Shahid Mehmood in The Friday Times
When the economic recession of 2008 struck the world economy, not many would have guessed that this event would set off a wave of serious introspection about the nature and morality of present day capitalism. Many, including economists, thought that this is just a continuation of the traditional cycle that an economy goes through, whereby periods of growth are followed by recessions (which in general means lower GDP growth rates). It was expected that things would be back to normal within a few years.
But something different transpired this time around. Millions of people around the globe, especially in the leading centers of global capitalism like London and New York, spilled onto the streets and vented their anger against the present state of capitalism. This movement became the ‘Wall Street vs Main Street’ movement. Many years down the line, the world economy (mainly the industrialised world) is yet to regain its growth trajectory and the waves generated by the movement still reverberate. In effect, what we have is a crisis of the workings of capitalism. It would be interesting to delve into some details in order to understand how this state of affairs came to be?
This discussion takes us back to a Scottish professor of moral philosophy and his writings on market economy and capitalism. Adam Smith, who is now revered as the father of economics, wrote his magnum opus Wealth of Nations (WON) in 1776. Considered the bible of economics, one of the most outstanding insights of the book was that a person’s greed ends up benefitting the community as a whole. Two sentences (abbreviated) lay out this principle; Smith contends that: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest…” and “Every individual… neither intends to promote the public interest nor knows how much he is promoting it… he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention”.
Smith’s workings of an efficient capitalist system is tied to the workings of the ‘invisible hand’, the famous concept which explains how greed that ends up promoting the greater good. But the most noticeable aspect of this concept is that Smith first mentioned it in an equally remarkable (though less discussed) book of his called the Theory of Moral Sentiments. Published before WON, it outlined the moral pre-requisites for an economy to function properly. Smith’s concept of the invisible hand, therefore, was closely tied to morality. It reads as follows: “[The rich] consume little more than the poor and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity…they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life …”
What Smith envisioned has, up till the end of 20th century, worked pretty well. What we saw in the industrialised nations was that capitalists and entrepreneurs, in pursuit of profit, implemented ventures and projects that ended up benefiting the society as a whole. Setting up a plant for production, for example, was purely done for personal gain. But the venture needed employees, and thus many aspiring job seekers found their sustenance due to the pursuit of greed by the industrialists/capitalists. Gradually, in the face of rising resistance in the form of Marx and others, the economies of nation states gradually transformed into welfare states, whose main beneficiaries were the larger, lower segments of the population and the middle classes. This setting worked remarkably well, and explains how it managed to weather stiff resistance over centuries, none bigger than Communism which met its demise in 1991 with the dismemberment of the Soviet Union.
But the 21st century has seen the consensus starting to unravel, with the Wall Street vs Main Street only the first sign of widespread consternation. And the simple reason is that the workings of the invisible hand are now skewed starkly in favour of the one percent.
The signs of this dysfunction are all around, in numbers and other instances. All around the world, labour’s share of total national income is on a constant decline. The real income (income adjusted for the cost of living), except for top percentile of earners, has been falling gradually. Income inequality is at a historic high. Credit Suisse, which tracks global wealth, estimated that the richest one percent now own half of total global wealth (estimated at $280 trillion).
The 18th, 19th and 20th century witnessed entrepreneurship and capitalism in a manner that every new venture resulted in creation of newer job opportunities, generation of real wealth and comparatively proportionate distribution of wealth. In contrast, today’s wealth creation is largely centered upon financial engineering and application of technological developments. The former is merely a transfer of wealth from the lower percentiles (poor and middle classes) to the rich, and the latter is leading to lesser need for workers as artificial intelligence (AI) does the work without requiring any benefits (wages, health insurance, etc.) and thus saving the owners/entrepreneurs major costs of operating a venture. The global economic scene was once dominated by companies like GM that employed thousands of people. Now, it’s dominated by organisations like Google and Amazon whose quantum of wealth is much larger, yet they employ not even half of the labour employed by big players of yesteryears. Facebook, for example, has a market cap of $370 billion, yet employs no more than 14,000 people.
What factors drive this concentration of wealth? The main culprit, apart from others like government regulations, is technology, especially software and AI. Today’s technology has this extraordinary feature that only a small initial investment is needed to make the first software copy, but the millions following it can be replicated at zero cost. Thus, the owner can earn billions without the need to invest further. In technical lingo, there is zero marginal cost of replication, which makes all this different from yesteryears. These technologies do produce jobs, but these are ‘gigs’ rather than good, quality jobs with financial security. And they pay little, usually sustenance level wages except for technically exceptional people. This means that majority of workforce is already out of contention for good, high-paying jobs, thus contributing towards the labour’s falling share of national income.
The anger of Main Street is understandable. Today’s capitalism delivers wealth in the hands of a few. Those responsible for all those Ponzi schemes that destroyed the hard-earned savings of the working class have largely gone scot-free (too big to fail phenomena). And today’s global economic scene has a heavy imprint of rent-seekers, tax dodgers and financial wizards who do not contribute much to the well-being of the citizens or the real economy. This situation aptly describes the challenge faced by Capitalism. A system that has been exceptional in delivering prosperity and successfully warding off challenges over time now finds itself under severe scrutiny because its underlying mechanism of shared prosperity has, to a large extent, stopped working. Not surprisingly, as the dreams of shared prosperity recede, so does the moral ground for its continuation.
Friday 15 June 2018
Wednesday 13 June 2018
Trump as defender of democracy
George Monbiot in The Guardian
He gets almost everything wrong. But last weekend Donald Trump got something right. To the horror of the other leaders of the rich world, he defended democracy against its detractors. Perhaps predictably, he has been universally condemned for it.
His crime was to insist that the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) should have a sunset clause. In other words, it should not remain valid indefinitely, but expire after five years, allowing its members either to renegotiate it or to walk away. To howls of execration from the world’s media, his insistence has torpedoed efforts to update the treaty.
In Rights of Man, published in 1791, Thomas Paine argued that: “Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.” This is widely accepted – in theory if not in practice – as a basic democratic principle.
