Victims of data less social justice find a saviour

If any one is looking for a perfect case study of the effect of quota without data on the political system, look no further.

Recently, the Tamilnadu government partitioned the SC quota into two. SC-Arundathiyars were allocated 3% and the non-Arundathiyars the remaining.  There was a massive event in the city organized by various members of the community to thank the Chief Minister.

”We are a hundred times happier now than we would be at one of our weddings. Kalaignar Karunanidhi is responsible for this,” said AMK president Valasai Ravichandran.

Arundathi Makkal Katchi leaders renewed their vow to support Karunanidhi and the DMK in all upcoming elections. In the recent general election, the AMK had supported the DMK.

Source : Express Buzz (emphasis added)

This quota enabled students of their community to bag 59 medical seats and 1100+ engineering seats. We wish them well.  They have every right to these benefits under the social justice platform.

The real question is this :  Is this not a grave injustice to this community that it took 65 years to correct ?  A simple pulse check of the utilization of the quota would have revealed that this community was left behind decades ago. Three generations of Arundathiyars would have been Collectors, Government officials, Doctors, and Policemen. Instead, for six decades,  six % of Tamilnadu was forced to continue in their plight. Think about what lies at the root of this.

Why was a simple pulse check not performed on this all important socialist ration of education and jobs ?  In my view,  engineered exclusion is the worst kind of injustice. This is the kind of justice that Amartya Sen would never ever talk about. The ambiguity and the promise of something better is key to fake socialism.  They would never support measurement because it undermines the promise.  This is why exactly ZERO  social activists, NGOs, socially aware bloggers are talking about this.

In this light, Mr Karunanidhi needs to be applauded. Think about it.  The judicial system has excused itself from scrutiny leaving hundreds of millions waiting for social justice marooned. They are completely at the mercy of the politicians with no public domain data available to build up public consciousness about what needs to be done. The  media and social activists wont touch this either.  Therefore one has to conclude that in this case Mr Karunanidhi really has rescued this community from the tyranny of adhoc social justice.  Has he not ?  Easily distracted, the courts have let down the very people strict scrutiny will help most.  The most backward.

The real question remains.  How many other communities are there like this ? When will their turn come ? What if they are numerically small and found mainly at traffic signals and breaking stones ? What if they cannot offer a concentrated and stationery vote bank ? Who will speak for them ?

In a parallel India, imagine if marginalized groups were guaranteed a place on the platform.  There would be no need to beg for what is rightfully theirs. This would instantly release hundreds of millions into free agent hood and put big ticket issues back on the voting block.

PS:

Not a single ELM TV channel carried the story.

Nothing on blogs where the legal eagles nest.

Lamp unislamic, minister of UPA (led by Congress Party)

Mr E Ahmed, Union Minister of State of Railways, of the  Muslim League refused to light a kuthuvilakku (a lamp) at a public event at Indo Japan Chamber of Commerce.

The UPA (Congress Party led coalition) minister is first from left

Here is the report,

The minister, who flew into the city on Saturday especially to inaugurate the seminar on ‘Status of Infrastructure’, organised by the Indo-Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, caught the other dignitaries offguard when he declined to accept the candle offered to him to light the kuthuvilakku on the podium.

One of the organisers told this newspaper that the minister refused to light the lamp because it is an un-Islamic action.

“The Muslim community does not light lamps. It is against Shariah, the code which governs Islam,” said another. IJCCI president N. Krishnaswami told this reporter not to make an issue of this.

Source  : DC

This is the Indo Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry event.  The government just made a laughing stock of the Indian people in view of the Japanese. They are sure to chuckle, “WTF, you guys haven’t even sorted this out among yourselves after 65 years ?”

The factors that make it unacceptable are :

• The Kuthuvilakku is widely accepted as a “secular” thing. There are no images of Gods on the lamp
• Even the “Dravidian” leadership, widely considered to be rabidly anti-hindu, light the Kuthuvilakku at the drop of a hat
• The great Indian political nervousness is not justified in this case.  “First you will ask us to light the lamp, then you will ask for data about performance of the social justice platform“.  Lighting the lamp is not like lighting a fuse. The bedrock of contemporary Indian politics is not about to be blasted away. So there is nothing to fear
• Several prominent Muslims have lighted the lamp before the minister. See here for an example
• Sharia cannot be followed in the public domain, at least in front of other countries. No one is forcing you to light a lamp at home

Note to Mr Vishnu Som.

