Thoughtful Negotiation Principles

 

Bagga or Mevani, an unlawful arrest is just that. But tell that to Indians picking sides

Yogendra Yadav in The Print


Principles be damned, whose side are you on? This seems to be the ruling philosophy of our public life. We all talk about principles, we invoke norms, we cite rules — but only after choosing whom to support. Rarely do we allow our judgement about who is right or wrong to be touched by the principles, norms or rules we extoll. No wonder, no one takes any proclamation of principles seriously.

As someone who is a stickler for procedures, I have often been at the receiving end of this sorry side of our public life. No one is willing to entertain a suspicion that I might have said something because it is right, correct or fair. It is not just our political life, which is especially charged at this moment. I have faced the same reaction in academia, government institutions as well as social movements. If you object to a proposal by a “friend” just because it is a poor proposal, you are sure to risk your friendship. If you support something right done or said by someone from the other camp, tongues start wagging — zaroor kuchh setting hai! That is what happened when I spoke up against hoisting of religious flag inside the Red Fort on 26 January, or against lynching of a Dalit Sikh man at Singhu border by some Nihangs. My visit to the family of a BJP worker who died at Lakhimpur Kheri is still held up as a proof of lack of loyalty to the cause.

So I was prepared for the usual reactions when I tweeted welcoming the Punjab and Haryana High Court order staying the arrest of BJP member Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga until 6 July. My tweet simply said: “The order should be welcomed, no matter what our opinion about the person. Sending police to arrest someone on a tweet is not done. Be it Jignesh Mevani or Rana couple, Alka Lamba or Disha Ravi, it is unethical and illegal to use police to torment political opponents.” You can check my timeline for the replies I received. The usual trolling was joined by AAP supporters, no less vicious than BJP ones — who assumed that I was taking out khundak (grudge) against Arvind Kejriwal. (As and when I support something the AAP does, it is read as a sign of a wish to come back.)

Looking beyond the personal antics

Many critics made valid points: that what happened to Bagga was nothing compared to what BJP governments have done to their critics, that the courts were far from consistent in protecting other victims in his position. Some of them assumed that I had forgotten Bagga’s past, especially his leading a physical assault on my friend Prashant Bhushan. Some of them insisted that given his low-grade trolling, the Punjab police had good reasons to give him its famous dose.

Without doubt, Tajinder Singh Bagga is what in polite English you’d call a ‘disagreeable’ character. The thesaurus offers you less polite options to choose from: rude, nasty, obnoxious, repugnant, disgusting. Worse, we don’t even know if this public persona is his real self. All we know is his reel self on social media. All we know is that he has made a political career and business out of attacking — physically and verbally — those targeted by the BJP. We just know him as yet another cardboard character — straight from a cartoon strip — that has arrived in our public life to meet the ever-rising demand for hatred, contrived and real.

How do you deal with someone like him? Ideally, he should be ignored. Stop feeding people like him with negative attention and they perish. Or, you could turn him into a meme, as satirist @roflGandhi has done, much to my delight. Or you could refute him — an ineffective and unwise option, to my mind — through fact-checking or counter-trolling. But can you set the police after him? That is the operational question in this instance.

Just consider the facts of the case. In March this year, Bagga wrote a nasty tweet, since deleted, in response to Arvind Kejriwal’s speech in Delhi assembly questioning the BJP’s promotion of the movie The Kashmir Files: “When 10 lakh ***** are born, one Kejriwal takes birth”. Disgustingly provocative the post certainly was. But would you say it is “criminal intimidation” or “promoting enmity between communities”? These are the charges under which the Punjab police, following a complaint from a local AAP functionary, booked Bagga. He dodged police summons to come to Punjab for “questioning”, a euphemism for mental and physical torture. The Punjab police, ever so focused on this one FIR, landed in Delhi to arrest him.

The drama that followed, involving Punjab, Delhi, and Haryana police, can only be called a farce worse than Bagga’s antics. The National Commission on Minorities, conspicuously silent on bulldozing of Muslim-owned houses and shops, was peeved at Bagga not being allowed to tie his turban. When the court opened at midnight for him, India’s criminal justice system looked like a joke. The Punjab and Haryana High Court order was a welcome end to this prolonged and pathetic public spectacle.

