An Exchange Of Souls
This is a column about how good intentions can run amok and how an honourable, intelligent man who set out to avert environmental disaster, ended up accidentally promoting the economics of the slave trade.
GEORGE MONBIOT
This is a column about how good intentions can run amok. It tells the story of how an honourable, intelligent man set out to avert environmental disaster and ended up accidentally promoting the economics of the slave trade. It shows how human lives can be priced and exchanged for goods and services.
The story begins in a village a few miles to the west of London. The British government proposes to flatten Sipson in order to build a third runway for Heathrow airport. The public consultation is about to end, but no one doubts that the government has made up its mind.
Its central case is that the economic benefits of building a third runway outweigh the economic costs. The extra capacity, the government says, will deliver a net benefit to the UK economy of £5bn(1). The climate change the runway will cause costs £4.8bn(2), but this is dwarfed by the profits to be made.
There is plenty of evidence suggesting that the government’s numbers are wrong. A new analysis by the environmental consultancy CE Delft shows that the official figures overestimate both the number of jobs the runway will generate and the value brought to the United Kingdom by extra business passengers(3). In an excoriating article in the Guardian last week, Professor Paul Ekins demonstrated that the government has rigged the cost of carbon(4). (Delightfully, the web address for the consultation document ends completecondoc.pdf.) But while the runway’s opponents don’t like the results, most people seem to agree that weighing up economic costs and benefits is a sensible method of making this decision. The problem, they argue, is that the wrong figures have been used.
When Sir Nicholas Stern published his study of the economics of climate change, environmentalists (myself included) lined up to applaud him: he had given us the answer we wanted. He showed that stopping runaway climate change would cost less than failing to prevent it. But because his report was so long, few people bothered to find out how he had achieved this result. It took me a while, but by the time I reached the end I was horrified.
On one side of Stern’s equation are the costs of investing in new technologies (or not investing in old ones) to prevent greenhouse gas emissions from rising above a certain level. These can reasonably be priced in pounds or dollars. On the other side are the costs of climate change. Some of them - such as higher food prices and the expense of building sea walls - are financial, but most take the form of costs which are generally seen as incalculable: the destruction of ecosystems and human communities; the displacement of people from their homes; disease and death. All these costs are thrown together by Sir Nicholas with a formula he calls "equivalent to a reduction in consumption", to which he then attaches a price.
Stern explains that this "consumption" involves not just the consumption of goods we might buy from the supermarket, but also of "education, health and the environment."(5) He admits that this formula "raises profound difficulties", especially the "challenge of expressing health (including mortality) and environmental quality in terms of income"(6). But he uses it anyway, and discovers that the global disaster which would be unleashed by a 5-6° rise in temperature, and which is likely to involve widespread famine, is "equivalent to a reduction in consumption" of 5-20%.
It is true that as people begin to starve they will consume less. When they die they cease to consume altogether. But Stern’s unit (a reduction in consumption) incorporates everything from the price of baked beans to the pain of bereavement. He then translates it into a "social cost of carbon", measured in dollars.He has, in other words, put a price on human life. Worse still, he has ensured that this price is buried among the other prices: when you read that the "social cost of carbon" is $30 a tonne, you don’t know - unless you unpick the whole report and its methodology and sources - how much of this is made of human lives.
The poorer people are, the cheaper their lives become. "For example," Stern observes, "a very poor person may not be ‘willing-to-pay’ very much money to insure her life, whereas a rich person may be prepared to pay a very large sum. Can it be right to conclude that a poor person’s life or health is therefore less valuable?"(7) Up to a point, yes: income, he says, should be one of the measures used to determine the social cost of carbon. Sir Nicholas was by no means the first to use such a formula. What was new was the unthinking enthusiasm with which his approach was greeted.
Stern’s methodology has a disastrous consequence, unintended but surely obvious. His report shows that the dollar losses of failing to prevent a high degree of global warming outweigh the dollar savings arising from not taking action. It therefore makes economic sense to try to stop runaway climate change. But what if the result had been different? What if he had discovered that the profits to be made from burning more fossil fuels exceeded the social cost of carbon? We would then find that it makes economic sense to kill people.
This is what the government has done. Its consultation paper boasts that "our approach is entirely consistent with the Stern Review"(8). It has translated his "social cost of carbon" into a "shadow price of carbon", which is currently valued, human lives and all, at £25 a tonne(9).
Against this is set the economic benefit of a new runway. Part of this benefit takes the form of shorter waiting times for passengers. The government claims that building a third runway will reduce delays, on average, by three minutes(10). This saving is costed at €38-49 per passenger per hour(11). The price is a function of the average net wages of travellers: the more you earn, the more the delays are deemed to cost you, even if you are on holiday.
Consider the implications. On one side of the equation human life is being costed. On the other side, the value of delays to passengers is being priced, and it rises according to their wealth. Convenience is weighed against human life. The richer you are, the more lives your time is worth.
The people most likely to be killed by climate change do not live in this country. Most of them live in Africa and South Asia. Hardly any of the economic benefits of expanding Heathrow accrue to them. Yet the government has calculated the economic benefits to the United Kingdom, weighed them against the global costs of climate change and discovered that sacrificing foreigners - especially poor ones - is a sensible economic decision.
I can accept that a unit of measurement which allows us to compare the human costs of different spending decisions is a useful tool. What I cannot accept is that it should be scrambled up with the price of eggs and prefixed with a dollar sign. Human life is not a commodity. It cannot be traded against profits or exchanged for convenience. We have no right to decide that others should die to make us richer.