This kind of behaviour and not minarets in alpine villages, measure up to a fundamental threat to Indian Muslims.

Ayodhya for dummies – the real ones

Mr Vir Sanghvi’s Q&A titled Ayodhya for Dummies is nothing short of a spectacle.

We wonder if this was to atone for his ‘Liberhan report is complete rubbish‘ comment. We would not be surprised if the Q&A took two passes to write. The first pass would have the right answers, and the second pass a varnish job to give it a secular shine.

2. Did Muslim invaders destroy Hindu temples?

Ans. The sad answer is yes, they did. Some of this was for the purposes of looting (temples were rich) but some of the destruction was religion-driven.

Why is this a sad answer ?  If raiding of temples were only for looting, the invaders would have left the structures untouched. This was almost never the case.  Looting was overlaid on what was primarily seen a religious duty.  None of this of course rubs off on present day Muslims.  So there is no need to get defensive about the true nature of Mughal rule.

Yes it was. There is no getting around that. Religious tolerance was not always a quality prized by medieval Muslim warriors.

But let’s keep in mind that those were different times. There was an era when Hinduism had been eclipsed in much of India by Buddhism. When Hinduism made a comeback some centuries later, Hindu kings destroyed Buddhist monasteries, more or less throwing Buddhism out of India.

I dont think people in India care about “medieval Muslim warrious” (see the dilution in action).Before the secular varnish, the sentence would have read, “…Mughal rulers of India“.  Why attempt to “get around” anything either.  People will then wonder if it was easy for the historians to “get around” Akbar or the Bahmanis ?

The Buddhism argument is a polemic. Also funny because it unwittingly does great disservice to the Indian Muslims and underhandedly supports the demolition.  It pulls the rug from under the Muslims in the sense that it says that the actions of the kar sevaks could indeed be justified if they had rebuilt exactly one Buddhist site first. They could even take Mathura if they rebuild yet another Buddhist site.  It is silly to bring Mr Abhishek Singhvi’s TV soundbits nonsense under the microscope.

Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism are all native religions to the area. Throughout history each of them have had their crests and troughs.  Hinduism predates and embraces all – even giving Buddha a position in the Dasavataram.

6. Was this true?

Ans. Probably not. There are many controversies about the historical Ram, his very existence and the location of his Ayodhya. Some historians and archaeologists dispute that today’s Ayodhya is the same as the Ayodhya of the Ramayana.

Moreover, several other spots have also been claimed as birthplaces of Ram.  So it is not clear that this one has any special claim. It is just one of many.

Besides, the overwhelming majority of Hindus had never heard of this spot till the controversy began. So if Ram was born here thousands of years ago, why did most of us only hear of the place in the mid-80s?

EA

Look how he sets it up. It as he suggests there is a controversy about Ram’s very existance, then that surely overtakes all other controversies, does it not ? It Lord Ram did not even exist, then it means he was never born, which also means there can not possibly be a birthplace. This is a time tested technique. The Indian opinion makers forward this as their basic position and proceed to offer each argument as a concession from their stand. How clever ?

Well, King Dasharathan did not leave a GPS receiver as proof of where his son was born.  History is funny in the sense that you can dispute everything.  How do we know where the prophets were born ? This is the same logic that questions the Ram Sethu.

The overwhelming majority of Hindus (rather Indians) have not heard of this because the overwhelming majority spend all their time fetching drinking water or stepping over sewage thanks to the fake socialist state imposed on them.

Mr Jairam Ramesh of the Congress party himself admitted that under the Congress Party’s 50+ year watch India has been groomed to sweep the Nobel prizes for filth and garbage. Lets say the overwhelming majority had in fact “heard about this spot”, would it then make the razing of the mosque  justifiable or atleast understandable ? If that is all you have, then the BJPs Ram Janmabhoomi movement was just an exercise to make the majority “hear about this spot” and let emotion guide events.

The question should be the following:

If there was ever a Ram temple commemorating his birthplace at Ayodhya, based on what we know about the Mughals, what are the chances that they pulled it down ?

Even the answer to that is not going to help us.