Even if the people of the US, Canada and Mexico had explicitly consented to Nafta in 1994, the idea that a decision made then should bind everyone in North America for all time is repulsive. So is the notion, championed by the Canadian and Mexican governments, that any slightly modified version of the deal agreed now should bind all future governments.
But the people of North America did not explicitly consent to Nafta. They were never asked to vote on the deal, and its bipartisan support ensured that there was little scope for dissent. The huge grassroots resistance in all three nations was ignored or maligned. The deal was fixed between political and commercial elites, and granted immortality.
In seeking to update the treaty, governments in the three countries have candidly sought to thwart the will of the people. Their stated intention was to finish the job before Mexico’s presidential election in July. The leading candidate, Andrés Lopez Obrador, has expressed hostility to Nafta, so it had to be done before the people cast their vote. They might wonder why so many have lost faith in democracy.
Nafta provides a perfect illustration of why all trade treaties should contain a sunset clause. Provisions that made sense to the negotiators in the early 1990s make no sense to anyone today, except fossil fuel companies and greedy lawyers. The most obvious example is the way its rules for investor-state dispute settlement have been interpreted. These clauses (chapter 11 of the treaty) were supposed to prevent states from unfairly expropriating the assets of foreign companies. But they have spawned a new industry, in which aggressive lawyers discover ever more lucrative means of overriding democracy.
The rules grant opaque panels of corporate lawyers, meeting behind closed doors, supreme authority over the courts and parliaments of its member states. A BuzzFeed investigation revealed they had been used to halt criminal cases, overturn penalties incurred by convicted fraudsters, allow companies to get away with trashing rainforests and poisoning villages, and, by placing foreign businesses above the law, intimidate governments into abandoning public protections.
Under Nafta, these provisions have become, metaphorically and literally, toxic. When Canada tried to ban a fuel additive called MMT as a potentially dangerous neurotoxin, the US manufacturer used Nafta rules to sue the government. Canada was forced to lift the ban, and award the company $13m (£10m) in compensation. After Mexican authorities refused a US corporation permission to build a hazardous waste facility, the company sued before a Nafta panel, and extracted $16.7m in compensation. Another US firm, Lone Pine Resources, is suing Canada for $119m because the government of Quebec has banned fracking under the St Lawrence River.
As the US justice department woke up to the implications of these rules in the 1990s, it began to panic: one official wrote that it “could severely undermine our system of justice” and grant foreign companies “more rights than Americans have”. Another noted: “No one thought about this when Nafta implementing law passed.”
Nor did they think about climate breakdown. Nafta obliges Canada not only to export most of its oil and half its natural gas to the US, but also to ensure that the proportion of these fuels produced from tar sands and fracking does not change. As a result, the Canadian government cannot adhere to both its commitments under the Paris agreement on climate change and its commitments under Nafta. While the Paris commitments are voluntary, Nafta’s are compulsory.
Were such disasters foreseen by the negotiators? If so, the trade agreement was a plot against the people. If not – as the evidence strongly suggests – its unanticipated outcomes are a powerful argument for a sunset clause. The update the US wanted was also a formula for calamity, that future governments might wish to reverse. But this is likely to be difficult, even impossible, without the threat of walking out.
Those who defend the immortality of trade agreements argue that it provides certainty for business. It’s true that there is a conflict between business confidence and democratic freedom. This conflict is repeatedly resolved in favour of business. That the only defender of popular sovereignty in this case is an odious demagogue illustrates the corruption of 21st-century liberal democracy.
There was much rejoicing this week over the photo of Trump being harangued by the other G7 leaders. But when I saw it, I thought: “The stitch-ups engineered by people like you produce people like him.” The machinations of remote elites in forums such as the G7, the IMF and the European Central Bank, and the opaque negotiation of unpopular treaties, destroy both trust and democratic agency, fuelling the frustration that demagogues exploit.
Trump was right to spike the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He is right to demand a sunset clause for Nafta. When this devious, hollow, self-interested man offers a better approximation of the people’s champion than any other leader, you know democracy is in trouble.
His crime was to insist that the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) should have a sunset clause. In other words, it should not remain valid indefinitely, but expire after five years, allowing its members either to renegotiate it or to walk away. To howls of execration from the world’s media, his insistence has torpedoed efforts to update the treaty.
In Rights of Man, published in 1791, Thomas Paine argued that: “Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself, in all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies.” This is widely accepted – in theory if not in practice – as a basic democratic principle.
Even if the people of the US, Canada and Mexico had explicitly consented to Nafta in 1994, the idea that a decision made then should bind everyone in North America for all time is repulsive. So is the notion, championed by the Canadian and Mexican governments, that any slightly modified version of the deal agreed now should bind all future governments.
But the people of North America did not explicitly consent to Nafta. They were never asked to vote on the deal, and its bipartisan support ensured that there was little scope for dissent. The huge grassroots resistance in all three nations was ignored or maligned. The deal was fixed between political and commercial elites, and granted immortality.
In seeking to update the treaty, governments in the three countries have candidly sought to thwart the will of the people. Their stated intention was to finish the job before Mexico’s presidential election in July. The leading candidate, Andrés Lopez Obrador, has expressed hostility to Nafta, so it had to be done before the people cast their vote. They might wonder why so many have lost faith in democracy.
Nafta provides a perfect illustration of why all trade treaties should contain a sunset clause. Provisions that made sense to the negotiators in the early 1990s make no sense to anyone today, except fossil fuel companies and greedy lawyers. The most obvious example is the way its rules for investor-state dispute settlement have been interpreted. These clauses (chapter 11 of the treaty) were supposed to prevent states from unfairly expropriating the assets of foreign companies. But they have spawned a new industry, in which aggressive lawyers discover ever more lucrative means of overriding democracy.
The rules grant opaque panels of corporate lawyers, meeting behind closed doors, supreme authority over the courts and parliaments of its member states. A BuzzFeed investigation revealed they had been used to halt criminal cases, overturn penalties incurred by convicted fraudsters, allow companies to get away with trashing rainforests and poisoning villages, and, by placing foreign businesses above the law, intimidate governments into abandoning public protections.