Noticing a nation-wide trend

This drama is being played all over the country, in what Shekhar Gupta calls Mutually Assured Detention. While the BJP leads in targeting its critics with the help of agencies, mainstream media and social media, the opposition-led governments have also taken a leaf out of the BJP’s book. They, too, use the standard recipe: file a frivolous complaint, slap draconian charges in the FIR, use the police to go after the target and teach them a lesson. The job is done before the case ever comes up for trial in a court of law.

That is why I cite the case of Jignesh Mevani. Now, it seems ridiculous to compare Mevani’s fight for justice and his courage of conviction with Baggas of the world. My point here is to remind us that the insidious trick used by the BJP in Mevani’s case is not different from that used by the AAP in the case of Bagga. Now that the AAP controls a police force for the first time (Punjab’s), it is happy to misuse it exactly as other governments. They have also targeted Kumar Vishwas and Alka Lamba on similar trumped up charges.

The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra is no different, as the recent case of MP Navneet Rana and her MLA-husband Ravi Rana demonstrates. Their proposed gimmick of reading Hanuman Chalisa outside the private residence of the Chief Minister could at the most call for preventive detention. But arrest under charges of sedition and spreading hatred between communities is plainly ridiculous. Such vindictive actions cast a shadow on other cases — the one against TV anchor Aman Chopra, for example — where the charge of spreading enmity between communities appear to be serious and worthy of a criminal trial.

Hence my plea to all those who are concerned about the endangered constitutional fiction called the Rule of Law: can we stick to principles, irrespective of the persons involved? Or am I whistling in the dark?

We accept that Russian bombs can provoke a terror backlash. Ours can too

Mehdi Hasan in The Guardian


 

‘Isn’t it odd that in the case of Russia, western governments have been keen to link Vladimir Putin’s – and only Vladimir Putin’s – foreign policy to terrorist violence?’ Illustration: Sébastien Thibault



“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see,” wrote Ayn Rand in her novel The Fountainhead. That there is a link, a connection, between the west’s military interventions in the Middle East and terrorist attacks against the west, that violence begets violence, is “glaringly evident” to anyone with open eyes, if not open minds.

Yet over the past 14 years, too many of us have “decided not to see”. From New York to Madrid to London, any public utterance of the words “foreign” and “policy” in the aftermath of a terrorist attack has evoked paroxysms of outrage from politicians and pundits alike.

The response to the atrocities in Paris has followed the same pattern. Derided by a former Labour minister as “west-hating fury chimps”, the UK’s Stop the War coalition removed from its website a piece that blamed the rise of Islamic State (Isis) and the Paris attacks on “deliberate policies and actions undertaken by the United States and its allies”. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, scrapped a speech in which he was due to say that Britain’s “disastrous wars” have “increased, not diminished, the threats to our own national security”. Such arguments are verboten in our public discourse.

Isn’t it odd, then, that in the case of Russia, western governments have been keen to link Vladimir Putin’s – and only Vladimir Putin’s – foreign policy to terrorist violence? On 1 October the US government and its allies issued a joint statement declaring that the Russian president’s decision to intervene in Syria would “only fuel more extremism and radicalisation”. Yes, you heard them: it’ll “fuel” it.

Moscow’s bombing campaign will “lead to further radicalisation and increased terrorism”, claimed David Cameron on 4 October. Note the words “lead to”. Speaking at a Nato summit on 8 October the US defence secretary, Ashton Carter, warned of the “consequences for Russia itself, which is rightly fearful of attacks”. Got that? “Rightly fearful”.

And, in the days since the crash of the Russian Metrojet airliner in Egypt on 31 October, which killed 224 civilians, commentators have queued up to join the dots between Russia’s actions in Syria and this alleged terrorist attack by Isis. On a BBC panel discussion the Telegraph’s Janet Daley referred to the crash as “a direct consequence of [Russia’s] involvement in Syria”, adding: “[Putin] has perhaps incited this terrorist incident on Russian civilians.”