Like every other issue in front of us today, I first suspect the masked man behind the curtain who everyone else in the room is trained to ignore. The constitutional benefits that can accrue due to group identity and the role of the leadership in protecting these benefits. At first glance, the Muslims of today have little reason not to agree to a relocation in exchange for real harmony. We hear relocation of mosques in routine in Pakistan. However, I can understand why they would be loathe to do so. It would seriously weaken their group identity, signal a colossal failure of the protectors, and correspondingly strengthen the other side.

A complete separation of rigid identity from benefits is the only way we can hope to take on such big issues. This strikes at the heart of the entire political setup in the country today. Yet this is our ticket to freedom away from a guaranteed identity based showdown in the near future.

Media minarets

I followed with great amusement The Acorn’s expert deconstruction of Mr Vishnu Som’s startling assertion that the swiss minaret ban “represents a fundamental threat to millions of Muslims in our country”.

In his response, he really goes to town on those who call him on it.  You can tell he left nuance at home as he goes to work defending his statement. The closest he gets is this :

One can go on and on with this line of thought … the central point being easy to understand … the decision to ban minarets is regressive, its anti-Muslim, and violates religious freedom. As I have argued earlier, this is part of a larger wave against Muslims … perhaps part of the generalisation that Muslims are universally terrorists or inclined to violence.

I cannot tolerate such a generalisation and cannot tolerate people who believe that to be the truth. And it is generalisations like this which represent a fundamental threat to Muslims in India and around the world.

Can the minaret ban be considered to be regressive, anti-muslim, and violates religious freedom ? Sure.  But the prayer call is banned in many places around the world. Many mosques in the western world do not have minarets.  So, this is really a ban on the future construction of a specific type architectural feature. All four existing swiss minarets can stay.

What we are left with is this. Generalizations that all muslims are universally terrorists or inclined to violence represent a fundamental threat to Muslims in Indian and around the world.

That is like pouring a keg of water into a pitcher of beer.

Nitin called him out specifically on this:  Cause = ‘minaret ban’, Effect = ‘fundamental threat to millions of muslims in our country’

Mr Vishnu Som puts up a defence of this:  Cause = ’stereotyping of all muslims as terrorists’, Effect = ‘fundamental threat to all muslims of the world including Indians’.

Problem is we cant go from here to there. The new diluted version drips innocence.

–

Before you dismiss this little social media skirmish, think about why they say the things they say.

About a week ago, another ELM anchor claimed that India’s recent vote against Iran will have far reaching domestic political impact.  Really ?

Indian Muslims are Indian just like everyone else. They worry about rampant price rise, ten thousand crore scams, and rapidly deteriorating living standards just like Hindus.  Of course, they would be upset with the minaret ban, just like a Tamil Hindu will be upset about their beloved Murugan temples bulldozed in Malaysia. Existing temples were not spared either. Yet, no one said this was a fundamental threat to Hindus in India.  You may think this why-cant-i-have-what-he-has arguments are tiring. I agree, but they represent the touchstone of reason.

Upset, even anger, cannot be parlayed into a fundamental threat.

Constantly drumming into our heads that Indian muslims obsess, at a fundamental level, about their  coreligionists  in faraway places deepens suspicions in society.   It also confuses the liberal muslim to the point of, “Hey, is this for real? Are we supposed to be alarmed at the Swiss referendum results?”.

If the Muslims in India really thought the minaret ban is a fundamental threat to millions of their Indian coreligionists – then I’d rather hear it from an Indian Muslim.

Liberhan Ayodhya commission report online – read it

The Liberhan Ayodhya Commission report is online.

Read it for yourself at http://mha.gov.in/uniquepage.asp?Id_Pk=571

I suggest a slightly different reading order.

First read Chapter 12, where the author ambitiously takes on the “Definition of Secularism”.

Here is an excerpt :

Religion and state have thus been separated so that people are polarized by the electoral process on any ground other than those of religion, caste, culture, or creed.

