A couple of months back, I had arguments with other bloggers over my support for the US invasion of Iraq. I haven’t posted anything on Iraq for sometime, and now one of my antagonists, presumably just recovering from his honeymoon, has thrown down the gauntlet.
This of course means that I have to pick it up, lest people start thinking that it is out of a sense of shame at the US not finding any WMDs that I am silent. That is not true. I am shameless.

I am also realising that I am smart. In “The case” this is what I had written.

The humane course of action for the US to follow would have been to go in, remove Saddam Hussain, replace it by a decent regime, and get out.

Instead it chose to stop half-way through and impose sanctions on Iraq, in effect punishing Iraqis for the sins of their leader. They began a cat-and-mouse game with Saddam trying to get him to destroy his Weapons of Mass Destruction in exchange for removal of sanctions. Saddam did not co-operate. He surreptitiously continued his programme, evaded inspectors and made use of schisms within the Security Council to get away with it.

Quite clearly, the only way to stop him is to remove him from power.

Clever ain’t I? These justifications remain valid even if no WMDs are found

Why? Because remember the “World Community” had 3 alternatives, not 2.

1. Lift Sanctions.
   Costs:
   • Iraqis continue to suffer from Saddam and his sons’ tyranny
   • Saddam continues to pursue WMDs
   • Others get encouraged by his lenient treatment and try to develop WMDs on their own.
   • Saddam himself finds other neighbours to attack, use his WMDs or create mayhem generally
   Benefits:
   • Iraqis can no longer blame sanctions for their suffering.
   • The world gets cheaper oil (cheaper than if sanctions are in place)

2. Keep Sanctions in place indefinitely
   Costs:
   • Iraqis continue to suffer from Saddam and his sons’ tyranny
   • Iraqis suffer more because of the sanctions
   • Success at checking WMDs still uncertain.
   • The world (including the US) pays a higher price for oil
   • Muslims will continue to hate the US and it might lead to more terrorism.
   Benefits:
   • Saddam may be in check

3. Attack and remove Saddam from power.
   Costs:
   • Some Iraqis die (both soldiers and civilians)
   • American soldiers die
   • There will be chaos in Iraq for a short period as a result. Iraqis may suffer.
   • There may be so much chaos that Iraqis take refuge in an Iran style theocracy
   • Success might go to the Americans’ head and they start intervening in places where they shouldn’t
   • There may be more terrorist attacks because Muslims elsewhere may be angrier than they are now.
   Benefits:
   • Iraq will be permanently rid of WMDs
   • The world (including the US)will get cheaper oil
   • If a democracy and a civilised government is established there, Iraqis will be happy
   • If a democracy and a civilised government is established there, not only will the world get cheaper oil, Iraq?s will actually benefit from selling oil

The best alternative to war was not peace. It was continued inspections and tighter sanctions. There is no doubt at all that he had a WMD programme.

Only two smoking guns were found during all the UNSCOM inspections in Iraq in the 1990s. The first — Iraq’s nuclear weapons complex — came quickly in the summer and autumn of 1991. We were going after very large physical complexes that had been designed to deceive spy satellites — but whose purpose could be detected by inspectors armed with good intelligence and aided by key Iraqi defectors.

In the next six years of UNSCOM inspections only one other such discovery was made — when the existence of an Iraqi biological weapons program was finally uncovered in 1995. But it is often forgotten that the weapons themselves were not found by the inspectors. Iraq told the inspectors that it had destroyed the biological munitions, which, it said, had been stored inside abandoned railroad tunnels and buried along the runways at two military airfields. Even the best inspectors have almost no chance of discovering hidden weapons sites such as these in a country the size of Iraq.

Given this evidence, if WMDs are not found now, it simply means that sanctions were effective in stopping him, not that Saddam had an Ashoka-style change of heart.
But can anyone tell me why a short war with so few casualties was a worse option than continued sanctions? The list of “costs”, if you notice are highly uncertain. Unless things go horribly wrong, they won’t have to be paid, whereas the costs of keeping the sanctions on indefinitely are certain and are already being paid.

The first time we met, Yazad asked me how I became a capitalist. I could give no clear answer, because I couldn’t recollect any single event that turned me to capitalism.

Now I can give him one. This is how.