Compare and contrast Daley’s remarks on the downing of Flight 9268 with her reaction to the Paris attacks. Rather than accusing President Hollande of “inciting” terrorism against the people of France, or calling the carnage a “direct consequence” of French involvement in Syria, she took aim at anyone who might dare draw attention to the country’s military interventions in Muslim-majority countries such as Libya, Mali and, yes, Syria.

“If there is any need to argue about these matters, it should come at some other time,” she wrote, because “the French people did not deserve this”, and “it is wicked and irresponsible to suggest otherwise”. (To quote one of the leading foreign policy sages of our time, Phoebe Buffay of Friends: “Hello, kettle? This is pot. You’re black.”)

If Isis did bring down the Russian airliner, then of course it would be madness to pretend it wasn’t linked to Putin’s military campaign on behalf of the dictator of Damascus. Yet it would be equally insane to pretend that the horror in Paris had nothing at all to do with France’s recent military interventions in the Middle East and west Africa.

Yes, the attackers in the Bataclan concert hall chanted Allahu Akbar as they opened fire on the crowd, but they were also heard saying: “What you are doing in Syria? You are going to pay for it now.” Yes, Isis’s official statement of responsibility referred to Paris as “the capital of prostitution and obscenity”, but it also singled out the French government for leading a “Crusader campaign” and “striking the Muslims … with their planes”.

To understand political violence requires an understanding of political grievances; to blame terrorism only on religious ideology or medieval mindsets is short-sighted and self-serving. The inconvenient truth is that geopolitics is governed as much as is physics by Newton’s third law of motion: “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The CIA, back in the 1950s, even coined a term – “blowback” – to describe the unintended negative consequences, for US civilians, of US military operations abroad.

Today, when it comes to Russia, an “official enemy”, we understand and embrace the concept of blowback. When it comes to our own countries, to the west, we become the child in the playground, sticking our fingers in our ears and singing “La la la, I can’t hear you.”

You can argue that French – or for that matter UK or US – military action in the Middle East is a legitimate and unavoidable response to the rise of a terrorist mini-state; but you can’t argue that actions don’t have consequences.

The former chief of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit, Michael Scheuer, told me in 2011 that “people are going to ... bomb us because they don’t like what we’ve done”. In an interview for al-Jazeera in July, the retired US general Michael Flynn, who ran the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2013-15, admitted to me that “the more bombs we drop, that just … fuels the conflict”.

It is a view backed by the Pentagon’s Defence Science Board, which observed as long as ago as 1997: “Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States.”

Let me be clear: to explain is not to excuse; explication is not justification. There is no grievance on earth that can justify the wanton slaughter of innocent men, women and children, in France or anywhere else.

The savagery of Isis is perhaps without parallel in the modern era. But the point is that it did not emerge from nowhere: as the US president himself has conceded,Isis “grew out of our invasion” of Iraq.

Yet we avert our gaze from the “glaringly evident” and pretend that “they” – the Russians, the Iranians, the Chinese – are attacked for their policies while “we” –Europe, the west, the liberal democracies – are attacked only for our principles. This is the simplistic fantasy, the geopolitical fairytale, that we tell ourselves. It gives us solace and strength in the wake of terrorist atrocities. But it does nothing to stop the next attack.

The Guardian's pessimistic take on Corbyn let our readers down

Ed Vulliamy in The Guardian

For many of our readers and potential readers, the Labour leadership result was a singular moment of hope, even euphoria. It was the first time many of our young readers felt anything like relevance to, let alone empowerment within, a political system that has alienated them utterly.

The Observer – a broad church, to which I’m doggedly loyal – responded to Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide with an editorial foreseeing inevitable failure at a general election of the mandate on which he won. For what it’s worth, I felt we let down many readers and others by not embracing at least the spirit of the result, propelled as it was by moral principles of equality, peace and justice. These are no longer tap-room dreams but belong to a mass movement in Britain, as elsewhere in Europe.

It came as a disappointment – as I suspect it did to others who supported Corbyn, or were interested – to find such a consensus ready to pour cold water on the parade. To behold so little curiosity towards, let alone sympathy with, why this happened.

