Cindy's Mole?

It seems to be received wisdom these days that you must “earn" the right to criticize a person in public office or a political entity in electoral majority. How is the right earned? By paying compliments. This credits valuable coin into your emotional bank balance with said person or entity which you are then allowed to expend on criticism. In the absence of coin, your adverse comments carry no weight and must be dismissed as incoherent rants.

This wisdom is often yoked to another- invoking precedent from the putative adversary, thus ensuring that no assessment of a present-day event is possible absent reparations for the original sin: “He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone".

This power trifecta is completed by a slam-dunk. “Do you have a better idea”? Speak now or forever hold your peace.

 Between these triple punches, it must seem that all dissenting voices will be stilled. Any adverse comment, having been added as a post scriptum to elegiac paeans, will be reduced to the metaphorical equivalent of Cindy Crawford’s mole.

The word “Democracy” a portmanteau of two Latin roots: demos (people) and kratos (power), points to the relationship between electors and the elected. The elected serve, and serve at, the pleasure of their electors. The power and badges of privilege they enjoy are not birth rights or entitlements; they are perquisites meant to facilitate the work enjoined upon them. While this is the formal democratic construct, its real-world manifestation is rather different, particularly when a particular elected official is repeatedly reelected into the same office, or, as is often the case, successively more powerful offices. The longer this streak continues, the more likely it is for the incumbent to start associating the power and badges with herself, the person, rather than her elected office. Interestingly, this metamorphosis is bilateral; the electors begin to posit the person at a higher plane of existence than the one they inhabit and frame the relationship in terms of their gratitude rather than the official’s accountabilities. Indeed, even when such officials begin utilising their authority coercively, electors don’t merely condone it; they applaud it as decisiveness and fortitude. Parallely, elected officials, having the bully pulpit of office at their disposal, can use it to stoke anxiety and fear, amplify voices calling for assigning larger and larger gobs of personal discretion to themselves, and stifle even the slightest querulous note.

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is a morality tale which reminds us of the very short path in elected office from humility to hubris. It makes pointed references to the shared culpability of the vast assembly of citizens in elevating one among their own into a plenipotentiary above them all. Democratic societies on every continent have elected strongmen into office over the last decade. In each instance, a vocal minority of electors, willingly provide an elaborate apologia for the excesses of their caesar and work in concert to drown out discordant voices.

With this, let us go back to the popular wisdom trifecta with which we began this essay. If you are a citizen of a democratic jurisdiction, you are a shareholder in the societal power which places people into elected office. This, in and of itself, gives you the right to express your views about elected officials: favourable, indifferent or unfavourable. In contemporary discourse, the implicit assumption is that the exercise of the right to vote is the sole opportunity for voicing opinion about those aspiring to office. Nothing can be further from the truth. The duration of appointment is not, and should never be, devoid of an ongoing feedback loop which conveys the ebbs and flows of public opinion to those in elected office. These feedback loops can take many forms. Social media allow anyone with a smartphone, a data connection and a Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Blogger etc. account, platforms to air their views. Regular news outlets such as newspapers, news broadcasters on TV. radio or digital media are collectively labelled "Fourth Estate" in acknowledgement of their role as the watchdog over the other three "estates"- legislature, judiciary and executive. In some countries, regular opinion surveys monitor citizens' approval or disapproval of their presidents, prime ministers or monarchs. The Gallup Presidential Approval Rating traks how Americans view their president, week after week. In India, we are used to local or state elections being described as referendums on national leadership, particularly when the state is ruled by the same political configuration as the centre.

A range of ideological alignments point to wide differences in views about the devolution of economic, social, cultural and administrative power across the society. I am not obligated to ever agree with a single prescription or policy direction of those in office; indeed, a vibrant, plural political discourse demands that such differences exist. The incorrigible sceptic is not anathema to democratic polity, she is its strongest pillar.

Politicians become adept at the arts of deception and deflection. It takes little imagination to rake up real, and often imagined, injustices committed by someone else in the past, as covering fire for behaving atrociously in the here and now. Today’s atrociousness can even be framed in terms of rebalancing the scales and writing wrongs. This sets the hapless electors up for an infinite regression of finding and fixing old iniquity and creating brand new inequity for redressal by a future demagogue of the opposite persuasion. Invoking the past is a surefire way of perpetuating atrociousness.