Under Nafta, these provisions have become, metaphorically and literally, toxic. When Canada tried to ban a fuel additive called MMT as a potentially dangerous neurotoxin, the US manufacturer used Nafta rules to sue the government. Canada was forced to lift the ban, and award the company $13m (£10m) in compensation. After Mexican authorities refused a US corporation permission to build a hazardous waste facility, the company sued before a Nafta panel, and extracted $16.7m in compensation. Another US firm, Lone Pine Resources, is suing Canada for $119m because the government of Quebec has banned fracking under the St Lawrence River.
As the US justice department woke up to the implications of these rules in the 1990s, it began to panic: one official wrote that it “could severely undermine our system of justice” and grant foreign companies “more rights than Americans have”. Another noted: “No one thought about this when Nafta implementing law passed.”
Nor did they think about climate breakdown. Nafta obliges Canada not only to export most of its oil and half its natural gas to the US, but also to ensure that the proportion of these fuels produced from tar sands and fracking does not change. As a result, the Canadian government cannot adhere to both its commitments under the Paris agreement on climate change and its commitments under Nafta. While the Paris commitments are voluntary, Nafta’s are compulsory.
Were such disasters foreseen by the negotiators? If so, the trade agreement was a plot against the people. If not – as the evidence strongly suggests – its unanticipated outcomes are a powerful argument for a sunset clause. The update the US wanted was also a formula for calamity, that future governments might wish to reverse. But this is likely to be difficult, even impossible, without the threat of walking out.
Those who defend the immortality of trade agreements argue that it provides certainty for business. It’s true that there is a conflict between business confidence and democratic freedom. This conflict is repeatedly resolved in favour of business. That the only defender of popular sovereignty in this case is an odious demagogue illustrates the corruption of 21st-century liberal democracy.
There was much rejoicing this week over the photo of Trump being harangued by the other G7 leaders. But when I saw it, I thought: “The stitch-ups engineered by people like you produce people like him.” The machinations of remote elites in forums such as the G7, the IMF and the European Central Bank, and the opaque negotiation of unpopular treaties, destroy both trust and democratic agency, fuelling the frustration that demagogues exploit.
Trump was right to spike the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He is right to demand a sunset clause for Nafta. When this devious, hollow, self-interested man offers a better approximation of the people’s champion than any other leader, you know democracy is in trouble.
Tuesday 12 June 2018
Pranab Mukherjee's visit to RSS HQ explained
Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn
TWO lobbies were clearly worried by a photograph that was clicked during the swearing-in celebrations of the Karnataka anti-BJP coalition. It showed Congress leader Sonia Gandhi locked in a rare embrace with Dalit leader Mayawati. The picture had other leaders who were opposed to the Modi-led BJP government basking in the glory of the Karnataka victory, but the hugging of the two women was a defining moment. Insidious advisers to the Congress leadership had stalled their coming together in the past.
Among the understated reasons was the stark reality that some of the Gandhi family’s upper-caste advisers also happened to be conduits for the mercantile lobbies based in Mumbai. The photograph threatened both, the tycoons and their caste protégés adorning the upper houses of legislatures, where those who cannot win the Lok Sabha or assembly polls are given a cosy perch, not just in Congress.
There is a brouhaha about former president and former Congress minister Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh headquarters. It’s surprising why no one has linked the visit with the Karnataka photo. Mukherjee is an educated Brahmin, flaunting the requisite links with Mumbai businesses, which could be a temptation for the RSS leadership to sound him out.
It is possible of course that the nudge for the meeting came from the mercantile club in Mumbai. It has acquired the habit of late of playing kingmakers. Remember how hard they had lobbied with the RSS to make Narendra Modi the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate?
They finance other parties too, not the least the Congress party. But there is a silent caveat here. The Congress that forms the government or heads a coalition should not offer the prime minister’s job to a Gandhi, and we have had two such non-Gandhi Congress prime ministers to press the point.
-----Also Read
There is a history to this reasoning and the Gandhi family has been pitchforked as the villains, or the heroes, depending on where you are vis-à-vis crony capitalism. Jawaharlal Nehru had no love lost for the mercantile leaders whom Gandhiji otherwise saw as the trustees of a free India. Nehru put their biggest icon in jail for fraud. (R.K. Dalmia’s close friendship with Mohammad Ali Jinnah may have been an added allergen.)
Then came Indira Gandhi. She nationalised the cabal’s ‘usurious’ banks and also locked up several of them under the draconian Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act, the law she passed just before the 1975-77 emergency.
Mr Mukherjee recently chronicled his political innings from 1980 onwards. That marked the post-emergency return for Indira Gandhi who was looking vulnerable after her traditional left supporters deserted her over the emergency. Mr Mukherjee’s proximity to the Mumbai tycoons is well documented in books that predictably did not make it to bookshops. He became a darling of the media as her finance minister, the same media that is celebrating his visit to the RSS headquarters although he said perfectly liberal, pro-constitution things there. When Mrs Gandhi was killed, Mr Mukherjee reportedly saw himself as her natural successor, a thought resented by her family friends.
Rajiv Gandhi arrived to throw the ‘moneybags off the backs of the Congress workers’. He sent Mukherjee into political oblivion. The tycoons, however, swung into action. Every inch of media space they owned was harnessed to tarnish the young prime minister with financial scams. His death brought the cabal and Mukherjee back into the heart of Indian politics, both firmly embraced by Narasimha Rao.
One more twist followed. When Rao lost the elections in 1996, he handed over the Congress presidency to Sitaram Kesri, a canny grass-roots Congressman. The change was accepted by the Gandhis who saw in Kesri a better chance of getting to the bottom of Rajiv’s murder mystery than Rao had delivered. Also Kesri shored up two prime ministers with the help of communists.
I remember asking him at a news conference why he had taken the unusual step to ally with Dalit leader Mayawati in 1998. Did he see her as an asset as a woman leader, or was she a potential Dalit ally? Kesri exploded with joy. Both, he yelled. We don’t know which of the Congress rivals locked him up in the bathroom subsequently and handed the leadership to a still reluctant Sonia Gandhi, who had evidently not yet recovered from the shock of her husband’s assassination. Mukherjee was part of the group, or perhaps its leader, that went after Kesri in what can only be described as a palace coup. Kesri saw himself as a Gandhi loyalist and didn’t know what hit him. He died from the shock.