Of course the rest of the media were in on the offensive. Our sister paper the Guardian had endorsed a candidate who lost, humiliated; the Tory press barons performed to script. Here was a chance for the Observer to stand out from the crowd. But instead, we conjoined the chorus with our own – admittedly more progressive – version of this obsession with electoral strategy with little regard to what Corbyn says about the principles of justice, peace and equality (or less inequality). It came across as churlish, I’m sure, to many readers on a rare day of something different.

I accept that we are a reformist paper, and within those parameters one has to get elected. But that should not mean a digging-in by, and with, the parliamentary inside-baseball Labour party whose days and ways of presenting politics like corporate management selling a product (or explaining a product fault) have just been soundly rejected by its membership. Why embed with MPs in a parliament no one trusts against the democratic vote outside it?

And anyway, what if? Who, five years ago, would have predicted Syriza’s victory in Greece or bet on Podemos taking Madrid and Barcelona, now preparing for a role in government? It’s not as though the Observer’s accumulated editorials disagree that much with Corbyn.

During Ed Miliband’s Labour, the Observer robustly questioned the health of capitalism – our columnist Will Hutton calls it “turbo-capitalism”. We urged support for a living wage and the working poor, and the likes of Robert Reich and David Simon have filled our pages with more radical critiques of capitalism than Corbyn’s.

Anyway, how much of what Corbyn argues do most voters disagree with, if they stop to think? Do people approve of bewildering, high tariffs set by the cartel of energy companies, while thousands of elderly people die each winter of cold-related diseases? Do students and parents from middle- and low-income families want tuition fees?

Do people like paying ludicrous fares for signal-failure, delays and overcrowding on inept railways? Do people urge tax evasion by multinationals and billionaires, which they then subsidise with cuts to the NHS? Post-cold war, who exactly are we supposed to kill en masse with these expensive nuclear missiles? What’s so good about the things Corbyn wants to drastically change?

Even more fundamental is the appeal to principle and morality – peace, justice and internationalism – which drove the Labour grassroots vote, and was spoken at the rally for refugees which Corbyn made his first engagement and for which this newspaper stands absolutely. Why not embrace those principles, or at least show an interest in the fact that hundreds of thousands of people just did? Which better reflects the Britain we want: Corbyn’s “open your hearts” or Cameron’s “swarm”?

The parliamentary bubble – and our editorial – calculate that we cannot fundamentally change Britain on the basis of these aspirations, even if many people yearn to. In the acceptance speech, Corbyn should have appealed beyond the party in which he is steeped; perhaps he too inhabits a different echo-chamber.

But this isn’t about Corbyn, it’s about why he’s suddenly there. And what an appalling lesson to draw: someone is overwhelmingly elected to falteringly but seriously challenge that stasis and order of things – by urging peace, justice, republic and equality – only to be evicted by the deep system into a lethal ice-storm the moment he leaves the tent, like Captain Oates, though not of his own volition.

And even if middle England is more adverse to radical politics than middle Spain or Greece, does that mean we have to align with this mainstream stasis, just because it is so? What’s the point of principles if their trade-off for power is a principle in itself? Why have principles at all?

The legal philosopher Costas Douzinas argues for a separation of words: using “politics” to describe horse-trading between parties, which feign differences but actually agree, and “the political” to describe antagonisms that really exist in society. On that basis, why start with the stasis of “politics” to approach “the political”, rather than the reverse: invoke “the political” to challenge the stasis of “politics”? Especially alongside Greece, Spain and elsewhere.

Instead of a stirring leader, which did not have to endorse Corbyn but could celebrate the spirit of the vote along with those who delivered it, we’ve left a lot of good, loyal and decent people who read our newspaper feeling betrayed.

“There’s something happening in here / What it is ain’t exactly clear”, wrote Stephen Stills in 1967. It’s a good description of where we are with all this – we don’t as yet have the map whence this came, where it’s going or even what it is.

Dave Crosby sang: “Don’t try to get yourself elected” (from a mighty number called “Long Time Gone”). Along with almost half this country, I was inclined to agree, but Corbyn’s election throws Crosby’s dictum into question, just as to cut Corbyn down would prove Crosby right. “We can change the world” sang Graham Nash. But are we only allowed to try if middle England, the media and parliament try too?

