No shotgun legislation, not yet

In an unexpected outcome, the House of Representatives rejected the bailout package by a 228-205 vote. I say "unexpected" because the mainstream media had been relentlessly and unquestioningly predicting its passage; the all-powerful media's predictions are often self-fulfilling prophesies and this one will be too, its just a matter of time. But House Republicans and Democrats have shown for now at least that they (and their constituents) do have a mind of their own.

Gay rights & government

Read this interesting post titled Widow remarriage is an offence? on Swantah Sukhay about the Government of India's affidavit regarding IPC Section 377. Avinash quips:

The last mughal, Bahadur Shah Jafar, might have held more liberal opinions than our current rulers in Delhi.

Lol.

I disagree with Avinash only to the extent that I think it is wrong for the government to lead public opinion, as much as it is wrong to follow it. Personal rights have been granted by the constitution and the government's job is to guarantee the said rights, nothing more, nothing less.

Encouraging the government to lead is self-defeating, especially so in social matters, since each one of us will want to be led in a different direction, sometimes radically so as experience shows. Indeed, the government's stand in this case will surely be seen and appreciated by many as moral leadership.

On a related note, I am confused why the Home Ministry (the one that filed this affidavit) is involved at all in the "toning down" of a law. The law is either constitutional or it is not. If it is, then it can only be repealed or amended via legislative action of the Parliament (and not executive bodies like the Home or Health Ministry); if it is not then the Supreme Court can strike it down regardless of the other arms of government. Can anyone shed some light?

Political commentary is no one's prerogative

Maureen Dowd of the woods


Some might find the above commentator's remarks to be slanderous and offensive. But really, in this vilified pre-presidential election atmosphere, even revered columnists like the real Dowd offer little more than good old low-minded mud-smearing (9 in 10 of Dowd's most recent columns have included some kind of bitter attack on either John McCain, or, and mainly, Sarah Palin).

Republicans show some spine

at least temporarily.

When Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner (speaker and minority leader in the House of Representatives, respectively) issued a joint statement on Wednesday night promising to work together towards making the proposed financial bailout successful and effective, it seemed like just another example of the middleness of American politics - however viscerally opposed to each other the two parties can seem, they agree on most things that matter during the rare times that matter. It seemed imminent that after adding cosmetic features to the proposal to put up a show, legislators on both sides would ultimately give the Administration what it wanted.

Apparently not, at least not tonight. A dayful of hectic negotiations in the White House - involving the president, Hendy Paulson, leaders from both parties, and the leading presidential candidates - produced nada as Republican John Boehner pulled the rug, claiming that his caucus could not support government-sponsored bailout.

His real motivation is likely to be to buy time to generate support among some of his recalcitrant colleagues, but it gives hope, even if for only one night.

The frenzy in Washington and everywhere else about the bailout proposal over the past couple of days has been extraordinary. However, I find it a tragedy that the narrative still does not seem to lean any towards a critique of the fundamental premise of this credit-fueled economy. Politicians and commentators are running around looking for whipping boys - greedy Wall Street firms, aggressive mortgage sellers, other politicians - but not one finger is raised at the way Americans' ways of spending and (not) saving have been fashioned by decades of credit-friendly monetary policies.

Justifying murder

After the lynching of a company manager by disgruntled former employees in Noida, Labor Minister Oscar Fernandes had this to say:

"This should serve as a warning for the managements. ..workers should not be pushed so hard that they resort to whatever that had happened in Noida.”

Fernandes apparently doesn't believe in such a thing as rule of law, and wants others to stop believing too.

It's about business, stupid

Listen to this news report on National Public Radio on the India-US nuclear deal. With so much political rhetoric flying around the deal, it is unusual to find someone talk about it without pretense in sheer business terms.

[Link]

If you do listen to the clip, don't miss the gem at 3:57.

Book review: The Credit Crunch

It was like listening to Riders On The Storm on a rainy, thunderous night. If there was ever a right place and time for a book, it was this.

In The Credit Crunch, author Graham Turner lays out a chronology of the current economic disaster and attempts to explain its causes via a study of British and American credit and housing markets over the past few decades. The book is an easy read; I imagine the writer must have gone to great pains to make such a complex issue intelligible to laypeople.

At a superficial level, one striking feature of the book which adds immensely to its minimalistic feel is that while there are 75+ charts in the book, nearly each one of them is a simple time-series represented by a line chart. No area, bubble, pie, or scatter tamasha for you - Turner illustrates everything that matters from US housing delinquencies to Japanese domestic wholesale prices via rudimentary line diagrams (he deserves five stars, if not a Nobel prize, for just this achievement; you have to hate statistical researchers and their ways to empathize with me).

The book is supposed to focus on the credit crisis in the US and Britain, but it spends considerable print on the Japanese collapse of the 80s and 90s, which the author thinks is an indicator to what is going to befall the US and British economies.

The most interesting part of The Credit Crunch is, of course, where it lays the blame for the crisis. To my utter disappointment, Turner unhesitatingly acquits the much-maligned bankers and fantastical lending practices that seem to be everybody's first guess as the cause. Instead, he puts overinvestment, globalization, free trade and politicians' unquestioning support of economic-growth-at-all-costs in the dock. According to him, free trade and the unceasing outsourcing of production led to loss of jobs, decline in incomes, and unprecedented rise of debts. He stops just shy of portraying the mess as a manifestation of the labor-capital struggle.

Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat is still on my bookshelf, and I cant help remark how different the books are - Friedman had made a hard sell of globalization in his book.

The author is undoubtedly a keen Keynesian, and you will find many parts of the book revolting if you are not one. In a (rather lengthy) discourse on the Japanese crisis, Turner goes to undeserving lengths to defend Keynesian policies that Japan had adopted; I wasn't aware before, but it seems obvious from the ferocity of the defense that Keynesian ideas got a bad rep during the Japanese crisis because of their role in exacerbating it. He argues, rather too simplistically and fallaciously in my opinion, that governments' tinkering of markets certainly works, they only have to get the timing right.

Overall, the book is timely and decently-written, so is worth a read, though it would help to also read some other less prejudiced commentary alongside to round your understanding of the subject. At critical points, The Credit Crunch tends to slip into being an exposition of the author's own beliefs.

Fair-weather friend of the markets

Amid turmoil, McCain turns to regulation.














Barack se to kabhi ummeed hi nahi thi, par bhaiyya aap bhi?

An authoritarian's prescription

One of the blogs on my daily readlist is The Acorn written by Nitin Pai, a hawkish foreign policy commentator and one of the editors of Pragati - The Indian National Interest Review. Pai is part of a growing group of strongly nationalistic voices on the internet, a group that I privately identify as Centralists.

Centralists are both near and distant to their Hindu Nationalist cousins. Compared to the latter, Centralists seem to have more faith in the Constitution and the prevailing nature of the Indian state (with exceptions, for example Article 370). While Hindu Nationalists take the secular Indian republic to be an impediment to the realization of the Hindu nation, Centralists are far more comfortable articulating their worldview from within the existing framework. They also better understand the power of free markets, trade, and economic growth, and are liberated from social orthodoxies. The similarity between the two is in their criticism of the habitual "weakness" of the Indian state and their lack of reservations about both internal and external projection of state or military power.

Pursuant to the Delhi bomb blasts, Nitin Pai proposes a seven-point programme towards a new national anti-terrorism policy. A couple of points for reference:

Move internal security to the PMO. The Prime Minister should chair a Cabinet Committee on Internal Security; a dedicated internal security adviser (rank of secretary or higher) should be appointed to act as the point man covering all aspects of internal security.

Mobilise the nation through a national satyagraha against terrorism. Get the grassroots to be uncompromising and unrelenting in the battle against terrorism. Pay special attention to reconciliation and form national integration committees in sensitive areas.

I sometimes think I just don't see the world as clearly as my more gifted fellow-men. What are the "grassroots" and where will they find the terrorists to fight an unrelenting battle?

For better or worse, Centralist aren't the only ones broadcasting about the bomb blasts.

Rahul at E's flat, Ah's flat too argues that:

..preventing bombings of open markets in a free society is pretty near impossible.

[Possibly nobody told Rahul about the possibilities if we have a dedicated internal security adviser (rank of secretary or higher).]

As if in direct response to Nitin Pai, Sauvik at Antidote opines:

Let it not be forgotten that the effect of all this terrorism is to increase police powers and budgets while simultaneously diminishing civil liberties. This is the actual political result. If Manmohan gives “top priority” to the war between his sarkaar and terror, this is going to be the only political result.

"Sir, do you like baseball?"

I have lived in the US for a handful of years without ever owning a car, and have gotten by just fine by choosing my places of work and residence vis-a-vis the availability of public transit. Of course, it helps that the partner owns a car which allows me to occasionally access places that transit wont go and do things transit wont allow. Nevertheless, not owning a car is unusual enough for some people I know to view me as some kind of freak.

My preference for public transit over a car comes as much from the view that the personal automobile when used for urban commutes is a grossly inefficient thing (140 HP to move 80 kilograms?) as from the belief that the most insightful way to experience and understand a place is by sharing experiences of its inhabitants. Whether it be Mumbai or Sacramento, using public transit allows one to mingle with aspects of of society that are not normally available to you, no matter what class you belong to.

The experience of using public transit on a sustained basis entails not only the event of traveling in a rectangular box with a bunch of strangers, but a whole chain of associated social/physical phenomenon that go with it that are experientially distant compared to being behind a wheel. Walking from the transit station to your destination, looking like a stranger in a new place, sharing a laugh or a rant, borrowing a newspaper, helping a stranger board his luggage, and so on.

Friends who live in suburbs (the Brahmin parts of town, as I call them) and drive to work are so successful at filtering the everyday experiences they imbibe that some things in the transit world absolutely shock and disgust them. Events like noticing people urinating in public (yes, it happens everywhere), having an unwashed homeless individual as a companion, being asked for loose change/cigarettes/use of your mobile phone, and being solicited for sex (paid and unpaid, the latter by members of my own gender).

I can quote the last experience - being solicited for sex - without being dramatic because, firstly, I am male, and secondly, this being a relatively sexually liberated society, solicitations come in the form of direct verbal inquiries rather than through creepy or threatening innuendo. Which is why I was surprised when a couple weeks back, standing at a light rail stop in a city I was visiting, I was approached by a youngish man who asked me without showing his eyes from under the brim of his cap:

Sir, do you like baseball?

What country?

Joe Lieberman plumped for John McCain in a speech today in the ongoing Republican National Convention. According to him, McCain's main selling point is that he places nation before self and party. I assume he means the nation of Israel.