It is said that the Mumbai club has applied a financial squeeze on the Congress party for flirting with state leaders they do not control. This could be a blessing in disguise for the party. It could bring the Gandhis close to crucial leaders like Mayawati, Arvind Kejriwal, Lalu Yadav and Mamata Banerjee who have to fend for themselves financially.
If, like Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi goes for crowd funding instead of leaning on crony tycoons for support, he might become a richer, cleaner leader. But before that, he must do with the current potential ‘Congress Syndicate’ what Emperor Akbar did with his regent Bairam Khan or Nehru did with his detractors clothed as advisers. They could be sent to work with the masses under a new Kamraj Plan to borrow from the Congress history.
Above all, it was Mayawati’s sacrifice and not ambition that has reaped rewards for a rejuvenated opposition. Rather than aim to become prime minister, Rahul Gandhi would do well to watch out for deserters, no matter how educated they are, while embracing the game-changing picture from Karnataka.
TWO lobbies were clearly worried by a photograph that was clicked during the swearing-in celebrations of the Karnataka anti-BJP coalition. It showed Congress leader Sonia Gandhi locked in a rare embrace with Dalit leader Mayawati. The picture had other leaders who were opposed to the Modi-led BJP government basking in the glory of the Karnataka victory, but the hugging of the two women was a defining moment. Insidious advisers to the Congress leadership had stalled their coming together in the past.
Among the understated reasons was the stark reality that some of the Gandhi family’s upper-caste advisers also happened to be conduits for the mercantile lobbies based in Mumbai. The photograph threatened both, the tycoons and their caste protégés adorning the upper houses of legislatures, where those who cannot win the Lok Sabha or assembly polls are given a cosy perch, not just in Congress.
There is a brouhaha about former president and former Congress minister Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh headquarters. It’s surprising why no one has linked the visit with the Karnataka photo. Mukherjee is an educated Brahmin, flaunting the requisite links with Mumbai businesses, which could be a temptation for the RSS leadership to sound him out.
It is possible of course that the nudge for the meeting came from the mercantile club in Mumbai. It has acquired the habit of late of playing kingmakers. Remember how hard they had lobbied with the RSS to make Narendra Modi the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate?
They finance other parties too, not the least the Congress party. But there is a silent caveat here. The Congress that forms the government or heads a coalition should not offer the prime minister’s job to a Gandhi, and we have had two such non-Gandhi Congress prime ministers to press the point.
-----Also Read
The Marwari hegemony of Indian Media
-------
There is a history to this reasoning and the Gandhi family has been pitchforked as the villains, or the heroes, depending on where you are vis-à-vis crony capitalism. Jawaharlal Nehru had no love lost for the mercantile leaders whom Gandhiji otherwise saw as the trustees of a free India. Nehru put their biggest icon in jail for fraud. (R.K. Dalmia’s close friendship with Mohammad Ali Jinnah may have been an added allergen.)
Then came Indira Gandhi. She nationalised the cabal’s ‘usurious’ banks and also locked up several of them under the draconian Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act, the law she passed just before the 1975-77 emergency.
Mr Mukherjee recently chronicled his political innings from 1980 onwards. That marked the post-emergency return for Indira Gandhi who was looking vulnerable after her traditional left supporters deserted her over the emergency. Mr Mukherjee’s proximity to the Mumbai tycoons is well documented in books that predictably did not make it to bookshops. He became a darling of the media as her finance minister, the same media that is celebrating his visit to the RSS headquarters although he said perfectly liberal, pro-constitution things there. When Mrs Gandhi was killed, Mr Mukherjee reportedly saw himself as her natural successor, a thought resented by her family friends.
Rajiv Gandhi arrived to throw the ‘moneybags off the backs of the Congress workers’. He sent Mukherjee into political oblivion. The tycoons, however, swung into action. Every inch of media space they owned was harnessed to tarnish the young prime minister with financial scams. His death brought the cabal and Mukherjee back into the heart of Indian politics, both firmly embraced by Narasimha Rao.
One more twist followed. When Rao lost the elections in 1996, he handed over the Congress presidency to Sitaram Kesri, a canny grass-roots Congressman. The change was accepted by the Gandhis who saw in Kesri a better chance of getting to the bottom of Rajiv’s murder mystery than Rao had delivered. Also Kesri shored up two prime ministers with the help of communists.
I remember asking him at a news conference why he had taken the unusual step to ally with Dalit leader Mayawati in 1998. Did he see her as an asset as a woman leader, or was she a potential Dalit ally? Kesri exploded with joy. Both, he yelled. We don’t know which of the Congress rivals locked him up in the bathroom subsequently and handed the leadership to a still reluctant Sonia Gandhi, who had evidently not yet recovered from the shock of her husband’s assassination. Mukherjee was part of the group, or perhaps its leader, that went after Kesri in what can only be described as a palace coup. Kesri saw himself as a Gandhi loyalist and didn’t know what hit him. He died from the shock.
It is said that the Mumbai club has applied a financial squeeze on the Congress party for flirting with state leaders they do not control. This could be a blessing in disguise for the party. It could bring the Gandhis close to crucial leaders like Mayawati, Arvind Kejriwal, Lalu Yadav and Mamata Banerjee who have to fend for themselves financially.
If, like Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi goes for crowd funding instead of leaning on crony tycoons for support, he might become a richer, cleaner leader. But before that, he must do with the current potential ‘Congress Syndicate’ what Emperor Akbar did with his regent Bairam Khan or Nehru did with his detractors clothed as advisers. They could be sent to work with the masses under a new Kamraj Plan to borrow from the Congress history.
Above all, it was Mayawati’s sacrifice and not ambition that has reaped rewards for a rejuvenated opposition. Rather than aim to become prime minister, Rahul Gandhi would do well to watch out for deserters, no matter how educated they are, while embracing the game-changing picture from Karnataka.