Is the cost of standing up for principle too high? Of fact, procedure, and principle

by Peter Ronald Desouza in The Hindu

Is the cost of standing up for the principle too high, or is it necessary to stand up for them regardless of the cost since it would take society to new and higher morality?

Like all things Indian, small events appear to have large implications. The curious Indian, with a few thousand years standing behind her, finds connections and controversies in everything. Questions naturally appear. For example, does the Gopal Subramanium elevation controversy have wider implications for the polity? Must we see it as telling us something about our public culture or is it just a one-day spectacle, permitting us, now that it has passed, to go back to business as usual? Is the nonchalance on the issue because of fear or because of indifference? Because legal practitioners have dominated the debates so far, we have been cautious since this is a zone where angels fear to tread. But when the demons of doubt will not go away, the issues require detailing. These concern matters of fact, of procedure, and of principle.

The process

Let us begin with the facts. The practice followed by the collegium of the higher courts, before a candidate is recommended for elevation and a panel of names is sent to the government for appointment, is as follows. The Chief Justice initiates a consultation with the legal fraternity. Speaking in confidence to senior advocates and fellow judges, to both the bar and the bench, a long list of possible candidates for elevation is prepared. Based on these recommendations the Chief Justice then invites the candidates to determine their willingness to be considered. If the candidates are willing then they are required to furnish details about themselves, such as their contributions to the law especially with respect to important cases, the extent of their legal practice, their annual income, their legal history, etc. These details are then processed by the court administration, during which time, I suppose, the court gets inputs from relevant investigating agencies about whether they have any legal proceedings against the candidate, etc. other inputs that may make them ineligible for consideration.

Based on (i) the recommendations of the legal fraternity, (ii) the willingness of the candidate, and (iii) the hard data relating to the legal practice and public standing of the individual, the file is placed before the collegium. The collegium then scrutinises the information on record and, based on the highest standards of judicial scrutiny, arrives at a decision on whom to recommend and whom to ignore, from the names before it. Not every name that comes up through this process gets the approval of the collegium. The shortlist prepared by the collegium is then sent up to the government for its approval. This I am told is the standard process that is followed. Gopal Subramanium’s case, I suppose, went through the same process.

There are many issues that need clarification now. Let us list them here. Let us begin with the issue of sequence. (i) When was the collegium’s due diligence completed? (ii) When did it send its recommended panel of names? (iii) When did the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) give their reports which made him ineligible? (iv) Was it before the collegium considered the file, or after? (v) If before, were the intelligence reports presented to the collegium? (vi) If yes, then assuming that the reports were considered by the collegium, can they be regarded as germane to the appointment after the panel is sent to the government? (vii) If not, why were they concealed from the collegium? (viii) Does it constitute contempt by the CBI and the IB of the Supreme Court? (ix) When was the file sent to the President for his seal of approval? (x) How long did he take to grant approval? (xi) What were the reasons he gave to segregate the names into those he had approved and those that were to be kept in abeyance? (xii) Since this act of segregation has constitutional implications, did the President consult constitutional experts, as is the practice, or did he rely on his own wisdom? (xiii) If he did consult constitutional experts, who were they and what was their advice, and if he did not why did he not do so?

Fair and transparent

The principle for such empanelment was enunciated by the Supreme Court in the case of P.J. Thomas, nominee for the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), whose candidature was rejected in 2011 when it described in detail the process to be followed in the appointment to a position of authority. Appointments to the Supreme Court, I expect, fall into this category. Here is what the judgment said — (vi) The empanelling authority, while forwarding the names of the empanelled officers/persons, shall enclose complete information, material and data of the concerned officer/person, whether favourable or adverse. Nothing relevant or material should be withheld from the Selection Committee. It will not only be useful but would also serve larger public interest and enhance public confidence if the contemporaneous service record and acts of outstanding performance of the officer under consideration, even with adverse remarks is specifically brought to the notice of the Selection Committee. (vii) The Selection Committee may adopt a fair and transparent process of consideration of the empanelled officers.

Complete information, including fair and adverse comments, is a necessary condition. Also fair and transparent process. I suppose the collegium, the government and the President followed these guidelines.