Wednesday 20 February 2008
Monday 18 February 2008
Suddenly, The World Has More Poor
The economics profession underwent a revolution in December last year, as economic understanding of the world suddenly shifted. A new survey of prices showed decline in incomes in emerging economies like India. Yet hardly anyone noticed.
BRANKO MILANOVIC The economics profession underwent a revolution in December last year, as economic understanding of the world suddenly shifted.
Suddenly the world has more poor. Incomes declined in emerging economies: down by 40 percent in China and India, 17 percent in Indonesia, 41 percent in the Philippines, 32 percent in South Africa and 24 percent in Argentina. For Indonesia, the decline was far worse than the Asian crisis, and for China and India, the decline was worse than the one experienced by Germany during the Great Depression. Yet hardly anyone noticed.
The event was the release of new estimates of purchasing power parity, or PPP. Measured as part of a large international endeavor called the International Comparison Program, PPP aims to accurately calculate a country's economic power rather than simply dividing total national output by a country's population.
As every tourist knows, prices of goods and services differ widely between the countries. Poorer countries generally have lower price levels. A nice dinner, a haircut or a concert ticket, using market-exchange rates, cost much less in China or India than in the US or Norway. But the good or service is the same and, in principle, must be valued equally. The objective of the project is to compute difference in price levels, so that each unit of consumption can be valued the same, regardless of where it's consumed. Only then can true output and welfare differences between the countries be assessed.
Measuring price levels is an immensely complicated project that involves detailed reporting of more than 1000 prices of goods and services in almost 150 countries. A project of this magnitude has never been undertaken before. The most similar project took place in 1993, including data for about 100 countries and a limited range of goods. More importantly, the 1993 survey did not include China, which officially participated for the first time in the 2007 report, or India, which had participated since 1985.
The recent data include not only China and India, but countries that include 95 percent of world population and about 99 percent of world output. The list of surveyed goods and services was augmented, the methodology improved and 146 national statistical agencies collaborated along with international bodies including the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, Eurostat, the Economic Commission for Latin America, Asian and African Development Banks and others.
Price comparisons are important for at least two reasons:
First, they provide so-called PPP exchange rates, that is, in principle, with one PPP dollar, one can purchase the same bundle of goods and services in all countries. For example, with 100 PPP dollars, I would be equally well off in India and the US, even if that may involve only 30 "real" greenback dollars in India and 100 greenback dollars in the US.
Second, by using these exchange rates, we can convert incomes expressed in local currency and obtain "true" gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, reflecting real welfare and productivity of citizens. All inter-country comparisons, including poverty rates, depend on PPPs. When we say that one-third of the population in India lives at incomes below $1 a day, that one dollar a day is a PPP-converted dollar a day.
For modern global economics, PPP is like oil. One cannot move far without a method of comparison. So on December 17, 2007, this most detailed study of the world economy ever undertaken issued the conclusion that price levels in most Asian countries – in particular India, China, Indonesia and the Philippines – are much higher than assumed by economists, based on the outdated 1993 results.Not everybody's GDP per capita declined. Incomes in some countries – Russia, Nigeria, Egypt, Lebanon – increased, but the increases were more modest than the declines. For the rich countries, the revisions were minimal, falling within the 2 to 4 percent range.
These new estimates will have far-ranging consequences. Literally hundreds of scholarly papers on convergence or divergence of countries' incomes have been published in the last decade based on what we know now were faulty numbers. With the new data, economists will revise calculations and possibly reach new conclusions.
With the study's release, our view of the world has changed. While economists previously thought that US GDP per capita was 6 or 12 times higher than that of China and India, respectively, these numbers have been revised to 10 and 20 times. Until last month, economists thought that China accounted for 15 percent of world economy; it's now revealed to represent less than 10 percent.
In its December forecast of 2008 global economic growth, the IMF took account of the new numbers, lowering its projected global growth rate by one-half of a percent because high projected growth rates of China and India will pose less of an overall impact. In other words, China's expected growth of 10 percent will add only about 1 percent to global output rather than 1.5 percent.
These new results may, somewhat paradoxically, help the case of India, China and other poorer countries in having the International Monetary Fund accept using PPP-adjusted GDP to calculate countries' quotas, which determine voting rights and the ability to borrow from the fund. The new results show that moving to PPP-adjusted GDP does not entail a change as huge as earlier thought, and the rich countries may be more willing to accept it.
Implications for the estimates of global inequality and poverty are enormous. The new numbers show global inequality to be significantly greater than even the most pessimistic authors had thought. Until the last month, global inequality, or difference in real incomes between all individuals of the world, was estimated at around 65 Gini points – with 100 denoting complete inequality and 0 denoting total equality, with everybody's income the same – a level of inequality somewhat higher than that of South Africa. But the new numbers show global inequality to be 70 Gini points – a level of inequality never recorded anywhere.
Similarly, until last month, the number of people living at less than $1 PPP per day was estimated at just under one billion. The call to action issued at the Davos World Economic Forum still speaks of "980 million people who live on less than 1 dollar a day." But this was based on old estimates of price levels. Now, we know that the price levels in these and many other poor countries are higher, and the measured number of the poor will jump.
The most famous set of estimates of countries' historical PPP-adjusted GDP, made by Angus Maddison, is based on the old data. Maddison's numbers, the only data series of GDP per capita that include practically all the countries in the world, providing estimates for most as far back as 1820, is extensively used by econometricians and economic historians. Its revision will be massive. Much of what we think we know about comparative economic history will be reexamined.
Like in any revolution, the effects will take time to settle, and it will be several years before a consistent and standardized set of GDP numbers emerge. Only when the magnitude of this revolution sinks in will we see the beginning of far greater concern about the true outcome of global economic growth we celebrate. Again as with every revolution, we at least know that we are already living in a different world.