Monday 11 June 2018
Imran Khan - Where the Past is always Present
Nadeem Paracha in The Dawn
A few years ago in a TV interview that he gave to the former England cricket captain Mike Atherton, Imran Khan kept insisting that he didn’t dwell much on the past and was more focused on the present and the future. Yet, he often loves talking about how under his captaincy the Pakistan cricket team won the 1992 World Cup in Australia. His many fans on social media continue to upload highlights of the final in which Pakistan defeated England to lift the cup. They are always quick to remind Khan’s detractors of this feat, even though, most probably, many of them were still in their shorts at the time or not even born.
This does not in any way take away their right to celebrate that famous win. After all, this is one memory Khan frequently talks about. But why this particular memory of a man who claims to never think much about the past? Simply put, because the constant celebration of this memory serves his political standing and appeal best, whereas many other bits of his past do not. Or so he believes.
When Atherton wanted him to comment on his youthful past as a ‘playboy’ and someone who loved to party, Khan kept insisting that all this was in the past, much of which he didn’t even remember. Yet, during the course of the interview, he did quite clearly remember many other bits of the same past. But these were the bits which did not reflect badly on the kind of wholesome image that he and his supporters have been trying to construct of him as a politician and possible future prime minister.
A young supporter of Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), began to regularly email me right after he had cast his first-ever vote during the 2013 election. He still writes to me. Whereas his emails up until late last year were mostly about why he thought Khan was the best candidate for the PM’s job, his last two emails (one sent in February of this year and the other in April) were rather critical of the leader he once so admired.
I seldom respond to his emails, but in April I did, asking him what Khan had done to anger such a passionate follower. His reply: “Khan has made fools out of thousands of passionate supporters like me by continuing to accept close-minded people in the party. I was wrong. He is anything but progressive and I am tired of proving that he is.”
When I shared this with a journalist colleague of mine, he said, “This email is about that long-held, million-dollar question: why is Khan so attracted to the most ‘reactionary’ breed of people?”
I have met Khan only once, when as a 15-year-old schoolboy I managed to shake his hand outside the dressing room of Karachi’s National Stadium in 1982, soon after he had destroyed the Indian batting with his vicious in-swingers. Khan was anything but “reactionary.” And I believe he isn’t one even now. I remember I was quite excited when he decided to join politics in the early 1990s. But in this act lies the answer to the ‘million-dollar question’ that my colleague is trying to crack.
The reality of him being a charismatic ladies’ man or playboy with awesome cricketing skills was perfect for his sporting career which attracted some of the first lucrative sponsorship deals offered to a Pakistani sports personality. But the moment he decided to take the plunge to join the volatile world of Pakistani politics, he became just too conscious of this image.
From sounding like a dynamic cricket captain with some sharp insights about the game, and a brooding icon of lifestyle liberalism, he suddenly began to sound like a middle-aged man who, for the first time in his life, had read the standard Pakistan Studies book. If that wasn’t enough (it wasn’t), he made it a point to publicly declare that he had rediscovered his faith. I’ve always wondered why most folks who go through spiritual transformations have to announce it publicly? Shouldn’t it be a matter between the Almighty and them? I think it should, unless, of course, like Khan, one has a colourful past which he thought would become a burdensome baggage to carry into politics.
Khan’s understanding of his own country’s society is rather simplistic. It’s black and white, based on that intellectually lazy cliché of this society being entirely conservative. Had that been the case, he would have never been such a star during his cricketing days. As a cricket star, he never tried to overtly defend his lifestyle or even hide it. He didn’t need to. This was Pakistan, not Iran or Saudi Arabia.
But once Khan decided to see the same country as a politician, to him it suddenly started to look like a place no better than Somalia — but one which had millions of pious men and women exploited by a corrupt elite and khooni (who allow bloodletting) liberals, awaiting an equally pious but slightly more dashing messiah.
What about his own well-documented khooni-liberal past? Reading Pakistan Studies books and hiring wise spiritual tutors wasn’t going to cut it. Thus began his attraction towards what my colleague believes are “reactionary characters.” It began with former ISI chief Gen Hamid Gul, who till his last breath was still romancing the 1980s Afghan jihad.
Gul imparted some wonderful tips on the art and science of politics to Khan. This inspired Khan to often declare that he was no ‘brown sahib’ but then, just as often travel to London in a tuxedo. One day he returned with a rich Caucasian lady as wife. Gul was livid. It didn’t matter to Gul that Khan had converted her to Islam. Her father was a Jew. And that was that.
But all said and done, Khan was still quite a ladies’ man. He was, however, distraught to discover that, like Gul, some of his pious countrymen weren’t amused. So off he went to now praise the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI). In the early 2000s, he described it to be the most enlightened political party, even though there is every likelihood that he spent more time talking about it with then JI chief, late Qazi Hussain Ahmad, than reading any of the many books JI’s founder Abul Ala Maudidi wrote.
But Khan’s past continued to pop up. So even more was required to bury it for good for the benefit of the people of the pious banana republic he now wanted to save. So out came statements against US drone attacks, and against the Pakistan military’s operations against the extremists. These were coupled with very public exhibitions of the fact that Khan was now regularly saying his prayers like a true faithful.
Drone attacks, he said, were being prompted by dastardly liberals who were fake liberals and he was the more genuine liberal because he was against war, but one who enjoyed hunting in the rugged tribal areas with the rugged tribesmen who he proudly explained came from ‘a warrior race.’
And it went on. And it goes on like a vicious circle. The more conscious he becomes of a past he still so desperately wants to suppress, the more he ends up patronising ‘reactionary characters’ to the utter bemusement of his more urbane supporters. Radical clerics, populist motormouth TV personalities, rabid conspiracy theorists, hate-spouting bigots — he is willing to play footsie with them so he can finally prove that he has become the most pious, honest, God-fearing man to ever walk the scorched grounds of this banana republic.
Khan, I’m afraid, has become a parody of the Khan he once wanted to construct after he joined politics in 1995. Through whatever form of wisdom he crossed paths with during that period, it made him decide to loathe his past. And yet, ironically, it’s a past without which Khan would have even struggled to become a member of the country’s cricket selection committee, let alone become the chief of a major political party.
