Year: 2008

The Real Lesson of Kendriya Vidyalayas

A couple of years back, at a blog meet, I was having a discussion with Anand, who used to blog at locana. He was trying to defend government schools. His defence went: “Not all government schools are bad. I went to one myself. Ok, it was a government school at a campus that was filled with professors, but still…”

I sputtered a bit but never got a chance to complete my response in the din of the meet. This post at Nanopolitan reminded me of that conversation. This is as good a time as any for a response, I suppose.

People argue that private schools will serve only the rich and never provide the same quality to the poor. When faced with evidence that government schools also provide good quality only to the rich and neglect to serve the poor, their views undergo a fascinating inversion. The success of private schools for the rich is evidence that they will serve only the rich. The success of government schools for the rich is evidence that hope is on the way for the poor.  

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What’s New in Karnataka

About the elections in Karnataka, Neel asks:  “Once again. So whats new? Nothing much.”

Ah, but there is something new this time.  Over 30 years back, a constitutional amendment had frozen the map of India’s parliamentary and legislative constituencies to reflect the India of 1971. The moratorium has now ended, and the picture has moved forward to reflect the India of 2001, an India that is much more urban than it was in 1971.  I have reflected briefly on what urbanization means for India’s politics in the January 2008 Pragati 

Karnataka is the first state to go to the polls after the delimitation. Of course, both voters and politicians will take time to adjust to the new situation, but if I am right, this will be the beginning of one of the most significant changes in India’s politics, rivalling the change brought about by VP Singh in 1991.

Unnecessary Redundancy

Fark.com, that indespensible source of news, has brought to my attention the troubling case of Nancy Kissel , an American resident of Hong Kong who murdered her husband. She first laced her husband’s milkshake with sedatives and then bludgeoned him to death with a lead ornament. 

This modus operandi upsets my aesthetic sense. One should either poison one’s husband and make a clean killing or one should bash him up and see him die in pain. This innovation achieved neither purpose. I hope it does not become a trend.

Betrayed Trust of India

UTI Mutual Fund is running an ad campaign where it is claiming credit for the education of Indian investors. I am glad to see UTI being man enough and owning up responsibility for the abysmal financial knowledge of the average Indian investor. I suppose they think that five years is enough for investors to forget the saga of US-64 and the time when they used to get their agents to “promise” guaranteed returns on mutual funds.

Loss of Strategic Focus at The Maanga

There was a time when The Maanga used to focus on puking and used to puke very well. Sadly, by mindlessly diversifying its portfolio, it has lost focus.  By trying to mix puking with intelligent commentary, it has ended up doing neither.

A puke is like a surgical strike. To be successful, it has to be well-planned. You have to not only injure the target, but devastate it in the first attempt. Once you are done with it, you should be back in safe, well-defended territory. If you fail at these,  your battle is apt to go awry.  Your alternatives will be to call in reinforcements to defend a weak position or to stage a difficult retreat.  Neither choice is pretty.

A case in point is Avataram declaring that Ajay Shah is a moron  and then following it up with a search for reasons to back up his point.

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My Country, My Lies

L K Advani’s memoir reminds me of the Yes Minister  and the Yes Prime Minister books. In particular, it reminds me of the preface to the latter, which starts something like:

Hacker’s unexpected ascension to the Premiership, which happens towards the  end of the first chapter of his volume, created almost as many problems for historians as it did for the country. Hacker was determined to portray his term in office as a series of triumphs, a task that would have defeated a far more skilled diarist…

There is much more in those fine books that would be appropriate to quote. Unfortunately, I do not have the volumes with me here and my memory fails me as much as it did Advani.

Virgina Postrel Echoes Me

On Barack Obama

Obama’s glamour also accounts for some of his campaign’s other stumbles. Plenty of candidates attract supporters who disagree with them on some issues. Obama is unusual, however. He attracts supporters who not only disagree with his stated positions but assume he does too. They project their own views onto him and figure he is just saying what other, less discerning voters want to hear. So when Obama’s chief economic adviser supposedly told a Canadian official that, contrary to campaign rhetoric, the candidate didn’t want to revise NAFTA, reporters found the story credible. After all, nobody that thoughtful and sophisticated could really oppose free trade.

Unlike Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, the two glamorous presidents who shaped 20th-century American politics, Obama has left his political philosophy a mystery. His call for “a broad majority of Americans—Democrats, Republicans, and independents of goodwill—who are re-engaged in the project of national renewal” is not a statement of principles. It’s an invitation to the audience to entertain their own fantasies of what national renewal would look like

Like any candidate, Obama of course has position papers on specific issues. But even well-informed observers disagree about whether he represents the extreme left wing of the Democratic party or something more market-oriented and centrist. As the NAFTA flap demonstrates, his supporters can’t even decide what the candidate really thinks about free trade. His glamour makes it easy to imagine that a President Obama would dissolve differences, abolish hard choices, and achieve political consensus—or that he’s a stealth candidate who will translate his vague platform into a mandate for whatever policies you the voter happen to support. (The Peril of Obama)

The link may not stay valid for long, but Postrel is using “glamour” in its  original sense, when it meant “Magic spell”. (That also accounts for the odd spelling of the word – odd, that is, if you are an American.)

The 13th Pragati

It has been exactly a year since Pragati was launched, an event that Nitin has strangely not remarked upon. The April 2008 issue of Pragati is out, and. It focuses on the budget, and as usual contains many excellent articles. I particularly like the one on the Debt Waiver by Salil Tripathi.  There is no article by me this time, but Nitin has kicked me upstairs to make me an editor, along with him. Editing was a much scarier experience than writing, so let me know how it turned out.