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Friday 15 February 2008
Crowds 'pick leaders to follow'
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 11:01pm GMT 14/02/2008
People in crowds behave just like sheep, scientists claim, by blindly following one or two people who seem to know where they are going.
# Like ants, humans are easily led
Researchers at Leeds University believe their findings could have important applications, notably in the management of disasters.
The study found that people, like sheep, can be easily led
The study found that people, like sheep, can be easily led
The team, led by Prof Jens Krause, conducted a series of experiments in which volunteers were told to walk randomly around a large hall without talking to each other. A select few were then given more detailed instructions.
The results published today show that it takes a minority of just 5 per cent of what they called "informed individuals" to influence the direction of a crowd of a minimum of 200 people. The remaining herd of 95 per cent follow without realising it.
"There are strong parallels with animal grouping behaviour," says Prof Krause, who reports the work with John Dyer in the Animal Behaviour Journal, with colleagues at the Universities of Oxford and Wales Bangor.
"We've all been in situations where we get swept along by the crowd but what's interesting about this research is that our participants ended up making a consensus decision despite the fact that they weren't allowed to talk or gesture to one another.
"In most cases the participants didn't realise they were being led by others."
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The work follows another study by Dr Simon Reader of Utrecht University that showed that most of us are happy to play follow-my-leader, even if we are trailing after someone who does not really know where they are going.
"Even more striking, that study found that even when we are shown a faster route, we still prefer to stick with the old one and tell others to take the long road too.
That discovery could have lethal implications when it comes to evacuating a building or ship in an emergency, when people would likely stick to the familiar evacuation route, even if slower than an alternative.
Last Updated: 11:01pm GMT 14/02/2008
People in crowds behave just like sheep, scientists claim, by blindly following one or two people who seem to know where they are going.
# Like ants, humans are easily led
Researchers at Leeds University believe their findings could have important applications, notably in the management of disasters.
The study found that people, like sheep, can be easily led
The study found that people, like sheep, can be easily led
The team, led by Prof Jens Krause, conducted a series of experiments in which volunteers were told to walk randomly around a large hall without talking to each other. A select few were then given more detailed instructions.
The results published today show that it takes a minority of just 5 per cent of what they called "informed individuals" to influence the direction of a crowd of a minimum of 200 people. The remaining herd of 95 per cent follow without realising it.
"There are strong parallels with animal grouping behaviour," says Prof Krause, who reports the work with John Dyer in the Animal Behaviour Journal, with colleagues at the Universities of Oxford and Wales Bangor.
"We've all been in situations where we get swept along by the crowd but what's interesting about this research is that our participants ended up making a consensus decision despite the fact that they weren't allowed to talk or gesture to one another.
"In most cases the participants didn't realise they were being led by others."
advertisement
The work follows another study by Dr Simon Reader of Utrecht University that showed that most of us are happy to play follow-my-leader, even if we are trailing after someone who does not really know where they are going.
"Even more striking, that study found that even when we are shown a faster route, we still prefer to stick with the old one and tell others to take the long road too.
That discovery could have lethal implications when it comes to evacuating a building or ship in an emergency, when people would likely stick to the familiar evacuation route, even if slower than an alternative.
Thursday 14 February 2008
Everybody Loves A Good Farce
Everybody Loves A Good Farce
Raj Thackeray must be pleased, as would be MNS, SP and, particularly, the Congress. All of them came out a 'winner', except the city of Mumbai and the families of those who suffered. First in that list is the family of an unsuspecting 52-year-old from Nashik.
SMRUTI KOPPIKAR Raj Thackeray may have gone home pleased tonight, pleased that the script turned out quite the way he wanted it, with himself as a hero for disgruntled Marathi youth. But this new hero has blood on his hands, ironically the blood of a Maharashtrian. Even as his arrest and released-on-bail drama was being played out in a tense but edgy Mumbai, an unsuspecting 52-year-old Ambadas Dharao was killed by a stone hurled at him by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) activists in Nashik. Dharao was returning home in the staff bus of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited when the activists, enraged at the arrest and determined to display their 'strength', began throwing stones and setting public transport vehicles on fire. Nashik was among the worst hit cities at the end of a tense Wednesday. Pune, Nagpur, Latur were also affected as were various parts of Mumbai.
Would Raj Thackeray have spared a thought for the hapless Dharao and his distraught family? How can Raj Thackeray ever justify his 'boys' taking a Maharashtrian life, any life, to uphold the cause of Maharashtrians? How, indeed, does Raj Thackeray justify the weeks of endless tension, slander campaigns, vicious words, malicious actions that he and his 'boys' indulged in to justify anything at all? A script that he did not begin writing has propped him up as a hero, bestowed on him the larger-than-life halo he always desired, and turned his fledgling party's political fortunes. But in his moment of political triumph--Raj Thackeray now has a national political profile--would he have the mindspace to reflect upon his words and actions of the last few weeks? He can now boast an identity other than that of being Bal Thackeray's estranged nephew, he can cite his cause in place of a well-deliberated ideology, but most of all, he can now claim to have suffered an arrest to uphold the cause of Marathi identity or "asmita". Raj Thackeray would love to be anointed the spokesperson of all things Maharashtrian, never mind his ageing uncle.