146.9 Page 872 (emp added)

This is where the report is a massive let down. No Indian wants to pay 8 crores and wait 17 years to hear Mr Liberhan’s philosophical takes. He should have stuck to analyzing the Babri Masjid case and then to look for criminal culpability. Almost all the BJP leaders claim they did it, so whats the point in saying ‘Yeah, they are right’ ?  He goes on to define Hinduism, gives us a history lesson including such gems as how the Mughals were “hinduised”, we get to hear his vision of casteless India.  There are umpteen instances of such high sounding theorizing.  After every such instance, the enemy is projected as the one who wants to attack the innocence of this system. A lot of rants are actually not against the demolition but against the “political format” the movement took.

This my friends, is where the proverbial rubber meets the road.

Do we really have such a system in place ? What if the opposite were true and that the Indian state has been carefully guided into a gorge over the years by the pillars of democracy who have failed us. A gorge where the state engineers inequality, prevents rational examination (strict scrutiny) even of compromises sought to made to fundamental rights, and eventually  fixes your position in society.  In such a gorge, the only power worth having is a place on the table where such engineering takes place. Is it not ? Wont we be forced to see the following in a different light ?

Murli Manohar Joshi admitted  that although the issue had the propensity to divide the country, the religious issue had to be put in a political format.

149.10 Page 885

Elsewhere, the author draws heavily from Amartya Sen. There are about a dozen quotes attributed to him in the chapter titled ‘Secularism’. Such as this one :

Sen wrote that, Even among those who see themselves as religious Hindus, a great many would dispute Ram’s divinity.  The identification of Ram with divinity is common in the north and west of India.

146.3  Page 869

Actually, there is no place in India where Ram’s divinity is disputed. The best Mr Sen has is probably the Dravidian movement. Only those unfamiliar with the Dravidian movement will fall for this.  We happen to be in the know.  It is a plain fact that people of Tamilnadu are deeply religious and have the largest and most elaborate temples to Lord Ram. You could probably put all the Ram temples in Delhi combined into Sholingar or Suchindram.  The dravidian movement is about castes jostling for space at the ‘engineering table’.  Just come to TN and you will find that almost every Sumo, Scorpio, Endeavours with the Dravidian parties flag in the front will sport a  Hindu God sticker montage at the back.  It will be easy to dismiss such things from a distance, but people see this and draw the correct conclusions. In any case, I dont think anyone really wants Mr Liberhan  to pronounce his grand judgment on Lord Ram. This is an example of straying off the track.

Even if we concede that  Lord Ram is considered divine only in the North and West. What is the point he is driving at ? Almost all the hindu “fascist leaders” and illiterate kar sevaks were from the North and West.  Are their actions then understandable because in their regions, Mr Sen says that Ram really is considered divine ?

I never thought I’d agree with anything Vir Sanghvi says. But here is his verdict :

24 Nov 2009 … “RT @virsanghvi: If I was the government of India, I would ask Liberhan for my money back. 17 years, 9 crores spent and complete rubbish . via Twitter.

Best way to remember 26/11

The best way to honour the brave security men who laid down their lives is NOT to merely remember their sacrifice. The nation should take a pledge to make their sacrifice worthwhile.

Remembrance is FREE, change takes EFFORT.

This brings us to the two most inane talking points on TV channels.

• What has changed since 26/11 ?
• Why is there no private + public partnership to tackle terrorism ?

These two points were repeated ad-nauseum by all TV hosts, especially Rajdeep Sardesai. Lets start with the ‘private/public’ partnership issue. This is a silly extension of the private – public partnership concept in infrastructure projects which was mostly due to capital investment requirements. Mr P Chidambaram rightly popped this balloon within two seconds in an interview to the CNN-IBN editor. In the follow up, the issue immediately deflated to a pathetic matter of citizens approaching the police for help. The only way I see private involvement in national security issues is for citizens to bear arms. I am not saying that is good or bad, but thats  it, everything else related to security is public.

Dwell on this for a minute and you will find this reveals a deeper fissure in Indian society.  In a normal democracy, you would expect that since the private elects the public, we would not have to get all worked up over a partnership. In other words, the private public partnership already exists, it is called democracy. The middle class is confused, or rather the free agent middle class is a confused lot. They realize their pet big ticket issues like terrorism or even back breaking price rise or rapidly diminishing living standards are not electoral issues.  So what is ? Large swathes of people trapped by a system that holds them hostage to group incentives.  No group will defect from this system – not because we are evil or like to leech. It is a simple matter of the price to pay for defection. We support group incentives but only under the control of evidence not under the control of life stories of individuals.