The linked article is an NDTV expose of private engineering and medical colleges. They’ve caught principals of these colleges on camera auctioning off the “management seats”, which amount to 15% of seats (which the management has the discretion to allot, subject of course, to the provision that no capitation fees are charged, and other guidelines that the government may issue from time to time)

A decade back such an expose would have given me the fond hope that something would be done about it. I’ve realised now that this “something” would amount to more stringent guidelines and some more jobs for bureaucrats.

A decade back I would have amused myself trying to devise a perfect system that an engineer would have been proud of – a set of checks-and-balances which would ensure that the system would correct itself.

But then I entered IIT Bombay and there I saw the strangest thing. The institute gave its own degree. Its professors were free to set their own syllabus. They graded as they wished, with no oversight from anyone.

And it worked!

It worked because my alma mater was concerned about its reputation in the market (which in this case, happened to be the international market). Of course, it recruited good professors, admitted good students and was paid huge amounts in government grants. But somehow the system held together without falling prey to the wolves of corruption.

So I had this idea. Why don’t we let every college admit whoever it liked, set its own syllabus and charge whatever fees it wishes, provided the college issued its own degree? Why should the college hide its own uselessness behind its university affiliation? Let the degree compete in the job-market or the higher-education market.

When the college finds that its students aren’t doing well, perhaps it would think of actually teaching something useful. It would also start wondering how to attract good students to its rolls, and if it finds that fees are the problem, it would start arranging for loans and scholarships. It would also plough back the fees it charged into more facilities for its students rather channel the usurious capitation fees into the pockets of its promoters.

Colleges would no longer be money-spinning enterprises run by politicians with access to the required permissions, but would turn into places where you actually learnt something.

It wasn’t the first step or the last, but the realisation that a simpler, but imperfect system could produce better results than a perfect, but over-engineered one was a crucial step in my conversion.

The irony of finding the virtues of the free market in a government run institute and the vices of socialism in private colleges hasn’t escaped me.

This is not meant to be my current master plan to transform India’s education system. I just wanted to describe the insight I got.

The Economist( link requires subscription) says that women do worse than men because they are less competitive:

“A second study, of physical tasks, showed similar results. When nine- and ten-year-old children?ran a race alone, boys and girls clocked similar speeds. When children raced in pairs, girls’ speed hardly altered. But boys ran faster when paired with a boy, and faster still when racing against a girl. Mr Gneezy points out that, if men try harder when competing, they will disproportionately win the top jobs, even when to do the job well does not require an ability to compete. Job selection is itself highly competitive”

and also because they are uncomfortable with the idea of negotiation!

that women may do worse than men even when they win a job, because they take a different approach to negotiation. Ms Babcock, who recounts her studies in a forthcoming book?, noticed that male graduates with a master’s degree from her university earned starting salaries almost $4,000, or 7.6%, higher than female students. But when she asked who had simply accepted the initial pay offer and who had asked for more, only 7% of women, compared with 57% of men, turned out to have negotiated. On average, those who negotiated raised the initial offer by $4,053-almost exactly the difference between men’s and women’s starting pay.

Huh? What about all those women I see negotiating with bhajiwalis?

The adage “Exceptions prove the rule” is one of the silliest I’ve heard. It is too obviously illogical and I can’t think of a situation where it actually makes sense. So I was happy to learn that it is actually a backward compatibility issue.

Long long ago, “to prove” meant “to test”. Then, “Exceptions prove the rule” meant, “Exceptions test the rule”. The latter makes perfect sense, but unfortunately lacks the epigrammatic quality that the former has acquired.

There are many other phrases and usages based on the original sense of “prove”, but their meaning hasn’t changed so drastically.

• The proof of the pudding is in the eating
• Prooving ring (where they test cars)
• Foolproof

It was such a minor change in usage. From “to test” to “to pass the test”, but it caused an increase in the amount of Nonsensical Particulate Matter floating in the air.

Kingsley’s comment on what I’ve been smoking “inspired” me.
This report says that more than 90% of euro notes are laced with cocaine, because addicts roll up notes to snort the stuff.
That explains why the dollar has been losing value against the euro. It’s not that the dollar is low; it’s that the euro is high.

Okay okay, don’t beat me up! I didn’t think of the joke this time! It is James Taranto’s (Opinionjournal.com – Best of the Web scroll to the very end- “Economic Stimulus” )fault.