Scores of Marathi-speaking people have hesitatingly approved of his cause but disparaged his methods. They believe, rightly or otherwise, he is speaking their thoughts when he says that Uttar Bharatiyas--migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar--are an impediment in the progress of Maharashtrians particularly in Mumbai. Even so, many such Maharashtrians do not approve of taking lives to press that claim. That his methods, mimicking those of his uncles' 40-year-old ones, may not get him brownie points. At some point in his political career, Ambadas Dharao's death may come back to haunt him but right now, Raj Thackeray has reached a high that he himself would not have imagined in November 2005 when he announced to the world that he was quitting his beloved uncle's Shiv Sena.
No wonder then that he wanted to be arrested, that he dared the state government to arrest him, that he reiterated last Saturday all that he had been saying last few weeks. When asked if the poor man on the street--Uttar Bharatiya panwalla, taxi driver and so on--suffered even as he joined fight with Amar Singh and Abu Asim Azmi of the Samajwadi Party, Raj has this to say: "What bichara [loosely, helpless], who bichara? This same bichara man goes to the rallies and chat pujas to show his strength, isn't it? How then is he a bichara? Besides, when two countries go to war and two generals fight, it's generally the soldier who dies. This is inevitable." Shorn of pomposity, it translates as: there's nothing wrong if the poor man on the street has to pay with his life for my cause, it is bound to happen. To many, it would sound callous. For Raj, it's part being a toughie.
To wit, Abu Asim Azmi played along in a rather coordinated manner to provide Raj with the counterpoint that he was desperately looking for in this script, and also to resurrect his own political career.Azmi is not new to controversies. Like Raj, he too thrives on contrarian points of view, incendiary language and outlandish claims. With Amar Singh as his boss, and perhaps chief guide this time, Azmi's public discourse with Raj touched a new nadir. If Raj had to be arrested for his words and actions, Azmi too would have had to face similar treatment though his words--provocative as they were--could not be directly linked to violence anywhere. When the Mumbai police moved in for the kill Wednesday evening and picked up both, Azmi was pleased with himself too. It meant another shot at a political career that has been on the downslide. As Amar Singh screamed out, it meant the SP could try its luck again in Mumbai.
In many ways then, Raj Thackeray and Abu Asim Azmi seem like two peas in a pod, two faces of the same phenomenon, two utterly self-absorbed small-time politicians who will happily build and re-build their careers over dead men and spilt blood. No wonder then they fed off one another for over a fortnight. But as many Mumbaikars say, Azmi cannot claim to speak for all Uttar Bharatiyas or even those from UP just as Raj Thackeray cannot claim to be spokesperson of all Maharashtrians. Who then does Mayawati speak for? And whom does the Shiv Sena represent? Mumbai became the battleground for identity politics to play out.
In allowing Raj and Azmi a free run over the last two weeks, the state government helped them become heroes. In the farcical drama of arrests and bail that played out Wednesday evening, if both Raj and Azmi walked away satisfied, so did the government. The Congress-NCP government "showed", however unwillingly, that it meant business this time when its home minister RR Patil spoke of the law taking its course. Patil and chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh "proved" to whoever it mattered that they could "act" tough with those breaking the law. Act, they certainly did. In the process, they earned a few pats on their backs from their party bosses, showed they were not cowed down by empty threats issued by the likes of Raj and Azmi, and picked up extra points for not letting Mumbai burn during the drama. It's a different matter, though, that the First Information Report, filed as belatedly as it was, ensured that the charges levelled would not stick, and that the bail could easily be organised.
Politically, the Congress must have loved every moment of the drama, for as Raj's heroic status grew, his ability to impact and wean away the Marathi vote from the Shiv Sena multiplied. To the extent that the Sena--and with it the BJP--weakens, there's one less factor for the Congress to worry about in the 2009 general and state assembly election.
In the end, it's all about politics and who got what in the bargain. In this drama, all the protagonists came out a 'winner', except the city of Mumbai and the families of those who suffered. First in that list is the Dharao family from Nashik.
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Raj Thackeray must be pleased, as would be MNS, SP and, particularly, the Congress. All of them came out a 'winner', except the city of Mumbai and the families of those who suffered. First in that list is the family of an unsuspecting 52-year-old from Nashik.
SMRUTI KOPPIKAR Raj Thackeray may have gone home pleased tonight, pleased that the script turned out quite the way he wanted it, with himself as a hero for disgruntled Marathi youth. But this new hero has blood on his hands, ironically the blood of a Maharashtrian. Even as his arrest and released-on-bail drama was being played out in a tense but edgy Mumbai, an unsuspecting 52-year-old Ambadas Dharao was killed by a stone hurled at him by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) activists in Nashik. Dharao was returning home in the staff bus of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited when the activists, enraged at the arrest and determined to display their 'strength', began throwing stones and setting public transport vehicles on fire. Nashik was among the worst hit cities at the end of a tense Wednesday. Pune, Nagpur, Latur were also affected as were various parts of Mumbai.
Would Raj Thackeray have spared a thought for the hapless Dharao and his distraught family? How can Raj Thackeray ever justify his 'boys' taking a Maharashtrian life, any life, to uphold the cause of Maharashtrians? How, indeed, does Raj Thackeray justify the weeks of endless tension, slander campaigns, vicious words, malicious actions that he and his 'boys' indulged in to justify anything at all? A script that he did not begin writing has propped him up as a hero, bestowed on him the larger-than-life halo he always desired, and turned his fledgling party's political fortunes. But in his moment of political triumph--Raj Thackeray now has a national political profile--would he have the mindspace to reflect upon his words and actions of the last few weeks? He can now boast an identity other than that of being Bal Thackeray's estranged nephew, he can cite his cause in place of a well-deliberated ideology, but most of all, he can now claim to have suffered an arrest to uphold the cause of Marathi identity or "asmita". Raj Thackeray would love to be anointed the spokesperson of all things Maharashtrian, never mind his ageing uncle.
