Viswanathan K's Thoughts

In the 90’s, after VP Singh had opened the Pandora’s box of reservation (Mandal), it set off another political wave – Ayodhya, Hindutva, or what came to be called Kamandal (the brass vessel to carry water, carried by sadhu s).   Today, after almost a decade of rule of Kamandal , we seem to have a revival of Mandal again, writes Raghu S Jaitley. As leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi criticized the budget saying: “The government of being of the forward castes, by the forward castes and for the forward castes. ” The Opposition is right in demanding that the census be conducted, but they also insist on a caste-based census. And then the Supreme Court passed a verdict: “permitting sub-classification for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in reservations by state governments. This will allow state governments to reserve seats for specific sub-groups within the quotas that are aimed at SC and ST communities based on the relative deprivation of those sub-groups.” Jaite...

Use the word “money” in the same sentence as “politics” and the next words that leap to our mind are “corruption” and “bribes”. While that association is indeed true, the reality is far more complicated and strewn with the misfiring of good intentions, says Rwitwika Bhattacharya-Agarwal in What Makes a Politician . ~~ Everyone needs money to live   She starts with the basic point – everyone needs money. Obviously. But how does one make money in politics? Political parties don’t pay salaries; and politics is a full-time job… you see the structural problem with such a setup?   Note that this problem isn’t limited to MLA’s and MP’s alone – it applies for the party workers as well. This leads to two common outcomes – many people avoid politics altogether; and the other set have to find ways within the context of politics and influence. With that in mind, consider a party worker who doesn’t get to contest the election but gets to be, say, the secretary to the elected ...

Say, you are a citizen who doesn’t just want to curse the kind of politicians we have. Instead, you are willing to become one to improve things. How would you even go about becoming a politician and getting the party ticket? After all, unless elected, you can’t change anything. Rwitwika Bhattacharya-Agarwal explains how to go about those aspects in What Makes a Politician . ~~ Professional “bias” in politics   How do you prepare for a political career? The first step for most would be to join the youth wing of a political party to learn the ropes, and meet party leaders. But if you’re too old for youth wings, then the profession you are in may help. Lawyers, for example, are the most common profession that joins politics. That is because of their understanding of the constitution, laws, and yes, they may have represented the party or a political leader in the past in a legal case. Bureaucrats stand a good chance for similar reasons – experience, proximity, and thus relation...

Dan Williams wrote an interesting post on ideologies. The term “ideology”, as we know all too well, refers to “belief systems”. While some like Karl Marx viewed ideologies as “inherently bad”, not everyone agrees. For most people, the term doesn’t necessarily have a bad connotation. It just refers to belief systems.   Except, as Williams says, when the term is used in politics. He quotes Christopher Federico and Ariel Malka who say, in politics, ideologies serve a purpose. Huh? Politics, they say, covers a huge and diverse set of matters from economics to trade policy to social matters to immigration to geopolitics to taxation. Voters cannot evaluate any political party issue by issue. “(Ideology) derives in large part from the inherent complexity of politics… By providing leaders and citizens alike with comprehensive, organised frameworks for making sense of politics, ideologies supply political actors with ready-made judgements about the state of the world and many issues...

You’d think when a government is able to reduce poverty, it would make positive headlines. So when the UPA government announced that poverty had fallen on both counts, as a percentage of total population and also in absolute numbers, Montek Singh Ahluwalia was surprised by what followed. He explains what followed in Backstage .   First , the opposition questioned the data – fake and hoax, said Mulayam Singh Yadav. Not surprising. Second , even many Congress MP’s were unhappy about such announcements. That was surprising. It took a while for Ahluwalia to understand the reaction of the Congress MP’s – (a) They feared that their vote bank would assume that the party would reduce their focus on the poor and shift attention to other areas; and (b) They feared that parts of their vote bank who were now deemed above the poverty line would lose some of their benefits, like subsidized grains. Third , many questioned the changes to the definition of the poverty line – it is logical t...

The venture capitalist, Paul Graham, made some very interesting points about why anything related to religion and politics quickly turns into, er, a religious argument. For one, he says: “Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions.”   But why is that the case? “One possible explanation is that they deal with questions that have no definite answers, so there's no back pressure on people's opinions. Since no one can be proven wrong, every opinion is equally valid, and sensing this, everyone lets fly with theirs.” That’s a possibility, but then Graham points out the reverse isn’t true: “It's a mistake to conclude that because a question tends to provoke religious wars, it must have no answer.”   The key, he says, could be something else: “I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people's identity, and people can never ha...