The media is unable to articulate the above. The fervent appeal for a private public partnership is a way of beseeching the public people (elected largely to validate the incentives ecosystem) to include the private people in the game. Even though they have been given a chance to vote on the issue and the verdict is out for all to see.

Long time readers of this blog may sigh, ‘Here he goes again’. I can understand the fatigue of despair and the non stop pessimism. The unfortunate fact is, you cant have any of the benefits of democracy unless you honor all of its pre-requisites.

The next issue is : What has changed since 26/11 ?

What the TV channels really mean by change is material change. New guns, new vehicles, new groups of commandos. All this is welcome but nowhere near the type of change required to make the sacrifices of our security forces worthwhile. All forces not just those involved in the 26/11 operation.

The biggest change will be to compromise the existing political ecosystem and put big ticket issues like this on the voting block.  That is only possible if enough people are moved into free agent hood. More free agents also means more social justice, even under the quota system. The trillion rupee difference is a system based on evidence (data) will replace the whim of individuals.

Will it make a difference if more South Mumbai voters turned up to vote ?

I am afraid it would make little impact. There is no evidence to suggest that rich people automatically mean free agents who would always vote on big ticket issues.   Maybe the same winners would be voted in with a higher absolute number of votes.

While we are on the subject of election mechanics,  the way we handle electoral rolls need to be changed. For example, almost no hostel student was able to vote simply because they were away. At least in the general elections, people should be allowed to vote from any booth for their constituency. People who stay put in their home constituency are more likely to develop a liking for the stationary bandit or be involved as a beneficiary of this or that scam.

 

To conclude :

Here is to all the brave men who laid down their lives fighting the frenzied terrorist bastards. The victims had no option, you guys did.

Let us take a pledge to support any policy that will contribute towards putting such big ticket items on the voting block. That is the kind of change we want, the kind that is good enough to honour the dead.

 

 

China’s non democratic path not for us

Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh at an interaction with CFR, the American think tank.

‘There is no doubt that the Chinese growth performance is superior to the Indian performance,’ he said in response to another question on why the Indian economic performance was lagging behind that of China’s.

‘But I have always believed there are other values which are more important than the growth of gross domestic product like respect for fundamental human freedoms, respect for rule of law, respect for multi-religious, multi-ethnic rights,’ he said.

Source : Yahoo

 

In the true spirit of “Democracy for the sake of Democracy”, we present the intangible as a substitute for the tangible.

 

 

Serendipity and the new age entrepreneurs

Normally, monsoon time means rains and fog, but it seems like this season it is smoke and mirrors.

Here is Rajeev Chandrashekar’s latest article titled “Connection Errors“. He really takes DoT and TRAI to town while also saying the new age licensees simply found themselves in an “interesting situation”.

Read on.

 

The protagonists in this tragicomedy — DoT and TRAI — have by now developed a perfect track record of ‘doublespeak’. Phrases like consumer benefit, common man and competition when emanating from them take on an ominous hue. It’s not the first time that the TRAI and DoT (seemingly acting in concert — when the opposite should be true) have used the common man and his benefit to roll out scams.

Source : HT

 

Tragicomedy ? Hardly a term that fits here.  He says, “TRAI and DOT used the common man and his benefit to roll out scams”.  So, we are to believe that the  TRAI and DOT rolled out the scam and not the Congress led UPA government.

Essentially this whole thing boils down to the death of nuance in Indian public life.  In report after report, the main talking points are along the lines of  “but there was no note from TRAI asking us not to do that”. “The FM and PM did not raise any objection”, “There was no XYZ note asking the government not to do ABC, so we did ABC”. Is it fair to say that in the Congress led UPA government, the absence of a note devoid of any nuance will immediately lead to a massive compromise of a national asset. Its like a 10 year old claiming there was no label on the cookie jar with his name on it telling him not to enjoy its contents.

TRAI and DOT as institutions cannot be expected to issue a consultation paper for every possible avenue of corruption. Look, if the government wants to undersell – it will. If the government had the goodwill to extract fair price for the airwaves, which do not discriminate between Hindu, Muslim, OBC, Dalit, it would not require the DOT and the TRAI acting as schoolteachers exhorting it not to cheat.

