritage sites, museums etc. I would like to take this further to incorporate several existing practices to develop a model that would bring in change in India.

We have all been paying an Education Cess on all taxes for over three years now. The cess collected each year is upto Rs. XX crores. But we are also told that the Finance Ministry, never really gave the money over to the Education Ministry and is simply sitting on it. My question was: who decided that education was the most important thing for which a cess needed to be collected? Why was it felt that education was more important than potable water or health? What were the objectives which the cess was to fund? Where does the ministry stand vis-à-vis those objectives today? As the tax payer who gave the cess, I have no clue. But as a tax payer I would like to be involved.

I am not calling for the withdrawal of the cess. I would to extend the same into a more integrative practice, that will encourage participation of all parties involved.

The basic principles of the model are as below:

Where the cess to be collected will be deployed is to be decided not by the government in power but by the tax payer. Each year when (s)he files his return (or with the December Quarter Advance Tax), (s)he sends in a vote saying where the money should be deployed in April next year.

The options for where the money should be deployed are generated by each of the ministries. So the Power Secretary develops a plan saying I have this great idea, that needs so much funds and this is my plan of action for using the funds over the next five years with these annual milestones. Similarly the Health Secretary, the Education Secretary and so on. (Mind you not the politician in charge but the Administrator in charge is to be responsible for the project). Each of these projects is publicized where a tax payer can easily access all details and compare them and analyse if these budgets and targets are plausible and honest.

After the tax payers have voted in their choices, the two projects that are voted most are to be funded by the cess. If the projects cost more than the cess collected, the budget has to allocate the sum required. If the cess collected is in excess, the sum is to be voted on by the tax payer in the next year for deployment. The two Secretaries whose projects have been chosen, cannot be changed from their position for the tenure of the project, even if they are due to retire.

At the end of year one, both projects are assessed by an independent team of consultants drawn from a pool of intellectuals and auditors to be listed right in the beginning of the year whose presence in the pool can also be voted/nominated by the tax payers.

The progress report for both projects is evaluated and published publicly. The evaluation is against the specified milestones and will have no room for subjectivity.

If a project has failed to achieve its goals by over 20% the project is scrapped and the Secretary who presented the plan, is to resign from the service he represents. The “Up or Out” policy works beautifully in the private consulting industry and it should be brought in at the higher levels of the public administration too. An administrator who does not know what (s)he can do, does not do what (s)he says (s)he will and cannot get the work done, is clearly not fit to be in the position held or of similar nature.

If the projects meet their targets, they are to be continued to be funded by the cess and the budgetary allocation for the gap (if any). The Secretary incharge stays for the duration of the project and is allowed 1% of the project cost for the next year as a bonus to the team handling the project, coming out of the cess.

If the projects are exceeding their targets by over 20%, the government will fund these projects completely with annual reports being submitted to the tax payer on the status and new projects will be funded by the cess. The team also gets 2% of the project cost for the year as bonus. This will ensure that projects, that were great ideas and should have been supported by the budget, will now be supported by the same, and the cess used to identify other great ideas.

For a country where 500 million votes are counted within a week, I am sure counting the votes on the cess from 1.5 million tax payers will be no task especially since there are plans to insist on electronic forms.

This will give the tax payers a chance to push for their concerns, needs and priorities and simultaneously give the administrator a chance to articulate ideas that he/she may have but have been suppressed by the powers that be.

In time the discretionary tax contribution should be increased and the black box contribution that one has no clue where it goes reduced. . It can also be extended at the state level to the professional tax collected etc. With time even state secretaries, department heads or public sector companies could pitch for the funds.

As performance is rewarded publicly, it will hopefully get administrators to pitch their best ideas and actually vie for more than their political masters blessings. An officially available bonus hopefully will reduce their passion for making money from projects.

Congress, Gandhis and predictions

I have a friend with whom I chat often on the state of india. He is to put it very mildly completely paranoid about where India is going. So his recent trip, which he says is based on very very confidential yet reliable sources, is as follows:

1. India is heading towards a civil war to be fought between the government and the naxalites who in any case run over 1/3rd of the country
2. The entire Gandhi family is being cornered and there are umpteen congressmen who want to see them demolished and hence when the conspiracy is through, they will he helpless and hence will flee the country in the middle of the night before Diwali 2006.
3. The most corrupt politician in the country is Chidambaram and every decision he takes is only based on his take.

Okay, I accept India is not great, has not reached its potential, hell does not even know its potential. A lot of politicians and bureaucrats (I might as well not stick my neck out unnecessarily) are looking to feather their nest, A bunch of them also believe we are great because we used to be great three thousand years ago, some have no clue what to do and then there are others who believe they may not know what is right but they sure know what someone is doing is wrong....basically a bunch of selfish nincompoops.

But nevertheless, i cannot believe any of the above three assertions are likely to be completely true.

As far as i know the naxalite movement in the country waxes and wanes depending on the government in power. with a country as large as ours, it is not possible for these groups to actually run the country plus from all accounts they become as corrupt as those they fight against leading to complete disenchantment. So basically they are like Pakistan whose power comes in irritating the opposition not eliminating, which they know they cannot. Have not heard of a single road that was built by a maoist group or a dam (even a small one) built by them. They only can destruct what exists. This helps them for a while and then people want roads, water, electricity and accountabilty.

Similarly, the congress may hate the Gandhis and I don't blame them but they don't know how to behave in a democratic party. they are not even used to elections where there are two people standing for the party president's post. So to them the Gandhis are the lesser evil. At least you know whose genes these guys have. Anybody who could actually have grown into a credible alternative has been eliminated (if not be design by death). So these spineless guys would rather push for a Rahul Gandhi than say SAchin Pilot, though they may be of the same age group and experience. BJP that wanted to really deal a rough one to them could not do anything in their term, so what chance do these spineless congress guys have, in removing them. Civil society knows corruption exists, but i doubt they believe that removing the Gandhis from the scene will change life altogether. Hey, we are talking about a country where an out of power politician could get a private company to hire his idiot of a brother to do nothing except collect his cheque. Will sending the Gandhis off help?

I have no idea who is how corrupt and how he makes his money but it seems a little difficult to believe that the most corrupt guy in the cabinet is the one who probably earns more through his profession than a lot of his colleagues put together. A guy who left a party and came back despite no change in the situation as he desired is hardly respect worthy but most corrupt - must have its uses.

If India is descending into a civil war, I can only think of the way it happened in "Asterix and the Goths". Indians just cannot seem to stay together without each person wanting to be the leader. So while they are trying for that, they prefer to hold others back and push for a neutral choice.

If all this can lead the country to where it has reached I have hope yet