A few years ago in a TV interview that he gave to the former England cricket captain Mike Atherton, Imran Khan kept insisting that he didn’t dwell much on the past and was more focused on the present and the future. Yet, he often loves talking about how under his captaincy the Pakistan cricket team won the 1992 World Cup in Australia. His many fans on social media continue to upload highlights of the final in which Pakistan defeated England to lift the cup. They are always quick to remind Khan’s detractors of this feat, even though, most probably, many of them were still in their shorts at the time or not even born.
This does not in any way take away their right to celebrate that famous win. After all, this is one memory Khan frequently talks about. But why this particular memory of a man who claims to never think much about the past? Simply put, because the constant celebration of this memory serves his political standing and appeal best, whereas many other bits of his past do not. Or so he believes.
When Atherton wanted him to comment on his youthful past as a ‘playboy’ and someone who loved to party, Khan kept insisting that all this was in the past, much of which he didn’t even remember. Yet, during the course of the interview, he did quite clearly remember many other bits of the same past. But these were the bits which did not reflect badly on the kind of wholesome image that he and his supporters have been trying to construct of him as a politician and possible future prime minister.
A young supporter of Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), began to regularly email me right after he had cast his first-ever vote during the 2013 election. He still writes to me. Whereas his emails up until late last year were mostly about why he thought Khan was the best candidate for the PM’s job, his last two emails (one sent in February of this year and the other in April) were rather critical of the leader he once so admired.
I seldom respond to his emails, but in April I did, asking him what Khan had done to anger such a passionate follower. His reply: “Khan has made fools out of thousands of passionate supporters like me by continuing to accept close-minded people in the party. I was wrong. He is anything but progressive and I am tired of proving that he is.”
When I shared this with a journalist colleague of mine, he said, “This email is about that long-held, million-dollar question: why is Khan so attracted to the most ‘reactionary’ breed of people?”
I have met Khan only once, when as a 15-year-old schoolboy I managed to shake his hand outside the dressing room of Karachi’s National Stadium in 1982, soon after he had destroyed the Indian batting with his vicious in-swingers. Khan was anything but “reactionary.” And I believe he isn’t one even now. I remember I was quite excited when he decided to join politics in the early 1990s. But in this act lies the answer to the ‘million-dollar question’ that my colleague is trying to crack.
The reality of him being a charismatic ladies’ man or playboy with awesome cricketing skills was perfect for his sporting career which attracted some of the first lucrative sponsorship deals offered to a Pakistani sports personality. But the moment he decided to take the plunge to join the volatile world of Pakistani politics, he became just too conscious of this image.
From sounding like a dynamic cricket captain with some sharp insights about the game, and a brooding icon of lifestyle liberalism, he suddenly began to sound like a middle-aged man who, for the first time in his life, had read the standard Pakistan Studies book. If that wasn’t enough (it wasn’t), he made it a point to publicly declare that he had rediscovered his faith. I’ve always wondered why most folks who go through spiritual transformations have to announce it publicly? Shouldn’t it be a matter between the Almighty and them? I think it should, unless, of course, like Khan, one has a colourful past which he thought would become a burdensome baggage to carry into politics.
Khan’s understanding of his own country’s society is rather simplistic. It’s black and white, based on that intellectually lazy cliché of this society being entirely conservative. Had that been the case, he would have never been such a star during his cricketing days. As a cricket star, he never tried to overtly defend his lifestyle or even hide it. He didn’t need to. This was Pakistan, not Iran or Saudi Arabia.
But once Khan decided to see the same country as a politician, to him it suddenly started to look like a place no better than Somalia — but one which had millions of pious men and women exploited by a corrupt elite and khooni (who allow bloodletting) liberals, awaiting an equally pious but slightly more dashing messiah.
What about his own well-documented khooni-liberal past? Reading Pakistan Studies books and hiring wise spiritual tutors wasn’t going to cut it. Thus began his attraction towards what my colleague believes are “reactionary characters.” It began with former ISI chief Gen Hamid Gul, who till his last breath was still romancing the 1980s Afghan jihad.
Gul imparted some wonderful tips on the art and science of politics to Khan. This inspired Khan to often declare that he was no ‘brown sahib’ but then, just as often travel to London in a tuxedo. One day he returned with a rich Caucasian lady as wife. Gul was livid. It didn’t matter to Gul that Khan had converted her to Islam. Her father was a Jew. And that was that.
But all said and done, Khan was still quite a ladies’ man. He was, however, distraught to discover that, like Gul, some of his pious countrymen weren’t amused. So off he went to now praise the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI). In the early 2000s, he described it to be the most enlightened political party, even though there is every likelihood that he spent more time talking about it with then JI chief, late Qazi Hussain Ahmad, than reading any of the many books JI’s founder Abul Ala Maudidi wrote.
But Khan’s past continued to pop up. So even more was required to bury it for good for the benefit of the people of the pious banana republic he now wanted to save. So out came statements against US drone attacks, and against the Pakistan military’s operations against the extremists. These were coupled with very public exhibitions of the fact that Khan was now regularly saying his prayers like a true faithful.
Drone attacks, he said, were being prompted by dastardly liberals who were fake liberals and he was the more genuine liberal because he was against war, but one who enjoyed hunting in the rugged tribal areas with the rugged tribesmen who he proudly explained came from ‘a warrior race.’
And it went on. And it goes on like a vicious circle. The more conscious he becomes of a past he still so desperately wants to suppress, the more he ends up patronising ‘reactionary characters’ to the utter bemusement of his more urbane supporters. Radical clerics, populist motormouth TV personalities, rabid conspiracy theorists, hate-spouting bigots — he is willing to play footsie with them so he can finally prove that he has become the most pious, honest, God-fearing man to ever walk the scorched grounds of this banana republic.
Khan, I’m afraid, has become a parody of the Khan he once wanted to construct after he joined politics in 1995. Through whatever form of wisdom he crossed paths with during that period, it made him decide to loathe his past. And yet, ironically, it’s a past without which Khan would have even struggled to become a member of the country’s cricket selection committee, let alone become the chief of a major political party.