Scores of Marathi-speaking people have hesitatingly approved of his cause but disparaged his methods. They believe, rightly or otherwise, he is speaking their thoughts when he says that Uttar Bharatiyas--migrants from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar--are an impediment in the progress of Maharashtrians particularly in Mumbai. Even so, many such Maharashtrians do not approve of taking lives to press that claim. That his methods, mimicking those of his uncles' 40-year-old ones, may not get him brownie points. At some point in his political career, Ambadas Dharao's death may come back to haunt him but right now, Raj Thackeray has reached a high that he himself would not have imagined in November 2005 when he announced to the world that he was quitting his beloved uncle's Shiv Sena.
No wonder then that he wanted to be arrested, that he dared the state government to arrest him, that he reiterated last Saturday all that he had been saying last few weeks. When asked if the poor man on the street--Uttar Bharatiya panwalla, taxi driver and so on--suffered even as he joined fight with Amar Singh and Abu Asim Azmi of the Samajwadi Party, Raj has this to say: "What bichara [loosely, helpless], who bichara? This same bichara man goes to the rallies and chat pujas to show his strength, isn't it? How then is he a bichara? Besides, when two countries go to war and two generals fight, it's generally the soldier who dies. This is inevitable." Shorn of pomposity, it translates as: there's nothing wrong if the poor man on the street has to pay with his life for my cause, it is bound to happen. To many, it would sound callous. For Raj, it's part being a toughie.
To wit, Abu Asim Azmi played along in a rather coordinated manner to provide Raj with the counterpoint that he was desperately looking for in this script, and also to resurrect his own political career.Azmi is not new to controversies. Like Raj, he too thrives on contrarian points of view, incendiary language and outlandish claims. With Amar Singh as his boss, and perhaps chief guide this time, Azmi's public discourse with Raj touched a new nadir. If Raj had to be arrested for his words and actions, Azmi too would have had to face similar treatment though his words--provocative as they were--could not be directly linked to violence anywhere. When the Mumbai police moved in for the kill Wednesday evening and picked up both, Azmi was pleased with himself too. It meant another shot at a political career that has been on the downslide. As Amar Singh screamed out, it meant the SP could try its luck again in Mumbai.
In many ways then, Raj Thackeray and Abu Asim Azmi seem like two peas in a pod, two faces of the same phenomenon, two utterly self-absorbed small-time politicians who will happily build and re-build their careers over dead men and spilt blood. No wonder then they fed off one another for over a fortnight. But as many Mumbaikars say, Azmi cannot claim to speak for all Uttar Bharatiyas or even those from UP just as Raj Thackeray cannot claim to be spokesperson of all Maharashtrians. Who then does Mayawati speak for? And whom does the Shiv Sena represent? Mumbai became the battleground for identity politics to play out.
In allowing Raj and Azmi a free run over the last two weeks, the state government helped them become heroes. In the farcical drama of arrests and bail that played out Wednesday evening, if both Raj and Azmi walked away satisfied, so did the government. The Congress-NCP government "showed", however unwillingly, that it meant business this time when its home minister RR Patil spoke of the law taking its course. Patil and chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh "proved" to whoever it mattered that they could "act" tough with those breaking the law. Act, they certainly did. In the process, they earned a few pats on their backs from their party bosses, showed they were not cowed down by empty threats issued by the likes of Raj and Azmi, and picked up extra points for not letting Mumbai burn during the drama. It's a different matter, though, that the First Information Report, filed as belatedly as it was, ensured that the charges levelled would not stick, and that the bail could easily be organised.
Politically, the Congress must have loved every moment of the drama, for as Raj's heroic status grew, his ability to impact and wean away the Marathi vote from the Shiv Sena multiplied. To the extent that the Sena--and with it the BJP--weakens, there's one less factor for the Congress to worry about in the 2009 general and state assembly election.
In the end, it's all about politics and who got what in the bargain. In this drama, all the protagonists came out a 'winner', except the city of Mumbai and the families of those who suffered. First in that list is the Dharao family from Nashik.
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Wednesday 13 February 2008
Valentine's day greetings
Its Valentine's day my friend
A time for us to ascend
On the path of love
In a nice little cove
Or soon our time will end
Warmest greetings of love
Girish
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Saturday 9 February 2008
Let the new knowledge in
Once a person has been announced as an expert, they lose the impetus to use wisdom wisely
Annalisa Barbieri
Saturday February 9, 2008
The Guardian
The five men boarded the flight from Sardinia to London. They were all members of a steel band, but because the flight was full they had to mostly sit apart. They were ordinary passengers, on their way home to spend New Year's Eve with their families. One was blind, and his colleague, whom he was sitting next to, was reading him the football scores.
However, this perfectly innocent scene held intrigue for a fellow passenger - no normal person but an expert: a psychology professor. He had seen the men in the departure lounge sitting together, now they were dispersed. The man pretending to be blind was now reading the paper. They were clearly terrorists! He alerted the pilot (I can imagine what he said: "I'm a psychology professor; these men are terrorists!") and the men were escorted off, and not allowed back on, even when they proved they were entirely innocent. In the event, the band did not get back to their families until January 2, after travelling to Italy and London, via sleeping rough in a Liverpool bus shelter.
Four years ago, a mother gave birth to a child and died a few hours later. Instead of being given an anaesthetic as an epidural, straight into her spine, she had been given it through a drip into her arm. The midwife who made the error repeatedly denied making the mistake, and because of course she never made the mistake, she could show no remorse. The hospital took more than a year to admit there had been a mix-up. Clearly, experts don't make mistakes.