Now that we’ve seen the origin/ original meaning of ‘left’ and ‘right’ in politics, let’s take a quick look at the role of religion in these two groups in some of the major (English speaking) democracies. Why English speaking only? Because those are the countries whose news sites I can read and understand.   British politics today shows minimal signs of religion or religious groups having a huge say. (Before you applaud them too much, the keyword there is ‘today’ – in the past, politics and religions have mixed and interfered freely). Though there are signs of rising hatred of Islam in recent times – but that’s more an anti-Islam feeling than a pro-Christianity feeling.   In the US, on the other hand, Christianity is projected openly by almost all politicians (Even the Indian origin politicians who made national headlines like Kamala Harris and Bobby Jindal are Christians – it’s hard to find too many non-Christians rising high in American politics). Actually, America p...

What do the terms, “left” and “right”, as used in politics, mean? Let’s start with the origin of those terms because that gives a general feel of those terms – the underlying theme, so to say.   In The Righteous Mind , Jonathan Haidt says that the two sides diverge wrt a fundamental question of governance: “Preserve the present order, or change it?” In 1789, at the French Assembly, the delegates who favoured ‘preservation’ sat on the right, while those favoured ‘change’ sat on the left. “The terms right and left have stood for conservation and liberalism ever since.” From that, it is obvious why the terms “conservatives” and “liberals” are used as synonyms for the right (preserve) and the left (change) respectively.   The terms are a bit unfortunate because the word “conservatives”, even when used in a political context, gets mistaken for religious conservatism. Even though the side that favours retaining the existing system may not be religious at all. Somet...

One view of religions is that they are very good memes, ideas that are very good at spreading themselves. If you agree with this view, then it is correct to conclude that religions should probably be gotten rid of. (Note that in this view, we’re not bothered by what specific harm it causes; rather, the conclusion is drawn as there is no benefit and either a small or a high cost to the host/believer).   But what if that view isn’t right, wonders Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind . What if religions evolved as “cultural innovations that spread to the extent that they make groups more cohesive and cooperative”? In this view, the “purpose” of religion was to persuade individuals to be less selfish, to convince them to work as groups with all the associated benefits and sacrifices. The gods “can be used to promote cooperation and trust within the group”. In such a setup: “The gods of larger societies are usually quiet concerned about actions that foment conflict and division ...

Everybody tends to curse politicians. Many of the reasons are valid, of course. But politics is the art of operating within the bounds of what’s possible. Or as Barack Obama said : “I used to explain to my staff after we had a long policy debate about anything, and we had to make a decision about X or Y, “Well, if we do this I understand we’re not getting everything we’re hoping for, but is this better?” And they say yes, and I say, “Well, better is good. Nothing wrong with better.” That’s a point most of us understand and agree with in our calmer moments.   Unfortunately, we’re rarely calm when we think of politicians or policies. Instead, we’re almost always in an antagonistic mindset. So for the same outcome, we think differently based on who’s in power. His political opponents won’t let my guy do the good he wants to. The other guy never intended to do any good anyway. My guy did the best anyone could have done. Your guy sold out.   The passage below by Ib...

I was intrigued by the title of Shivam Shankar Singh’s book: How to Win an Indian Election . The book did not disappoint. The author says he was drawn into politics for the same reason so many other educated folks chipped in around the same time: massive corruption under UPA II, the Anna Hazare led protests, and the gruesome rape of Nirbhaya: “It was against this backdrop… (arose) two charismatic leaders… Arvind Kejriwal… (and) Narendra Modi.” Singh is a political consultant, similar to the far, far more famous Prashant Kishor. Their campaign style works only if a party identifies one man clearly for CM or PM. And that style revolves around the branding of the Chosen One. Did you think only the BJP plays the branding game? Singh points out it is done well by all parties. Take Punjab. The Congress candidate for CM, was rebranded from aristocratic “Maharaj” Amarinder Singh to “Captain” Amarinder Singh, the ex-army man who would pull Punjab out of the abyss. Or look at Bihar. M...

The twists and turns, betrayals and horse-trading leading to Uddhav Thackeray becoming Chief Minister of Maharashtra are worthy of a face-paced novel or political thriller. Santosh Desai sums it up perfectly: “The real lesson from Maharashtra is not about any one political party’s victory or defeat… Everyone’s greed and opportunism have helped cancel out everyone’s else’s greed and opportunism.” Sharad Pawar’s NCP comes off as the one on whom the least criticism can be hurled. The Congress, on the other hand? “The Congress’ claims about its commitment to secularism lie in tatters. In the current context, its attempt to position itself as a counterpoint to the BJP is rendered laughable given its willingness to partner a party that has historically been to the right of the BJP.” Wait a minute. Didn’t the Shiv Sena say it was abandoning its Hindutva agenda, “betrayed its long-time alliance partner but showed a willingness to move beyond its core ideological position in ord...

