Year: 2009

Lok Satta Party Ad

Yesterday I caught an interesting ad for the Lok Satta Party on some Telugu channel. It depicts a family obviously in poverty. Their hands are in cuffs.  Two extended hands appear, one of them offering rice and the other offering some other food which I did not catch. The family shakes their heads, refusing. Then Jayaprakash Narayan, head of the party shows up, and he too extends his hand, only it is revealed that he has keys in his hands. Nice, crisp and effective message.

Lok Satta has been running quite a serious campaign here in Hyderabad. Any idea where they are getting  funding from? Perhaps their  web site  answers the question, but a quick glance reveals this, which does not tell me much about the composition of their sources.

The Hackneyed Man From the Past

Gaurav non-Sabnis thinks that  the use of the man-from-the-past technique in my Pragati editorial “The Case for Freedom” was hackneyed.  He is free to think so. He also thinks that my introduction was inaccurate. He is free to think so too as long as he doesn’t mind being mistaken.

Gaurav makes two errors – a misinterpretation and a factual error. The misinterpretation is this: He says that “mismatch between supply and demand must be as old as beginning of trade”. Well, duh. Obviously, a famine is a severe mismatch between the demand for food and the supply of food. If I had said that there is now a greater mismatch than before, it would have been an extremely stupid statement.

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Plausible Deniability

Dilip D’Souza does not read The Examined Life.  In the course of not reading my blog, he runs across a comment by me on my blog saying that I cheered the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

The Babri Masjid, if you recollect, was demolished in 1992. At the risk  certainty of giving away my age, I was 17 years old at that time. The comment itself makes it clear that I have reconsidered my view since. A person who, at the age of 40, admired a psycopathic mass-murderer should not be throwing stones at people aged 17, especially since stones can’t do time travel yet. A sane man would have, on reflection, passed by the chance to pick up the stone. But we are talking of Dilip D’Souza. So out comes a post. I am apparently an “economist” and a libertarian who was “delighted” by the demolition of the Masjid. The characterization delights me, as I am not really a trained economist. I just did a couple of courses as part of my MBA. And I had written “cheered”, not “delighted”, but it is close enough.

Having done this  of course, the problem is to get back plausible deniability.  Dilip needs to get back to not reading my blog. The SOP so far is to claim that though he does not read the blog, one of my posse of admirers (or detractors) sent the link to him. But this time, it is a slightly different. This time, he adds a postscript.  Apparently, the economist/libertarian has written to him and remains delighted that the Babri Masjid was demolished. Ingenious, isn’t it?  If I protest that I did not in fact write to him, it will turn out that it was someone else, not me.  In March 2009, an epidemic broke out among economist libertarians wherein they all confessed their teenage delight when the Babri Masjid was demolished to whoever was within reach.  If I don’t protest, the insinuation that I remain delighted with the demolition of the Masjid stays. If only Dilip D’Souza were smarter, he would have been a valuable asset in India’s psychops.

Why Vote for Meera Sanyal?

Nilu wants to know why I support Meera Sanyal. He seems to have discerned that I support her from the fact that I have joined the Facebook group that says “Meera Sanyal for South Mumbai”. Can’t blame him for that, but I don’t only join Facebook groups when I support those causes. I join them when I am interested enough to track what is happening.

That said, I do support Sanyal, and if I were a registered voter in South Mumbai, I would vote for her. But Nilu asks some valid questions, and here are the answers.

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His Father’s Son

One of the depressing facts that you pick up from the book “Blank Slate” is that current research tells us that the influence of parental upbringing on a child’s nature is approximately zero. Your genes have some effect on your son or daughter.  The overall environment that he has been brought up in matters. But your own influence is negligible. Another way of stating this is that if you have a biological child and an adopted child, the difference between the two will be almost as great as the difference between your biological child and your neighbour’s child.

Of course, there are many studies that have established this effect, but to me, the simplest verification came from the fact that I have inherited my social shyness from my father, even though he died when I was five.  Another example seems to be Varun Gandhi.  He must have been 2 years old  was 3 months old  when Sanjay Gandhi died in a plane crash, but he still seems to have managed to inherit his father’s psychopathic  personality.  The combined effect of his father’s genes and his current environment seems to have rendered irrelevant any effect of his mother’s upbringing.

Presidential and Parliamentary Systems

Rishi wants to know how I can claim that the Presidential System underdelivers change, and Ritwik angrily objects to my claim that in the Parliamentary System, the Prime Minister can handpick legislators. Both of them have missed an important qualifier: popular.

Change is rare in any mature democracy. This is as it should be. Obviously, I prefer change in the direction of less government and limited powers and others may prefer otherwise, but whatever the direction of your preferred change, I think that we should be wary of a system where a Chief Executive can, on the basis of just one election, bring about fundamental and drastic change in the structure of the polity.