What really takes the cake is his recap of the events leading up to the great black swan event in Indian history:

A set of companies gets spectrum and telecom licences at Rs 1,600 crore apiece. The market value for this spectrum is much more — Rs 4,000-9,000 crore — depending on the market transactions of Unitech, Swan, and Datacom and the reserve price for 3G licences).

The DoT requires a lock-in period before the licences can be sold and holds these companies to their network rollout obligations. But the TRAI has come out with a consultation paper to do away with the restriction on sale of licences to allow ‘consolidation and M&As’.

That leaves all the new licensees in an interesting situation — they have licences worth far more than what they paid for and there’s no need to roll out or invest further. They can sell their licences to make a lot of money for doing nothing. Where does that leave the government and people for whom these new licences represented affordability and competition? Basically nowhere. The government loses money from spectrum and the people see the market going back to the same structure as before.

Source : HT

This is a very ambitious maneuver even for an Indian capitalist. He wants to you believe that the new age licensees (most of whom did not even have a website)  just happened to be “left in a interesting situation“.  Well, how many believe that !!  Did these new age licensees know before hand that they would be left in the aforementioned  “interesting situation” ? If not, they would have to be crazies  to pony up 1900 Cr with no telecom experience and a strict policy lock in period of 3 years.

Any idea of a windfall tax is silly because we are talking about a finite natural resource here.  It is highly disappointing that Mr Rajeev Chandrashekar chose to attribute the minus to DOT and TRAI and the huge plus to pure serendipity.

—

On a related note : The CEO of Telenor was on TV a few days back. He was refreshingly candid. He acknowledged the whole allocation process was a bit strange, but he had worked with such countries (markets)  before and was extending full co-operation to the CBI authorities investigating the case.  (Sorry no URL, I saw the show)

 

 

Where are the CPI-M leaders ?

Faced with massive defeat in Kerala and West Bengal at the hands of their erstwhile UPA buddies, the Congress Party. You would think the left leaders would huddle up.

Brinda Karat – Brazil
Prakash Karat – London (Brinda will join him at London after Brazil)
Sitaram Yechury – Spain

Like them or not, India needs the left to check the Congress party which is the primary custodian of the status quo (read third world corruption empire characterized by a vice like grip of vested interests).

Their four and a half years in support of the Congress party shone unprecedented media spotlight on Brinda Karat, Prakash Karat, Yechuri, D.Raja etc. How many of us heard of them before ? For four and a half years they had it easy in TV studios, they were able to cash in the “secular” voucher in every TV debate. For a moment, they thought the “secular” voucher could be used by all parties not just the Congress. They made a fatal mistake. Secular is a synonym for the Congress Party. These three leaders seemed more and more like the Congress leaders, at least in terms of viciously attacking the other primary opposition the BJP. You could easily mistake Yechuri for a Tharoor.The left let the Congress define or place them inside TV studios and outside.

Would you like to spend your money to watch Michael Jackson dance or an imitator ? The voter has spoken.

“BJP leader joins Congress” and newspaper editing

A simple news story, “Mr Thirunavikkarasar of the BJP joined the Congress party”. When asked by newsmen, he clearly laid out the reasons for his decision.

 

Can you spot the difference in how these two newspapers carry this story ?

Specimen 1 : Deccan Chronicle

 

Mr Thirunavukarasar said that he had resigned from the primary membership of the BJP and also from the Rajya Sabha. Speaking at the AICC headquarters he-re, he said that he had joined the BJP because of Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee but since his exit, the party had “totally surrendered to the RSS.”

“The state leadership of BJP is not keen on developing the party. Also, it is difficult for the BJP to grow here (Tamil Nadu) by alienating 40 per cent of the population comprising the minorities. Hence, I decided to quit,” he said denying that he switched over to the Congress only to protect his own business interests.

Specimen 2 : The Hindu

 

Mr. Thirunvaukkarasar told The Hindu that he was joining the Congress without any pre-conditions as he was fed up with the BJP’s movement towards “communal politics” guided by the RSS. Moreover, former Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee, to whom he was attracted, had retired from active politics. In his more than three-decade-long public life, he always wanted to be close to the people. But Tamil Nadu people were not ready to accept the BJP’s policies and the Congress was the only hope for them.

 

Were you able to spot it ?