Google is celebrating M C Escher’s birthday today!
That reminds me. I have to finish reading Godel Escher, Bach

I am shocked that while I was away in Hyderabad no one took on the mantle of blogging this. Swaminathan Aiyar explains simply and elegantly a little known law called the Law of unintended consequences.

The Emperor Tughlak tried something of the sort by decreeing that silver was equal in value to copper. He thought poor people holding copper coins would instantly become as rich as those having silver. Instead rich businessmen quickly submitted copper coins to the treasury and demanded silver in return. Soon the treasury was empty of silver, the rich had got richer and the poor were as badly off as ever. Tughlak had not thought through the unintended consequences of his decree. He failed to realise that the fundamental economic fact ?_” that silver is relatively scarce and copper relatively abundant ?_” cannot be changed by mere legislation.

(You cannot legislate away poverty)

He goes on to explain the folly of decreeing minimum wages. Kerala is involved.

Kids these days! They know everything. In my time we were so innocent.

“Uncle I can go under you. Can I go under you?
Uncle please spread your legs!”

I refused of course. The kid seemed like an expert swimmer, but one never knows. Diving is a risky job, especially when the water is shallow, and I didn’t want him to get into an accident trying to dive through my legs.

Kids these days know everything about swimming.

Okay now I am pushed into a position where I have to defend really controversial views. But what the hell. I’ll go ahead.
RR (why are you going around with those initials? People might confuse you for me!) wants to know if the following crimes should be legal:

Sati
Yes, if it is voluntary. I believe that suicide should be legal, with the safeguard that you should have to swear on an affidavit that you are doing it voluntarily without pressure from others, etc. etc. Most decisions to commit suicide are impulsive, and the actual process of swearing an affidavit will dissuade more people – and give time for social organizations to get across help to people who are hell-bent on doing it.

Sati in the 19th century was rarely voluntary. The widow was usually drugged and dragged to the pyre. Needless to say, if it isn’t voluntary, it should be banned.

The rare incidents of Sati that have taken place in recent years (just 2 in living memory ) might have been voluntary. If they were, then it is more important to understand the conditions that made the widows take such decisions than to ban it. (I once heard Madhu Kishwar point out that the Sati law is draconian. It makes it a crime to abet or glorify it, thereby making potential criminals of every bystander who witnessed the act, thus ensuring that no one came forward to give evidence as to what happened. )

Euthanasia
Should be legal. If a person has left a “living will” asking for death if he ever turns into a human vegetable with no hope of recove?y, the courts should take the will into cognizance and kill him. If the person is in a position to ask for death, then it should be given to him.

Why should dowry be banned by the state when it’s done voluntarily ? When “gifts” are given in lieu of dowries doesn’t it become vague ? Besides, as you mention it’s not easy to bring offenders to book and using your logic, it probably leads to a general disrespect for the law. So, why bother to ban it ?

Why indeed? You’ve made most of my arguments for me. Of course, sudden and unreasonable demands for dowry that has not been agreed on earlier – the kind that happens the night before marriage, in the marriage mandap (such as happened in the Nisha Sharma case) , etc. should be treated as a breach of contract and be prosecutable as a civil offense. But there is no need to criminalise dowry that has been agreed on by both sides.

But the girl’s side agrees to the dowry only because of social pressures and traditions. It might look voluntary, but it isn’t really voluntary.

True. But in that case, what are the chances that the girl’s side, which wouldn’t resist social pressures to refuse dowry will actually go to the extent of complaining to the police, thereby ensuring that their daughter will never get married? The only people to take advantage of the legislation would be people who wouldn’t need to legislation – gutsy women like Nisha Sharma, coming from rich families, or familes which will support them through the storm they’ll have to weather. My impression is that Indian society is changing – middle class women of my generation won’t take harrassment lying down, so we will hear a lot more cases like like Nisha Sharma’s.

But soon, we will also hear of cases where the anti-dowry legislation is misused to harrass the guy’s side.

Before you ask, there are other practices that I’d like to see unbanned – sex determination and (especially female) foeticide. Nasty practices no doubt, but legislation to fix them has proved useless and counterproductive.