Finally, an eye for critical evaluation is not equivalent to an eye for creative imagination. It could even be argued that critiquing requires the diligent patience of an auditor while creativity requires the uninhibited voyages into the terra incognita of future possibilities. In 1915, Einstein came up with his General Theory of Relativity sitting in a patent office in Bern. Several dozen astronomers and astrophysicists then provided the first conclusive proof of the theory when a solar eclipse came along in 1919. This is how it should be in democratic polity too. Officials must exert their minds and imaginations for best acquitting their official responsibilities. And ordinary citizens must constantly probe their prescriptions for vulnerability or ineptitude. Officials should encourage and stimulate critical evaluations, so they are not blindsided by the law of unintended consequences.

Power has been shown, repeatedly, to be a desensitiser of self-awareness. Healthy democracies take the job of keeping elected officials on their toes seriously. And democratic societies that stifle critical voices must be mindful of Plato's insight, proven repeatedly in the real world, of the unfortunate propensity of democracies to morph into tyrannies.

Part Farce. Part Tragedy. All Aadhar.

My son decided to get enrolled for Aadhar.

Having little else on my schedule for the day, I offered to accompany him to an enrollment center. We knew it was going to be a time-consuming exercise, given the anecdotal accounts of strained facilities, long queues and disorderly customers, and we had lots to talk about.

A Google search had listed the Mumbai General Post Office as an Aadhar Seva Kendra (Aadhar Service Center). This stately edifice lying South East of the magnificent Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus had been on my list of Mumbai buildings to check out for a while and this Aadhar agenda was a perfect reason to combine business with pleasure. The cab decanted us at the GPO gates at 8.58 a.m. and we were rather looking forward to the next few hours under that great dome when we walked up the security bloke at the half-ajar gate. "Bahut der kar di aapne", "you are terribly late", he said. The GPO Aadhar center apparently processes only 15 (you heard that right, fifteen), customers a day and he opened a dogeared notebook that already had 16 (sixteen) names on it. The sixteenth chap had pleaded with them to keep him on standby banking on the possibility of there being a dropout from those ahead of him. "These customers came and booked their place between 4 and 6", he explained. 4 and 6? Yes, 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. aka the darkest hours before dawn. Not one to be disheartened by one snub, I strode out and demanded more options from Google. The Mumbai Collectorate, a complex of government offices, was just a km south of where we stood. We didn't dilly. Nor did we dally, but marched off to this other oasis that promised what we sought.

The Mumbai District Collectorate presents a rather characterless front enlivened ever so slightly by its unusual, oblique orientation to the road before it. The grand stairs of the Asiatic Society and the fabulous Horniman Circle that constitute its immediate neighbourhood, erase even an infinitesimal possibility of a second glance. But we were not to be distracted. The policeman at the guard post confirmed that there was a functioning ASK (acronyms, acronyms), right inside and thither we proceeded. An elderly couple sitting all by themselves on a bench in the main quadrangle indicated that they too had been drawn there and we took them along to a spot further inside the bowels of the complex to finally come upon a hallway with a vinyl sign tacked on that announced Aadhar Seva Kendra. A couple of gents had beaten us to it and they were happy to confirm that we had, in fact, reached the Jerusalem we sought.

It was just past 9.15 at the time. Barring the six of us (ibid.) there was nobody around. Even the safai karmacharis (janitors) had not swept past yet. Indeed, as the picture reveals quite vividly, the ASK vinyl sign had become some sort of a magnet for garbage left behind by the previous day's (week's?) aspirants. The clever ASK staff love suspense so there was no indication of when the doors to the sanctum sanctorum would be thrown open for us dawdlers. Nothing to it, in other words, than to settle down and begin a wait of indeterminate duration. There's a fellowship of shared discomfort which sparks bonhomie amongst strangers and soon enough, backstories of what brought us there were tumbling out. The senior citizens having been incessantly harassed for 'Aadhar seeding' (why does it need such reproductive nomenclature anyway?) by their banks, insurance companies and vada pav wala across the gulli had finally decided to throw in the towel and get enrolled. The other two gents were seeking modifications in their records; a new mobile number, a name spelled incorrectly.

Aadhar on their minds

The original 6 had now burgeoned to a round dozen and the doors remained as unyielding as ever.

10.30 a.m. Our prayers were to be answered after all. A young lady arrived with a bunch of keys, strode purposefully to locked door and a decisive turn of the key and slide of latch later, the ASK's doors had been thrown open for another productive day. (Stop right there. Not so fast).