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Not Just Survivorship Bias

VK points out, quite correctly, that survivorship bias doesn’t completely explain our perception that things are getting worse. He is right. There are many other reasons; some have to do with perception and some with reality.

Actually, in the first place, I don’t just find the idea that home appliances have gotten worse incorrect – I find it incredible. From my point of view, it is so obvious that things have been  better in the past 15 years than they were in the 15 years before that, that I question the honesty of those who claim otherwise.

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American Incentives

It is too early  for me to claim vindication for this post.  Given the high expectations that President Obama came to power with, and the enormity of the task before him, it was inevitable that his first 100 days would disappoint. But I want to make a point about he American political system that many people do not appreciate. The point is that:

The American political system tends to overpromise, but underdeliver change.

Why? Because of the preponderance of  direct elections. Presidential candidates have to win many direct elections before they come to power.  To win direct elections, you have to establish yourself as your own man even if you are in the same party as the incumbent.  In other democracies, handpicked successors tend to gain the organizational backing of the ruling party. In the US, because of the unique organization of parties, there is very little to gain. Even if the incumbent was hugely popular, 8 years of him would have wearied the voters, and his successor needs to be wary of promising 4 more years of the same.  George W Bush was, to put it mildly, not very popular in November 2008, which is why you had both candidates promising change, but similar dynamics would have applied even in 1988, when George Bush was running to succeed Reagan.

So why would it be difficult to deliver change? Because of direct elections again. Both the President and Congressmen are directly elected. Neither is beholden to  the other branch. In a Parliamentary system, a popular Prime Minister would be able to handpick his legislators – in fact, he would have to, because otherwise there would be a chance that he would get dislodged despite his popularity. In the US presidential system, there is

a) structurally no way for  a President to pick his legislators

b) no need for a President to do the same and

c) a risk if he attempted it, because the unpopularity of some legislators may drag him down.

For these reasons, a President, even if he is elected on a mandate for change, will find it difficult to push his legislative agenda through.

None of these explains Obama’s failure so far. That is another story.

Look Out for Presidential Chief Ministers

I have piled on Sagarika Ghose earlier, but I must give credit when she is right. I think that she is essentially right here.  I had written earlier that

Very few politicians have tried to break out of this cycle, and I believe that the person with the greatest chance of succeeding is Modi.

The other person who is succeeding is Naveen Patnaik.   Neither Modi nor Patnaik has an immediate chance of succeeding at the national level, but then, I’d expect a vacuum at the national level for the next few years anyway. In the next few years, I believe that we will see many more of these presidential Chief Ministers, i.e. Chief Ministers who bypass intermediaries and forge a direct contract with their constituents.  The contract is: I provide you good governance and you vote for me. This will replace the multi-level contracts based on various caste allegiences that are now the norm. The Central Government will be a confederacy installed by these Chief Ministers.

And, this is something for the BJP to think of. 15 years ago, the BJP would have been the natural place for all these Chief Ministers to be in ( or be in alliance with). Now, it is no longer true.  Karnataka is one place where they are really badly screwing up.  There, if you had a presidential Chief  Minister like Modi, they could have achieved a permanent majority just as they have achieved in Gujarat. Instead, they have Yedyurappa.

Also, this moral policing is a bad mistake. If you are wondering how this point is related to the previous ones, trust me, it is related. I have just skipped a few steps in the reasoning.

Pragati Marches On

The 24th issue of Pragati is out. If you haven’t picked it up already, please do so.  The theme this time is India’s engagement with the world. On that note there are articles on trade with ASEAN and South America, India’s relations with Bangladesh and on the importance of logistics. Rohit Pradhan and Harsh Gupta weigh in on the importance of the rule of law, and Prof R Vaidyanathan writes about the unique corporate governance challenges for India. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I have written the opening editorial on why Pragati will continue to champion economic freedom.

And, yes, I am running out of puns to use while announcing Pragati issues, and I am repeating them. I just hope that some day, there will be an issue of Pragati on religious tourism to India and I can use the headline “Pilgrims’ Pragati”

Rube Goldberg Voting System v2

A refinement of my idea here. Minors should continue to have weighted votes to be exercised by their parents, but each parent should be allowed only one vote in addition to his or her own. That way, parents don’t get credit for having too many children. (Polygynous people of whichever religion will get credit for as many children as there are wives, plus 1, which sounds fair.) Now,   I don’t think that it makes sense to argue that this will provide an incentive for parents to “game the system”. Those who think that it makes sense have obviously never had children themselves. But the point that it will overweight the votes of people who did not practise birth control is well-taken, hence the modification.

Second modification. The weights should be discounted. We should use the  five-year average rate on government securities of appropriate tenor to determine the discounting.  That will mitigate the advantage enjoyed by young people somewhat.