Banning sex determination is useless. An honest doctor isn’t allowed to even indicate the sex of the child (which is tough to do if you are using a human language to communicate with the future parents) and unscrupulous ones go ahead and do it anyway. Faced with widespread failure there was a move to restrict import of sonography machines! See what I meant about failure of government regulation leading to more regulation?

Um.. Is it really an arguable question whether general contempt and disregard for the law is widespread in India?
And what distinguishes a democracy from mobocracy is that there is rule of law. If the government has the power to make arbitrary, vague, continuously changing law with lots of discretionary powers to government officials, the difference between the government and a mafia is obliterated.

(Warning: Does not contain a SARS joke, a mention of Bidwai or nudity. Also, it is too long. And also serious.)

Sandeep writes interesting stuff. But then he tends to deface whatever he has written, leading me to suspect that he has a tortured artistic soul that has masochistic inclinations.

But I digress. He has written a couple of posts (1, 2) about Playwin lotteries. He is concerned that the poor and ignorant among the citizens of Karnataka are developing an addiction for Playwin lotteries and ruining their lives. He thinks that the Government should ban these lotteries.

Or, to be precise, he implicitly assumes that the default legal position ought to be that lotteries are banned, hence it is the Government’s fault for allowing Playwin to peddle lotteries to Kannadigas.

What’s wrong with Sandeep’s arguments? Well, here are a few:

Banning consensual crimes is not easy. Consensual crimes are actions like gambling, pornography, prostitution (assuming that the prostitute isn’t coerced into it), drinking, smoking, doping, etc. where both the perpetrator and the “victim” are doing it voluntarily. Of course, it is always possible to claim that even these allegedly victimless crimes have unwitting third-party victims (such as the families of those who buy Playwin lotteries, as Sandeep points out). But the point is that these alleged victims aren’t going to complain. This means that the police continually have to be on the prowl to catch the consensual criminals, and they have to be intrusive

Laws against consensual crimes are necessarily vague. Why?
Because a narrow ban will invariably have loopholes, while a broad ban will prohibit many legitimate activities. Take the Playwin example. Is it enough to just ban lotteries? Surely it is not beyond human ingeuity to devise some other form of gambling and not call it a lottery? For example, let us say that Playwin introduces something it calls the “Coffee Lottery” which goes as follows:

For a price, you can buy a ticket which is a bet on the price of coffee 6 months from now. You can take either a “sell bet” or a “buy bet”

Sell bet. If you take this side, you quote a price per kilo and if the actual price is higher than this, then you gain the balance. If it is lower, you lose the balance. You gain or lose this amount from the person who has taken the opposing buy bet.

Buy bet If you take this side, you quote a price per kilo and if the a?tual price is higher than this, then you lose the balance. If it is lower, you gain the balance. You gain or lose this amount from the person who has taken the opposing sell bet.
Playwin brokers the deal, pockets the price of the ticket and it sets the reference date and the reference coffee market to set the reference price.

Is this gambling? Would you ban this? Read it carefully before answering.
Yes?
Sure?

Oops. You have banned a perfectly legitimate activity, trading in Futures It turns out that tickets such as the above are useful devices for farmers and traders to minimise their risk at a small expense. (How? If you’re interested, ask me and I’ll tell you. I don’t want to make this any longer)

The example I gave was not hypothetical. Futures could not be introduced in India till a few years back because the 19th century Indian Contract Act did not recognise “gaming contracts”.

So what did they do? They amended the Contract Act and I bet the amendment started with something like “Notwithstanding anything specified in…” i.e, they added an exception to the law.

Exceptions and special cases to laws are bad because they make the law ambiguous and confusing. Ambiguous and confusing laws are bad because then you need a bureaucrat or a judge to interpret what the law or guideline actually means. Such interpretative powers increase the scope for corruption.
Not convinced? Take another example. When India had prohibition, there was a flourishing racket in medicinal exemptions to the no-alcohol rule.

“So we just have more stringent laws against corruption” I hear Sandeep say. If only it were that easy. Firstly, more laws mean more confusion. It means more government officials to check on potentially corrupt government officials. We know how that works.

Secondly not all corruption is illegal. A legislator walks upto the minister and tells him: “I know that gambling is a bad thing for the poor people, but surely it is a harmless pastime for the rich? So why ban horse racing? There is a horse-breeding industry in my constituency which is in the doldrums because of this ban. Employment is down. Make an exception for horse racing and I’ll support you if you make a bid for chief ministership”.
Is such a deal illegal? No. It is legitimate political activity. Is the legislator genuinely concerned about unemployment in his constituency or is he paid off by the horse-breeding industry? Who knows? And what difference does it make? In either case, we’ve ended up with more laws, exceptions to laws, special cases and discretionary powers.