In Paris, seven senior French doctors and former health officials are standing trial for manslaughter and fraud related to the death of more than 100 people they allegedly caused to be infected with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Three stories, from just one day in this week's news, of experts getting it very wrong. And what about the famous, entirely tragic case of the recent past? Sally Clark was wrongfully convicted of the death of her sons after one expert asserted that the likelihood of two sudden infant deaths in the same house was "one in 73 million", and another submitted an incorrect pathology report. Later, to add insult to injury, an expert in Munchausen by proxy decided, simply by watching a television programme, that it was actually Sally Clark's husband who did it. God save us from experts.
The problem with being an expert is that once it's been announced you know it all, it almost ceases to matter what you say. Because you're an expert. Some perfectly sane, intelligent people fail to question the questionable, because if a statement is prefixed with "the expert's view is ...", they think it escapes analysis. Even without tipping into real tragedy, who hasn't had the experience of an arrogant doctor who won't listen because he knows best. And don't even get me started on TV doctors, who belong to a whole special world of their own, the TV expert. Or the teacher who won't countenance you having an opinion on your own child because - look, she's the educational expert. Or the priest who actually thinks he's God?
These people don't let new knowledge in, they don't allow for variables, they don't listen. They don't need to, after all. I wonder at which point experts decide they no longer need to learn, because they already know it all?
The people I know with real specialisms and expertise - and yes, I am grateful for all the learned people in the world that use their wisdom wisely - purposely avoid the word expert. In turn, I avoid the opinions of experts; experts are rigid, and the one thing a keen mind must have is flexibility. The cleverest people I've met are also the best listeners. A really intelligent person is humble, and realises that knowledge is never finite.
annalisa.barbieri@guardian.co.uk
Comments
sbgman
February 9, 2008 2:07 AM
The really strange thing to me in reading this column is that I am a scientist...one would assume one of the "experts" (at least within my particular field of study), yet one of the things we scientists learn (or should learn) early on is that even the gurus and giant names can be wrong and their opinions/ideas should be questioned. Somehow, we seem to have mixed up "experts" with expertise. It often comes down to "Show me the data", and if you can't, be quiet!
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RogerINtheUSA
February 9, 2008 2:09 AM
What would happen if the UK's most prestigious Medical Journal's expert reviewers were to decide that the MMR jab causes autism?
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Auric
February 9, 2008 3:09 AM
Clearly applicable to Williams. `Listen to me, I know about gods, religions and things like that.` To borrow from George Orwell - No ordinary person could be such a fool.
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jakebylo
February 9, 2008 3:44 AM
this is an astoundingly ridiculous column - possibly setting a new record for the Guardian website - gave me an extended case of the "dancing eyes", especially the smug Aunty-knows-best last paragraph.
The columnist has absolutely no evidence that the few stories she cites (incidentally, a handful of situations out of the many millions of actions/decisions that designated experts (expertise is typically formally designated by official qualifications and other marks of recognition, and not merely someone declaring themselves an expert) in an enormous number of fields carry out every day) involved people with expertise who were arrogant and conceited and closed to new knowledge... and even if they really were, she has no evidence that this led to the mistake (And if an expert who had been involved in a serious mistake at work were found personally responsible, there are a whole range of possible explanations for their mistake - ranging from say, really bad luck to say, drunkenness due to personal problems at home - many explanations which can't be attributed to the blanket accusation of arrogance )
This article's accusations/character assassinations against these people in the cited cases is purely speculative and groundless, just so another snootily self-satisfied and self-righteous column can be written. (does the columnist really avoid the opinions of all experts? what an impractical way of living life.)
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goldengate
February 9, 2008 4:05 AM
And then there is George W. Bush, the expert decider in chief by virtue of having being installed in the Presidency, overrule all experts, because he alone knows what is best and his like minded other experts , in particular his Cabinet, that servers at his pleasure just tow the same line. The world should be congratulated to have so much wisdom.
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parallaxview
February 9, 2008 4:24 AM
Whoa Annalisa, just checked out your profile: seamstress to the Queen Mother, fashion PR, fishing correspondent, columnist, author, co-founder of the progressive parenting website.
Jack of all trades, master of ...?
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Mujokan
February 9, 2008 5:21 AM
One problem from two years ago, another problem from four years ago, and a third problem from twenty years ago. Luckily the writer isn't an expert on experts, or I wouldn't have found this column so convincing.
Once a person has been announced as an expert, they lose the impetus to use wisdom wisely
Annalisa Barbieri
Saturday February 9, 2008
The Guardian
The five men boarded the flight from Sardinia to London. They were all members of a steel band, but because the flight was full they had to mostly sit apart. They were ordinary passengers, on their way home to spend New Year's Eve with their families. One was blind, and his colleague, whom he was sitting next to, was reading him the football scores.
However, this perfectly innocent scene held intrigue for a fellow passenger - no normal person but an expert: a psychology professor. He had seen the men in the departure lounge sitting together, now they were dispersed. The man pretending to be blind was now reading the paper. They were clearly terrorists! He alerted the pilot (I can imagine what he said: "I'm a psychology professor; these men are terrorists!") and the men were escorted off, and not allowed back on, even when they proved they were entirely innocent. In the event, the band did not get back to their families until January 2, after travelling to Italy and London, via sleeping rough in a Liverpool bus shelter.
Four years ago, a mother gave birth to a child and died a few hours later. Instead of being given an anaesthetic as an epidural, straight into her spine, she had been given it through a drip into her arm. The midwife who made the error repeatedly denied making the mistake, and because of course she never made the mistake, she could show no remorse. The hospital took more than a year to admit there had been a mix-up. Clearly, experts don't make mistakes.