Separation of powers

Assuming complete information was available to the collegium, we now have to consider the contrasting positions of the collegium and the government. Based on the same facts considered by the collegium, the government is at liberty to give an alternative reading and argue for the unsuitability of a particular candidate. This is legitimate since the political lens of the government may be at variance with that of the collegium. The disagreement, at this stage, has to be on political grounds and not on facts. The procedure then requires the government to place its disagreement before the collegium which can either restate its earlier recommendation or revise it in the light of the arguments made.

This second stage is constitutionally sacrosanct since contained in it is the core principle of the separation of powers. The collegium has to deliberate on this contrary opinion of the government and decide whether, by accepting or rejecting it, the independence of the judiciary is eroded or enhanced. The decision that emerges from this review must indicate where the power of decision in the last instance, lies, with the government or with the court. Both parties must give clear reasons for their positions so that the final decision taken can educate the public on the core issue of separation of powers. The government’s reasons and the collegium’s views, as well as the facts of the matter, should be made public to serve, as the Supreme Court in the P.J. Thomas case said, the larger public interest.

We now come to the question of suitability. Was Gopal Subramanium unsuitable because of some “actions” of his, which were not kosher, i.e., meeting persons that he should not have met when he was Solicitor General, or was he unsuitable because of a “disposition,” i.e., shutting his mind out for an hour and praying as he was alleged to have done when he was investigating the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple gold case? From leaked reports in the press it appears that both “actions” and “disposition” made him unsuitable. This is puzzling. How was he then the lead counsel of choice for both the IB and the CBI? How was he amicus curiae for the Supreme Court in several cases such as the Bachpan Bachao Andolan case, the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, and the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple case. If he was good enough to be amicus curiae, why is he unsuitable now?

Basic issues for democracy

Three basic issues for our democracy emerge from this controversy. The first is the issue of public attitude. Are we prepared to let it lie, to blow over because another headline has grabbed its place or are we prepared to interrogate it further? This is not a partisan issue, of UPA versus NDA, since it perhaps points to a growing disregard for our constitutional culture. When the confidentiality of the collegium’s recommendation is treated lightly, when the intelligence reports are leaked, when the President’s confidential actions are public knowledge, we have reason to be concerned about the disregard for constitutional propriety. Will those who leaked information be punished to restore the sanctity of the process? Or are we moving toward what Paulo Friere calls the “culture of silence”?

The second issue concerns the doctrine of separation of powers. By segregating the names, did the President give primacy to the executive over the judiciary? Was this a question of political expediency trumping constitutional principles? With whom should the final decision, on who should be elevated, lie? The executive or the judicial fraternity? Since the Emergency, when it had touched its nadir, our democracy has been struggling to restore the balance between the executive and judiciary. Does the Gopal Subramanium case suggest that the pendulum has begun to swing again?

The third issue concerns Gopal Subramanium’s withdrawal of consent. By resigning he prevented the issue from developing into a constitutional face-off between the executive and the judiciary. Ronald Dworkin, the great legal and political philosopher, in Taking Rights Seriously, recommends such a face-off since he believes that only in such a situation will we be able to distinguish between just and unjust laws. We hope that the moment has not passed for the collegium to enunciate on the principle of finality. Mr. Subramanium’s withdrawal also highlights one of the knottiest problems of political philosophy. Should he have been pragmatic, and withdrawn to fight another battle, or principled, since a foundational principle was at stake? Is the cost of standing up for the principle too high, undermining other values that are also important, or is it necessary to stand up for them regardless of the cost since it would take society to new and higher morality?

Aung San Suu Kyi did not go to England to see her husband who had terminal cancer, when she was offered the choice, because she would have had to abandon the political struggle and leave the country. He passed away. She did not meet him. Yudhisthira told a little lie and won the war.

Beware of Corporate Psychopaths

Brian Basham in The Independent

Thursday, 29 December 2011

Outlook Over the years I've met my fair share of monsters – rogue individuals, for the most part. But as regulation in the UK and the US has loosened its restraints, the monsters have proliferated.

In a paper recently published in the Journal of Business Ethics entitled "The Corporate Psychopaths: Theory of the Global Financial Crisis", Clive R Boddy identifies these people as psychopaths.