Look at the scenario I have outlined above once again. For a moment in your mind replace “minister” with a “mafia don” who runs an extortion-and-protection racket. Do you see any difference between the minister’s behaviour and the don’s? I don’t. The minister might be sincere, but so might the don. When you have arbitrary and intrusive laws, the difference between the Government and the Mafia reduces. So don’t be surprised when we elect Mafia dons to be ministers; we are electing the right people for the job.

It leads to hypocrisy – and a general disrespect for the law. Sandeep, if gambling is illegal and you find your friends doing it would you turn them over to the police? The more private and consensual vices are criminalised, there will be more such activities which are illegal on paper, but which most people wink at. The upshot is that there will be a general decline in respect for the law. Look around you. Hasn’t it already happened?&lt?br />Or take another example. Suppose an honest policeman is sent to break up a Diwali gambling party. He finds a group of people having fun. They offer him a bribe also called the “Diwali Baksheesh”. Will the bribe weigh as heavily on him as a bribe given by an alleged murderer? Nonetheless he has taken his first step towards corruption, and it is that much easier for a murderer to bribe him in the future.

It hurts the poor How? Firstly, complicated laws hurt the poor more than the rich because the rich are better placed to pay the bribes that will cut the Gordian knot of complicated laws, and to last out the long court cases that result from the complicated laws. Secondly, laws to protect the poor end up putting special restrictions on the poor. The poor are prohibited from partaking of the simple pleasures of gambling, while the rich can indulge in horse races… how do you think they like that?

It is not self-correcting The problems I’ve mentioned aren’t new and certainly not theoretical. Every country that has tried intrusive laws has failed to achieve its goals (with the only exception of Singapore) The USSR failed, the US failed when it tried to impose prohibition and the Indian legal system has collapsed under the weight of confusing laws. It is not as people claim, that Indians are a specially corrupt people and that the general disregard for the law is embedded in our genes. The evidence that more laws lead to more lawlessness is overwhelming. So why do Sandeep and many many others (I know that I am in a hopeless minority) insist on calling for more laws?
Because it seems to be an immutable law that failure of government regulation leads to calls for even more government regulation. In contrast, an individual who fails mostly corrects himself – and if he does not, he doesn’t pull down the rest of society along with himself.

I don’t know whether I’ve made my case or lulled you to sleep with the length of this piece, but there you are. If you’ve read this, hopefully you’ll also consider this the next time you hear calls for more laws, “better implementation” or yet another regulatory authority. Not all problems of private vices have a legal solution. In most cases we’ll be better off abolishing the law.

Yes, many of these problems can also arise in legitimate laws. But there will be a lot less of them. It is easier to write a clear law against murder than a clear law against gambling. Secondly, the advantage of having fewer laws is that we can afford to keep a watch over our government officials who implement the few laws that we will have.

I’d have liked to tackle the question of why Singapore seems to defy all these rules, but I have honestly no idea. The only thing I can say is that it is an exception to the rule and unless you have a good idea how to replicate that experiment, better not try it out on a large scale in India.

Anita is holding a contest for entries worthy of entry into the dullest blog into the world.

Writing dully about banal things is an art-form, but I think it is tougher to write dully about important things in life. So here is my attempt.

The doctor told me that I had 3 months to live. He asked me if I had made my will.
I told him that I had no money and no one to leave it to.
He said ok.

Does this sound like Hemingway?

Outlook has a report on how the excavations in Ayodhya are proceeding. The article portrays a “balanced” view, i.e, it makes it seem as if the pro and anti-mandir guys are squabbling over the interpretation of the evidence that is turning up. But to me it is looking as if there is pretty strong evidence in favour of a temple turning up and the anti-mandir guys scoffing at them, claiming that the evidence is not yet enough. My bias may be showing, you decide.

In any case, the historical question of what Babur did in the 16th century is different from the ethical question of what we should do now. I think that there is evidence that Babur indeed demolished a temple to build the mosque in question, but that does not mean that Hindus should have returned the compliment.