In Paris, seven senior French doctors and former health officials are standing trial for manslaughter and fraud related to the death of more than 100 people they allegedly caused to be infected with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Three stories, from just one day in this week's news, of experts getting it very wrong. And what about the famous, entirely tragic case of the recent past? Sally Clark was wrongfully convicted of the death of her sons after one expert asserted that the likelihood of two sudden infant deaths in the same house was "one in 73 million", and another submitted an incorrect pathology report. Later, to add insult to injury, an expert in Munchausen by proxy decided, simply by watching a television programme, that it was actually Sally Clark's husband who did it. God save us from experts.
The problem with being an expert is that once it's been announced you know it all, it almost ceases to matter what you say. Because you're an expert. Some perfectly sane, intelligent people fail to question the questionable, because if a statement is prefixed with "the expert's view is ...", they think it escapes analysis. Even without tipping into real tragedy, who hasn't had the experience of an arrogant doctor who won't listen because he knows best. And don't even get me started on TV doctors, who belong to a whole special world of their own, the TV expert. Or the teacher who won't countenance you having an opinion on your own child because - look, she's the educational expert. Or the priest who actually thinks he's God?
These people don't let new knowledge in, they don't allow for variables, they don't listen. They don't need to, after all. I wonder at which point experts decide they no longer need to learn, because they already know it all?
The people I know with real specialisms and expertise - and yes, I am grateful for all the learned people in the world that use their wisdom wisely - purposely avoid the word expert. In turn, I avoid the opinions of experts; experts are rigid, and the one thing a keen mind must have is flexibility. The cleverest people I've met are also the best listeners. A really intelligent person is humble, and realises that knowledge is never finite.
annalisa.barbieri@guardian.co.uk
Comments
sbgman
February 9, 2008 2:07 AM
The really strange thing to me in reading this column is that I am a scientist...one would assume one of the "experts" (at least within my particular field of study), yet one of the things we scientists learn (or should learn) early on is that even the gurus and giant names can be wrong and their opinions/ideas should be questioned. Somehow, we seem to have mixed up "experts" with expertise. It often comes down to "Show me the data", and if you can't, be quiet!
Offensive? Unsuitable? Email us
RogerINtheUSA
February 9, 2008 2:09 AM
What would happen if the UK's most prestigious Medical Journal's expert reviewers were to decide that the MMR jab causes autism?
Offensive? Unsuitable? Email us
Auric
February 9, 2008 3:09 AM
Clearly applicable to Williams. `Listen to me, I know about gods, religions and things like that.` To borrow from George Orwell - No ordinary person could be such a fool.
Offensive? Unsuitable? Email us
jakebylo
February 9, 2008 3:44 AM
this is an astoundingly ridiculous column - possibly setting a new record for the Guardian website - gave me an extended case of the "dancing eyes", especially the smug Aunty-knows-best last paragraph.
The columnist has absolutely no evidence that the few stories she cites (incidentally, a handful of situations out of the many millions of actions/decisions that designated experts (expertise is typically formally designated by official qualifications and other marks of recognition, and not merely someone declaring themselves an expert) in an enormous number of fields carry out every day) involved people with expertise who were arrogant and conceited and closed to new knowledge... and even if they really were, she has no evidence that this led to the mistake (And if an expert who had been involved in a serious mistake at work were found personally responsible, there are a whole range of possible explanations for their mistake - ranging from say, really bad luck to say, drunkenness due to personal problems at home - many explanations which can't be attributed to the blanket accusation of arrogance )
This article's accusations/character assassinations against these people in the cited cases is purely speculative and groundless, just so another snootily self-satisfied and self-righteous column can be written. (does the columnist really avoid the opinions of all experts? what an impractical way of living life.)
Offensive? Unsuitable? Email us
goldengate
February 9, 2008 4:05 AM
And then there is George W. Bush, the expert decider in chief by virtue of having being installed in the Presidency, overrule all experts, because he alone knows what is best and his like minded other experts , in particular his Cabinet, that servers at his pleasure just tow the same line. The world should be congratulated to have so much wisdom.
Offensive? Unsuitable? Email us
parallaxview
February 9, 2008 4:24 AM
Whoa Annalisa, just checked out your profile: seamstress to the Queen Mother, fashion PR, fishing correspondent, columnist, author, co-founder of the progressive parenting website.
Jack of all trades, master of ...?
Offensive? Unsuitable? Email us
Mujokan
February 9, 2008 5:21 AM
One problem from two years ago, another problem from four years ago, and a third problem from twenty years ago. Luckily the writer isn't an expert on experts, or I wouldn't have found this column so convincing.
Friday 8 February 2008
Meditation is more than flower-power indulgence
Joan Bakewell
They are almost entirely wrong. The world needs meditation more than ever. Just ask Heath Ledger's family. The actor had complained for weeks of insomnia, anxiety and stress before his death last month. He turned for help to prescription drugs, none of which would have harmed him on its own, but taken together had a fatal result. "I can't stop my brain thinking..." he is rumoured to have complained. How much better if he had learned some simple meditation techniques that would have calmed the stress and given him space to rest his overactive mind.
I'm not suggesting the Maharishi's brand of Transcendental Meditation was what Ledger needed. It's hard to understand what the so-called giggling guru's specific teaching amounts to, other than that it requires substantial fees, results in bizarre bouncing activities, and has created a trust worth some £600m. Perhaps the trust's role is to spread the message, whatever the message is.