How to find network

Two young gentlemen followed the young lady and took their appointed places behind spartan desks equipped quite prominently with table lamps. These luminaires weren't to be taken lightly: they provided the illumination for capturing the stipulated facial image biometric. Soon, one of the two gents left, laptop in hand and trailing considerable length of critical looking cable. Technical difficulty, we surmised and got back to waiting. The man, though, had not merely stepped away for a brief interlude; he appeared to have 'proceeded on leave' as we like to call it. About half an hour later, I ventured in to ask the now solitary occupant, the original young lady, about the missing gent. "We have a network problem here", she acknowledged, "and the day's data acquisition cannot begin until we log into the central system". The particular section of the complex where this ASK is housed is separated by a wall from the Indian Navy's Western Naval Command HQ. There are hushed whispers about signal jammers and, as even I can confirm, mobile data is pretty much non-existent. Like a diviner with a wand or a dowser with rod, our dauntless champion was wandering around in the vicinity for his client to ping the server in the cloud (does have a metaphysical ring to it, doesn't it?). Later, much later, the mystic handshake having been completed, young man came back, much the worse for wear. It was well past 11.30 and if I'd been walking around hoisting a laptop and a dongle and a bunch of cables in the unforgiving outdoors, I'd be a wreck too.

The wait had given us more time to discover many more travellers' tales. A gentleman representing his 90 year old mother was wondering if she could be registered without clearly discernible fingerprints. There were plenty of incorrectly recorded addresses, mobile numbers, email addresses and misspelt names. One story stood out for egregious misery. A couple had travelled from Jalgaon, 

Mumbai 420 km

over 400 kilometers or 10 hours by MSRTC bus, to attempt to reverse an error of particularly dreadful proportions. Apparently, when they were first being registered, there was a major misattribution of fingerprint records, their being scrambled across a bunch of enrollments done around the same time. The error came to light when they were both misidentified while trying to 'seed' (there it is again) their Aadhars at their mobile service provider. They went back to the Jalgaon ASK where they had first enrolled, only to discover that it was shut or dormant. While Nashik would have been a less onerous journey, they decided to take no chances and come all the way to Mumbai.

And eventually, it was my son's turn to hand over the reins of his identity to a faceless, unaccountable deity in the cloud, the inscrutable UIDAI. It will probably be weeks, possibly even months, before we discover what the elven folk have done with his data. And whether his iris scan now identifies him as  a 34 year old businessman from Ranchi and his fingerprints have been assigned to, well, me for instance.

I could do a lot of inferential stuff with what I witnessed first-hand at the ASK this morning. You can too. But do ask yourself this. How confident are you now that Aadhar is a secure, stable, error-free unique identity system.

Theists aren't believers enough

Life as an atheist is uncomplicated. Let me speak in the first person here, as an atheist of at least 4 decades. I do not believe in a personal god. Indeed, I believe in no divine being that lies beyond the laws of science. Creation, existence and dissolution are phenomena arising from the laws of thermodynamics, the nature of space-time, the interaction of matter and energy and so on. Morality and ethics are neither motivated by nor subordinate to holy books or scriptural ordinance. They arise from evolutionary impulses for the healthy continuity of the species, an idea explored, with great scholarship and erudition, by Richard Dawkins in "The Selfish Gene". A moral compass rewards me richly in the one life that I have without having to rely on fantasies of an afterlife filled with milk, honey and mind-blowing sex. Above all, I have an abiding sense of breathless astonishment and wonder at the workings of the Universe at both ends of the scale- the gigaparsecs that separate us from the quasars and the infinitesimal dimensions of the superstrings that lie orders of magnitude below quarks. Even a passing thought of the workings of the world around us is enough to make me pause in wonder and leave me humbled  blow me away.

Believers seem to come broadly in two stripes. Those who consider themselves more evolved will talk about "a force that looks out for me, guides me, is all powerful". Less complicated believers frame their faith in images and rituals. The mini shrines on car dashboards, the taweez/amulet/ring that protects them or brings them good fortune, the pilgrimage to places of worship near or far, the prayers to be offered to <insert divine entity here> to secure <insert desired outcome here> are visible giveaways. For this lot, religious faith is as simple as a matter of accounting. They are virtuous ergo they win brownie points ergo divine entity is happy and rewards them. They do bad things ergo their brownie point balance is reduced ergo they need to make extra efforts to mollify deity with offerings and observances so that the equation may be set right again.

A peculiar feature common to both sorts is the willingness to privilege place/direction/time as more propitious and a deity that is personally interested in their welfare. 

Bringing me to my point. A human scale deity with human scale emotions isn't much of a deity. What could an insignificant, individual mortal do that impressed or perturbed a being that spans gigaparsecs in a blink and consumes a dozen galaxies in supergiant singularities? Conversely, how powerful is a deity that can be lured with puny blandishments or possession off by my sexual orientation?