Sunday 10 June 2018
Four years of Achhe Din - Modi feels we have let him down miserably
G Sampath in The Hindu
My dear friends and loyal readers, please join me in congratulating ourselves on four fantastic years of Achhe Din. I hope that is the correct spelling of ‘achhe’ and it’s not ‘achhoo’ as my autocorrect is suggesting. My father says the right spelling is ‘chee’ but I think he is editorialising.
So wherever you are, whoever you are, extend both your arms — don’t feel shy, this is a time to celebrate — and pat yourselves on the back. If you can’t reach your own back because you are too fat, do it using your social media handle, or the handle of your trishul. But do it for sure — because you deserve it.
A ridiculous notion
You silly goose! Deserve it my foot! I was just joking, to see how seriously you take me. And you all are really patting yourselves on the back?! This has to be the height of self-delusion. Do you people really believe the credit for all that India has achieved in the last four years goes to each one of you? I am asking a genuine question here and I want a genuine answer: are all of you megalomaniacs? Did you really think each of you is collectively responsible for the progress of this great nation? I am shocked to hear that you would entertain even for one second such a ridiculous, blasphemous notion. Never forget that all the good things happening in our country right now is because of one man — and we all know who that is.
What makes me really sad is that all of you got four years — four entire years — to fulfil every one of our beloved Prime Minister’s dreams. And yet, you have let him down so badly. Each one of you. True, the Indian economy is still growing at 12.7% per annum, we are still creating 4.2 crore jobs every year, and farmers are so happy that they are giving away milk and tomatoes for free. It is also true that we have eliminated corruption through demonetisation, achieved 200% tax compliance through GST, and deposited ₹15 lakh in the bank account of every Indian who worked in the IT Cell for a minimum of 56 days.
Nor can anyone deny that today, white people in different parts of the world look at brown Indians with more respect than ever before. Foreigners are so much in awe of our Prime Minister that when they translate his speeches they add five extra paragraphs free of charge. After 60 years of Dark Ages under the Congress, today every Indian village has woken up to light and Paytm.
Four great feats
In fact, Modiji routinely achieves in any given week 100 times more than what Nehru accomplished from 1947 to 2014. But the pseudo-sickular Indian media that has sold out to the hate-Modi industry simply won’t show them to the Indian public. If you think I am being too harsh, I’ll give you just four examples of Modiji’s historic achievements, all from the last one week, which have been completely blacked out by the paid-cum-stung media.
I’m betting you didn’t know, for instance, that for the first time in India’s 30,000-year-history, an orchid was named after an Indian Prime Minister when the Singapore government decided to name a beautiful Indic orchid that produces upright inflorescences up to 56 inches long, ‘Dendrobrium Narendra Modi’. Or that Modiji became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit a Mariamman temple in Singapore. Were you aware that the IAEA has hailed the achievement of electrifying all Indian villages as the greatest event in the history of every energy, including physical, kinetic, potential, sexual, and weed energy? Or that for the first time in India’s history, an Indian Prime Minister purchased a Madhubani painting in Singapore using a RuPay card? Do you know how many Madhubani paintings Nehru bought using a RuPay card, either in India or in Singapore? Zero. That’s right. If Modiji and Nehru were to settle things between them through a tennis match, Modiji would win by an innings and 545 runs.
The one thing we couldn’t do
That’s the kind of Prime Minister we’ve been blessed with the last four years — someone who not only works 23 hours a day but never boasts about it in his own words. In return, he had only one small request for all of us: a Congress-mukt Bharat. And I’m sorry to say, as a nation, we have failed miserably in this.
As the Karnataka elections and the recent bypoll results showed, not only is India far from being Congress-mukt, the entire Opposition is ganging up against one man. And you all are sitting quietly and watching like Gandhiji’s monkeys? After all that he has done for you, if you can’t even ensure another five years of Achhe Din in 2019, I must say you are not fit to remain in this country. I suggest you pack off to Pakistan and while you are there, don’t forget to watch ‘Veeradi Veera Wedding’ with your jihadi grandmother.
The Age of Perversion
Tabish Khair
We exist in a world where capital has become an obsession. And we are the perverts of free-floating ‘god-like’ capital
The period we are living through has been dubbed an Age of Fundamentalism, of Extremism, of Intolerance, etc. These are all appropriate descriptions. But if I had to choose a tag, I would call it the Age of Perversion.
An overbearing perversion
I do not use ‘perversion’ in its ordinary sense of ‘deviation from normal or accepted behaviour’. Simple deviation is not sufficient (and not necessarily bad) if it is not of an obsessive nature. What characterises a pervert is not the choice of a different option, but an obsession with only that option. The hallmark of an overbearing perversion is that no matter what one says, the pervert sees it only in terms of his/her obsession. Examples? Here you go.
A Muslim girl is raped in a Hindu temple, which causes justified outrage in many Hindu circles, but seems to leave some circles untouched. These miraculously untouched people not only make excuses but even point a finger (without any evidence) at Muslims, or, what they associate with Muslims, Pakistan. A post on Facebook states that Muslim clerics rape with impunity in their institutions. Apart from the wide sweep of its xenophobic purview — and I say so without denying that there can be serious problems in all male-controlled institutions, whether Hindu, Muslim or non-religious — I am shaken by the obsession of the person. No matter what the evidence, such a person can only blame ‘Muslims’. This is a perversion.
Versions of this exist elsewhere too. Go online and look at what many Islamists — who form only a small percentage of Muslims, just as Bhakts form only a small percentage of Hindus — have to say about the U.S., the Central Intelligence Agency, or Israel. No matter what happens, they point a finger at one or all of these three usual suspects. As their easy accusation is far in excess of any evidence, what this indicates is a perversion. Or look at hardcore Republicans: they are capable of blaming even the sinking of the Titanic on either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, or both! This too is a perversion.
What has happened to so many people in our age? Why has there been a decided increase in what can only be seen as obsessive perversions?
One can point to the nature of the Internet — the easy circulation of ‘alternative facts’, unmediated by any real expertise and effective counterchecking. But this is more symptom than explanation. Surely, there is something in us as an age that predisposes us towards such obsessive perversions, so that we seek on the Internet (and elsewhere) only ‘facts’ that suit our singular version of the complex reality out there? What is this ‘something’? Why has it become so extensive that it is changing the political character of entire countries?