I understand that the pop star Donovan, a long-time devotee, and film-maker David Lynch are currently proselytising for the cause. I am not sure I want the man who makes spooky films, and created the nightmare vision behind the 1986 shocker Blue Velvet, to be my spiritual guide.
Whether the Maharishi was a genuine inspiration or simply an old fraud is beside the point. Meditation, as part of Eastern philosophy, has an ancient and respectable past, and in bringing it to the attention of young people in the West thrown into confusion by the 1960s drug culture he did something worthwhile. The West already had its tradition of meditation too, of course, but it was falling out of favour. It is known as prayer.
By contrast, I learned what I know of meditation for nothing more than the cost of a book, called Teach Yourself Meditation. I was planning to visit India for a second time and already knew that the density of that country's spiritual life has a strange and disturbing effect. So I took the book along with me just in case. And when the moment came – a calm and beautiful place, a restful time – I sat cross-legged on a cushion and opened its pages.
I learned one thing fast that day: meditation isn't easy. For hectic, busy minds living in a turmoil of thoughts and ideas it is seriously difficult. I persisted throughout my Indian visit and slowly began to have a different sense of things from what I had before. It was entirely rewarding, offering some small sense of the cosmic nature of things and the immediacy of our place in time and space. It could easily be written off by cynics as holiday euphoria. But I didn't believe it was and I have persisted intermittently ever since. I can now manage to meditate properly for as long as five consecutive minutes: after that some sneaky idea, some distracting thought, wriggles its way into my consciousness and spoils that vast canvas of quiet that is what meditation aims for. And I have to start all over again.
Would the world benefit from meditation? Up to a point. The Maharishi believed his movement could bring about world peace, and John Lennon went on to write the beautiful but fanciful "Imagine". They both make the illogical leap from the individual to the community. Meditation is essentially personal, internal and even narcissistic. It aims to overcome the force of the ego but it is primarily self-regarding. It can clear clutter and confusion from the individual mind. But communities don't work like that. That's why saints don't fight each other, but countries have gone to war under holy banners.
Transcendental meditation imagines a world where everyone is so spiritually calm and at peace that wars become redundant. That is to suppose that tyrants and despots will be chilling out too. Whereas, we know full well they would welcome a meek and submissive population as being so much easier to subjugate to their will. The dangers of universal quietism is that it would abandon all the outrage we bring to our sense of injustice. There is a proper place for anger at the state of the world, for resistance to the forces of oppression. But meditation can help temper the anger.
They are almost entirely wrong. The world needs meditation more than ever. Just ask Heath Ledger's family. The actor had complained for weeks of insomnia, anxiety and stress before his death last month. He turned for help to prescription drugs, none of which would have harmed him on its own, but taken together had a fatal result. "I can't stop my brain thinking..." he is rumoured to have complained. How much better if he had learned some simple meditation techniques that would have calmed the stress and given him space to rest his overactive mind.
I'm not suggesting the Maharishi's brand of Transcendental Meditation was what Ledger needed. It's hard to understand what the so-called giggling guru's specific teaching amounts to, other than that it requires substantial fees, results in bizarre bouncing activities, and has created a trust worth some £600m. Perhaps the trust's role is to spread the message, whatever the message is.
I understand that the pop star Donovan, a long-time devotee, and film-maker David Lynch are currently proselytising for the cause. I am not sure I want the man who makes spooky films, and created the nightmare vision behind the 1986 shocker Blue Velvet, to be my spiritual guide.
Whether the Maharishi was a genuine inspiration or simply an old fraud is beside the point. Meditation, as part of Eastern philosophy, has an ancient and respectable past, and in bringing it to the attention of young people in the West thrown into confusion by the 1960s drug culture he did something worthwhile. The West already had its tradition of meditation too, of course, but it was falling out of favour. It is known as prayer.
By contrast, I learned what I know of meditation for nothing more than the cost of a book, called Teach Yourself Meditation. I was planning to visit India for a second time and already knew that the density of that country's spiritual life has a strange and disturbing effect. So I took the book along with me just in case. And when the moment came – a calm and beautiful place, a restful time – I sat cross-legged on a cushion and opened its pages.
I learned one thing fast that day: meditation isn't easy. For hectic, busy minds living in a turmoil of thoughts and ideas it is seriously difficult. I persisted throughout my Indian visit and slowly began to have a different sense of things from what I had before. It was entirely rewarding, offering some small sense of the cosmic nature of things and the immediacy of our place in time and space. It could easily be written off by cynics as holiday euphoria. But I didn't believe it was and I have persisted intermittently ever since. I can now manage to meditate properly for as long as five consecutive minutes: after that some sneaky idea, some distracting thought, wriggles its way into my consciousness and spoils that vast canvas of quiet that is what meditation aims for. And I have to start all over again.
Would the world benefit from meditation? Up to a point. The Maharishi believed his movement could bring about world peace, and John Lennon went on to write the beautiful but fanciful "Imagine". They both make the illogical leap from the individual to the community. Meditation is essentially personal, internal and even narcissistic. It aims to overcome the force of the ego but it is primarily self-regarding. It can clear clutter and confusion from the individual mind. But communities don't work like that. That's why saints don't fight each other, but countries have gone to war under holy banners.
Transcendental meditation imagines a world where everyone is so spiritually calm and at peace that wars become redundant. That is to suppose that tyrants and despots will be chilling out too. Whereas, we know full well they would welcome a meek and submissive population as being so much easier to subjugate to their will. The dangers of universal quietism is that it would abandon all the outrage we bring to our sense of injustice. There is a proper place for anger at the state of the world, for resistance to the forces of oppression. But meditation can help temper the anger.
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