When the Opposition asked whether the surgical strikes after Uri had even happened or if it was just government progoganda, I felt it was very insulting. Not because governments don’t lie, not because the NDA/BJP is above lieing, but because the action in question was supposed to have been done by the Army. So was the Opposition saying that today even the Army is part of politics, that they would go along with such lies? If so, doesn’t it mean that the Army in India is no different than the army of dictatorships? And in such a scenario, would the Army allow any free and fair elections? If all this were true, surely we are facing a much bigger problem, a behind the scenes Emergency situation. So how come we don’t see the logical next step then, the Opposition up in arms against the “second” Emergency, except this time the Army is a part of it? Not satisfied with their contradictions, this time after the air strikes in Balakot, the Opposition continues with its contradictory lies:...

Circular reasoning may lie at the heart of why all the criticism hurled at Facebook (and to a much lesser extent at Google) doesn’t trigger any change. Fred Turner elaborates by explaining what Facebook and Google believe in… truly: “It started with, “Don't be evil.” So then the question became, “Okay, what's good?” Well, information is good. Information empowers people. So providing information is good. Okay, great. Who provides information? Oh, right: Google provides information. So you end up in this loop where what's good for people is what's good for Google, and vice versa.” Replace “information” with “connecting people” above, and you get Facebook. Turner has a pretty good description of the current “ethics of engineering”: “The ethics of engineering are an ethics of: Does it work? If you make something that works, you’ve done the ethical thing. It’s up to other people to figure out the social mission for your object.” But today we increasingly see...

In recent months, the aura of invincibility around Modi and the BJP seems to be wearing off. As Santosh Desai writes , there are signs of jitteriness in the BJP about the elections in Gujarat, the “effects of demonetisation continue to reverberate through the economy”, GST implementation is having its share of issues, and the “cultural agenda too ends up with too many unhinged statements”. And in this backdrop: “Being on the back foot does not come naturally to Mr Modi and his reactions lack the surefootedness of an earlier time.” So who could rise now in the Opposition? Nitish went to the NDA, the Yadavs are barely standing, and Mamata never grew beyond Bengal, writes Chetan Bhagat. No wonder then that Rahul Gandhi seems to be on the rise, at least on the Net: “There seems to be a new zing in his tweets and statements about the government, particularly PM Modi. It is like someone took boiled daal and gave it a tadka. His lines are spicier (or more entertaining), which i...

When the RBI announced that pretty much all the money (98.86%) returned to the system, it led to the inevitable question as to whether demonetization achieved anything useful at all in the fight against black money. It’s a valid question. So what just happened? -          The top guys had probably converted most of the black money into assets like forex, gold and real estate long back anyway. -          But that just means the black money got transferred to someone else’s hands. Did the last person(s) in such a chain of transference bring it all back into the system? -          And so that last person in the chain can (theoretically) be questioned by the IT department: where did he get so much cash? Why doesn’t that tally with his declared income and tax paid over the years? Let’s next consider the political impact of all this. Chidambaram has gone to town ...

Almost every democracy is “representative”. Let Glyn Moody describe it : “Yes, elections take place, but after that, politicians just seem to do what they want, with little concern for what the public really thinks about the laws that they push through.” Except if you are a Swiss citizen. There it’s easy to call for a popular vote: “If 50,000 signatures are collected from Swiss voters or eight cantons [Swiss states] demand a referendum within 100 days, then a popular vote is held.” Keeping Switzerland’s size and population in mind, 50,000 is not as trivially small a number as it might be in other countries; but nor is it an impossibly big number to get either. If you think India needs such a system, join the queue: Germany needs it before us! Why? Because Chancellor Angela Merkel, an otherwise cautious politician who knew the pulse of the voters, has changed. As George Soros said : “In the case of the (Syrian) migration issue, she did act on principle.” Now keep in Ge...

I have been a huge admirer of George Orwell ever since I read Animal Farm . Then there was 1984 , which was so eerily prophetic that it made you wonder if the guy had managed to build a time machine… Orwell also wrote a famous essay, “Politics and the English Language” , in 1946. His argument went pretty much like this: “…the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words.” But this may be the one time that Orwell got it wrong. Or possibly a case where politicians and corporate bigwigs wised up and started achieving the same goals as before by being clear ! Huh? Take a complex issue. Use a simple (ideally catchy) phrase to describe your view on that complex issue and bingo! It is memorable, hence likely to be repeated; it sounds like common sense, and hence accompanied with that sense of obviousness. Did I just define sound bytes? Isn’t that exactly what you hea...