Come on, believers. Your God, if she's there, has to be a squillion to the power of squillion times more powerful than a prescriber of vertical/horizontal caste marks, ritual genital mutilation or compensatory self-flagellation. 

She was 23

She had just been to see 'Life of Pi'. Immersed herself in magic realism where things often aren't exactly what they appear. Where the gentle bobbing and swaying of a ship on the high seas can turn in minutes into a super-storm that will capsize and sink it. Where a limpid pool on a deserted island hides a malevolent secret.  But also where a defenceless boy shipwrecked in the middle of the ocean manages to make peace, albeit somewhat restive, with a ferocious and frequently starving tiger.She would still have had vivid memories of a fluorescent whale somersaulting in an iridescent arc above a frail lifeboat on a pitch dark night. And of bright hued birds and animals cavorting in a tropical zoo.

A beautiful fantasy that must have lifted her spirits, brought a smile to her young countenance, given her the buoyancy to deal with another difficult week in college and in the oppressive city, turned in a second into a horror so unspeakable, we could not abide it if it were to be ever reported with the full extent of its brutality.

How fragile a dream was her life?

Incoherent and angry

This post is written in a distraught moment. I came back to the top to write the disclaimer so those who don't want to read incoherent, angry rambling can leave right about now. 

Many of you, like me, may have spent a large part of this weekend riveted to the TV as another gruesome tale plays out on India's national stage. A young girl, younger than many of our kids, is battling for her life after a rape so brutal, it is a wonder she survived at all. It is hard not to take it personally. 

That is where the confusion begins. I am a parent of a young daughter myself. The fearful person within urges even more cocooning, even more restrictions. Conversely, the rational voice is outraged that my child should progressively lose her freedoms because the world around is an ever more dangerous place and most particularly the male gender is now merely a polite euphemism for violently anarchic, sexually repressed, grotesque beast.

I've never said this before so publicly but here is a question for you. Is this ubiquitous sense of siege the inevitable consequence of a more unequal India that economic liberalisation delivered? Being honest is going to be really hard but let me push the point. Even in the current instance, the 'good guy' is the well turned out, mixed-gender JNU set in its activist chic scarves. The intimidating image is a scruffy, all-male mob that has underclass written all over it. Fewer of the first lot, by far, than the second of course thus dialling up the factor of fear. Recall also that all the Saket rape accused are clearly underclass while the young girl is one-of-us, white collar bourgeois. The characterisations are in place. 

Twenty years back, my wife and I lived in a large bungalow desolate and rather remote corner of Secunderabad. Plots were vacant for over 50 metres on three sides (the fourth was a road). My work entailed frequent, extended travel; our first-born was a mere infant and my elderly mother-in-law also stayed with us. I would often be out of touch for days at a time but don't recall any bouts of, or with, anxiety wondering if they were all well while I was away. Today in spite of all the communication tech at hand and real time communications a snap, I would probably ensure round-the-clock security before leaving them in a similar situation. 

As the gradient that separates the economically successful from those still striving becomes steeper the walls that the former are enclosing themselves in are rising ever higher. The motivations of those outside are ever more suspect. On their part, the ones falling behind can see the prosperity on the other side and have an ever diminishing hope of getting on to that high table. While most will simply suffer the inequity silently a few, less accommodating or more desperate, will lash out in the only way they know... with violence. The unescorted young female from the posher class of home is a particular heel of achilles that can be attacked to achieve multiple hideous ends simultaneously. 

Demands for harsher punishment, tougher laws, more policing will dominate the course of proceedings over the next few days and weeks. Some tokenism will follow. It will make no difference, though. We have never had any shortage of laws, only of the political will to enforce them.

In the meanwhile, no time and effort will be expended in going beyond immediate cause to examine if there are underlying dysfunctions that our brave new India is relentlessly spawning. 

What's the point after all? We can't do jack shit about it anyway.

GAAR? AAAAARGH!

On a regular basis, our business papers bleat about the terrible idea that is GAAR. Apparently GAAR is terrible for FII. (We will note in passing that the two, read in conjunction remind us about an intemperate cartoon feline).

Since I understand little or nothing of matters financial, I had thus far chose to avoid offering any commentary on this, undoubtedly, earth-shaking issue. This morning, however, I actually read such a piece talking about what it was. Turns out that GAAR attempts to ensure that FIIs actually pay tax on profits they realise from the conduct of market transactions in India. It doesn't matter that the tax be paid in India, mind. Even if they pay it in some other jurisdiction, and can prove this, they needn't pay in India. Now FIIs don't like that. Why don't they like it? Because (i) they would have to reveal the provenance of the money they are bringing in and (ii) they would have to reveal the destination of the money going out. Ok, so I'm not getting the technicalities exactly right and so on, but I am looking at it from my own position as a small participant in the financial markets. Here's what happens to me. FIRST my income gets taxed at source. Then I take my post-tax income and invest it in the market. Then, when this punt generates a profit, it gets added back to my income and I pay tax on it yet AGAIN. Unlike these nice FII people who need to be treated with special, super-soft, velvet gloves.