The nature of capital
The main explanation is the nature of capital, especially now, when capital is no longer embedded, as it was under classical capitalism, in production and labour. The ‘freer’ capital gets from human labour, the more of an obsession it becomes. If 19th century critics (and even some conservative defenders) of capitalism had warned against the tendency of capital to impoverish other human values and relations, then, today, we have crossed that threshold. Everything has been ‘capitalised’, and capital, unlike money, is no longer just a medium of exchange or a social relation. It seems to be all there is under neo-liberalism. It seems to exist on its own. It is everywhere and nowhere. It reproduces itself. It dominates everything else. It obsesses.
This fact lurks under the surface of governmental actions in all countries, ranging from the U.S. and India to China. Governments defend, primarily, the interests of capital, even by cutting services and causing problems to citizens. Donald Trump’s government is currently being accused of running up trillions in deficit by providing huge tax cuts to the top 5%, and then trying to balance that deficit by cutting necessary services available to the other 95%. But versions of this ‘balancing’ act exist in almost every country in the world: as long as free-floating ‘capital’ is happy, governments can live with their (dirty) consciences, and probably win the next election!
We exist in a world where capital — diminishingly connected to labour and production and no longer primarily a medium of exchange — has become an obsession. It has reduced everything else, usurped the world. We are the perverts of free-floating ‘god-like’ capital. And this is our ‘natural’ state; we cannot really question it. We internalise its structures — and transpose them. Is it a surprise, then, that so many of us succumb to placebo perversions?
The other, smaller explanation is the nature of politics today. Given the kind of world we live in, politicians, operating on quasi-democratic platforms, prefer to cater to the perversions of their voters, which are easier to use as enticement: offer the pervert a titillating picture of his perversion, and you can lead him by the nose. Hence, we have politicians who put all the blame on one obsession – the CIA, Israel, Iran, Russia, Nehru, the Pope, immigrants, Muslims.
The period we are living through has been dubbed an Age of Fundamentalism, of Extremism, of Intolerance, etc. These are all appropriate descriptions. But if I had to choose a tag, I would call it the Age of Perversion.
An overbearing perversion
I do not use ‘perversion’ in its ordinary sense of ‘deviation from normal or accepted behaviour’. Simple deviation is not sufficient (and not necessarily bad) if it is not of an obsessive nature. What characterises a pervert is not the choice of a different option, but an obsession with only that option. The hallmark of an overbearing perversion is that no matter what one says, the pervert sees it only in terms of his/her obsession. Examples? Here you go.
A Muslim girl is raped in a Hindu temple, which causes justified outrage in many Hindu circles, but seems to leave some circles untouched. These miraculously untouched people not only make excuses but even point a finger (without any evidence) at Muslims, or, what they associate with Muslims, Pakistan. A post on Facebook states that Muslim clerics rape with impunity in their institutions. Apart from the wide sweep of its xenophobic purview — and I say so without denying that there can be serious problems in all male-controlled institutions, whether Hindu, Muslim or non-religious — I am shaken by the obsession of the person. No matter what the evidence, such a person can only blame ‘Muslims’. This is a perversion.
Versions of this exist elsewhere too. Go online and look at what many Islamists — who form only a small percentage of Muslims, just as Bhakts form only a small percentage of Hindus — have to say about the U.S., the Central Intelligence Agency, or Israel. No matter what happens, they point a finger at one or all of these three usual suspects. As their easy accusation is far in excess of any evidence, what this indicates is a perversion. Or look at hardcore Republicans: they are capable of blaming even the sinking of the Titanic on either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, or both! This too is a perversion.
What has happened to so many people in our age? Why has there been a decided increase in what can only be seen as obsessive perversions?
One can point to the nature of the Internet — the easy circulation of ‘alternative facts’, unmediated by any real expertise and effective counterchecking. But this is more symptom than explanation. Surely, there is something in us as an age that predisposes us towards such obsessive perversions, so that we seek on the Internet (and elsewhere) only ‘facts’ that suit our singular version of the complex reality out there? What is this ‘something’? Why has it become so extensive that it is changing the political character of entire countries?
The nature of capital
The main explanation is the nature of capital, especially now, when capital is no longer embedded, as it was under classical capitalism, in production and labour. The ‘freer’ capital gets from human labour, the more of an obsession it becomes. If 19th century critics (and even some conservative defenders) of capitalism had warned against the tendency of capital to impoverish other human values and relations, then, today, we have crossed that threshold. Everything has been ‘capitalised’, and capital, unlike money, is no longer just a medium of exchange or a social relation. It seems to be all there is under neo-liberalism. It seems to exist on its own. It is everywhere and nowhere. It reproduces itself. It dominates everything else. It obsesses.
This fact lurks under the surface of governmental actions in all countries, ranging from the U.S. and India to China. Governments defend, primarily, the interests of capital, even by cutting services and causing problems to citizens. Donald Trump’s government is currently being accused of running up trillions in deficit by providing huge tax cuts to the top 5%, and then trying to balance that deficit by cutting necessary services available to the other 95%. But versions of this ‘balancing’ act exist in almost every country in the world: as long as free-floating ‘capital’ is happy, governments can live with their (dirty) consciences, and probably win the next election!
We exist in a world where capital — diminishingly connected to labour and production and no longer primarily a medium of exchange — has become an obsession. It has reduced everything else, usurped the world. We are the perverts of free-floating ‘god-like’ capital. And this is our ‘natural’ state; we cannot really question it. We internalise its structures — and transpose them. Is it a surprise, then, that so many of us succumb to placebo perversions?
The other, smaller explanation is the nature of politics today. Given the kind of world we live in, politicians, operating on quasi-democratic platforms, prefer to cater to the perversions of their voters, which are easier to use as enticement: offer the pervert a titillating picture of his perversion, and you can lead him by the nose. Hence, we have politicians who put all the blame on one obsession – the CIA, Israel, Iran, Russia, Nehru, the Pope, immigrants, Muslims.
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