"They are," he says, "simply the 1 per cent of people who have no conscience or empathy." And he argues: "Psychopaths, rising to key senior positions within modern financial corporations, where they are able to influence the moral climate of the whole organisation and yield considerable power, have largely caused the [banking] crisis'.

And Mr Boddy is not alone. In Jon Ronson's widely acclaimed book The Psychopath Test, Professor Robert Hare told the author: "I should have spent some time inside the Stock Exchange as well. Serial killer psychopaths ruin families. Corporate and political and religious psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies."

Cut to a pleasantly warm evening in Bahrain. My companion, a senior UK investment banker and I, are discussing the most successful banking types we know and what makes them tick. I argue that they often conform to the characteristics displayed by social psychopaths. To my surprise, my friend agrees.

He then makes an astonishing confession: "At one major investment bank for which I worked, we used psychometric testing to recruit social psychopaths because their characteristics exactly suited them to senior corporate finance roles."

Here was one of the biggest investment banks in the world seeking psychopaths as recruits.
Mr Ronson spoke to scores of psychologists about their understanding of the damage that psychopaths could do to society. None of those psychologists could have imagined, I'm sure, the existence of a bank that used the science of spotting them as a recruiting mechanism.

I've never met Dick Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers and the architect of its downfall, but I've seen him on video and it's terrifying. He snarled to Lehman staff that he wanted to "rip out their [his competitors] hearts and eat them before they died". So how did someone like Mr Fuld get to the top of Lehman? You don't need to see the video to conclude he was weird; you could take a little more time and read a 2,200-page report by Anton Valukas, the Chicago-based lawyer hired by a US court to investigate Lehman's failure. Mr Valukas revealed systemic chicanery within the bank; he described management failures and a destructive, internal culture of reckless risk-taking worthy of any psychopath.

So why wasn't Mr Fuld spotted and stopped? I've concluded it's the good old question of nature and nurture but with a new interpretation. As I see it, in its search for never-ending growth, the financial services sector has actively sought out monsters with natures like Mr Fuld and nurtured them with bonuses and praise.

We all understand that sometimes businesses have to be cut back to ensure their survival, and where those cuts should fall is as relevant to a company as it is, today, to the UK economy; should it bear down upon the rich or the poor?

Making those cuts doesn't make psychopaths of the cutters, but the financial sector's lack of remorse for the pain it encourages people to inflict is purely psychopathic. Surely the action of cutting should be a matter for sorrow and regret? People's lives are damaged, even destroyed. However, that's not how the financial sector sees it.

Take Sir Fred Goodwin of RBS, for example. Before he racked up a corporate loss of £24.1bn, the highest in UK history, he was idolised by the City. In recognition of his work in ruthlessly cutting costs at Clydesdale Bank he got the nickname "Fred the Shred", and he played that for all it was worth. He was later described as "a corporate Attila", a title of which any psychopath would be proud.

Mr Ronson reports: "Justice departments and parole boards all over the world have accepted Hare's contention that psychopaths are quite simply incurable and everyone should concentrate their energies instead on learning how to root them out."

But, far from being rooted out, they are still in place and often in positions of even greater power.
As Mr Boddy warns: "The very same corporate psychopaths, who probably caused the crisis by their self-seeking greed and avarice, are now advising governments on how to get out of the crisis. Further, if the corporate psychopaths theory of the global financial crisis is correct, then we are now far from the end of the crisis. Indeed, it is only the end of the beginning."

I became familiar with psychopaths early in life. They were the hard men who terrorised south-east London when I was growing up. People like "Mad" Frankie Fraser and the Richardson brothers. They were what we used to call "red haze" men, and they were frightening because they attacked with neither fear, mercy nor remorse.

Regarding Messrs Hare, Ronson, Boddy and others, I've realised that some psychopaths "forge careers in corporations. The group is called Corporate Psychopaths". They are polished and plausible, but that doesn't make them any less dangerous.

In attempting to understand the complexities of what went wrong in the years leading to 2008, I've developed a rule: "In an unregulated world, the least-principled people rise to the top." And there are none who are less principled than corporate psychopaths.

Brian Basham is a veteran City PR man, entrepreneur and journalist