Let me remind you. We are talking about institutional investors here, not direct investors. These are NOT people who are building factories, setting up universities or research laboratories, bringing in new technologies, strengthening our roads, dams, ports or power stations. They are gamblers playing short term punts in the Indian markets. If they think the Rupee is going to harden against the dollar, they will happily buy Indian paper and exit it as soon as it delivers their profit benchmark. If they think Indian equities are going to take a hammering, they will not hesitate to sell short and cover as the markets tank. They are not putting money into the ground, which having gone in, takes a few years to start producing an yield, and what is more, is nearly impossible to liquidate and exit. They are putting money into electronic roulette wheels called NSE, BSE, NCDEX and so on where the cosmetic indicators called stock and commodity indices live. And this money is fungible. If it doesn't like the bed it is sleeping in, it simply goes and finds a nicer one. On the other side of the street. Or the other side of the planet.

And apparently, the only reason why the nice folks at FinMin are so keen to see these delicate darlings smile is because they help keep us nifty and sensexy.

Right then. Here's my rant. My money at least isn't hot money. I don't have the option of upping and picking up my stakes from the table and then storming out in a huff.Everyone knows where my money came from. There are no participatory notes behind which I can hide.

And that fully honest money is treated systematically worse than money that something called an MAD or BSM or KVM illicitly shuffles out of India and then shuffles back in wearing the impenetrable mask of an FII?

How is that a fair tax system? And how come no tax-compliant Indian has any problem with their  being treated systematically worse than dirty, volatile, foreign speculators?

And finally, can we please understand that their is nothing investment-like in FII money? Call it what it is. A gambler's stash.

Broadcasting and Brand Management

A young man who currently works in one of the Big Three television networks dropped by for some career advice last week. After graduating from business school he has spent almost five years at the job, the first two in Ad Sales and the next three in Marketing. He feels like he is beginning to stagnate and has raised the issue with his boss. Boss suggests that he move back into Ad Sales.

What would you advise him?

If he planned to be in the broadcast industry for the long haul, say the next decade, I suggested that he stay in Marketing. If it was just the next two or three however, he was likely better off shifting back to Ad Sales.

Seems cryptic? Hang on, we should soon see why.

Marketing’s role at most Indian broadcasters only comes in when all aspects of the channel, show or event have already been finalized. All that remains is to build awareness of the impending launch to try and ensure the quickest possible pace of sampling among viewers. Talented creative agency is called in and briefed. Wit, emotion, action and drama are poured in and out pops a striking, often award winning, campaign. All that remains to be done is splashing out a large sum on a media plan and the job is done.

If you learned your Marketing at one of the putative Universities of the discipline, P&G or Unilever or one of the beverage majors for instance, you would expect to lead, not follow the process and centre every decision at each stage on the consumer. It would probably offend you to be treated merely as a deliverer of advertising and media campaigns. Given the circumstances, you would want to shift closer to either the Content or the Ad Sales side of the business, where the action really was.

Things are going to start changing. As soon as July 1, 2012 actually.

For as long as we’ve had C&S TV in India, going on 20 years now, the biggest impediment in its expansion has been limited bandwidth due to analog delivery. With capacity of less than 70 channels delivered at indifferent resolution and scratchy audio, the biggest challenge before a channel is to get distribution at whatever cost. Once this hurdle has been negotiated, it enters a relatively limited range of options available in any given genre. The rest depends on casting as wide a content net as possible. Almost every channel tries to be all things to all viewers.

Mandatory digitization arrives in the big metros on July 1. In a fell swoop, channel choice is set to grow three-fold or more. Costs of distribution should fall rather sharply, removing a significant entry barrier and opening doors for many more content providers. Inevitably, the days of every channel wanting to be ‘One size fits all’ must give way to specific consumer needs driving product design. International channels already show this precision in proposition and content. Comedy Central makes no bones about what it stands for and will stay close to the promise. Fox has a whole portfolio of well-designed channels that identify and then single mindedly go after a tightly defined benefit.

And make no mistake. This is the direction where all of Indian television is headed; the era of the Marketing led broadcasting business.