G for Government

When the state is ruled by a mob, good lives are at risk. That's where a government is born in the state. A government is the organization, or agency through which a political unit exercises its authority, controls and administers public policy, and directs and controls the actions of its members or subjects. I am always amazed by the working nature of the government and its obsession with the authority and power.

Mikhail Bakunin, the 19th-century Russian anarchist, put it best : “A very grave danger to a person’s moral life is the habit of giving orders.” That habit of giving order and following it without questioning is trade mark of our governmental organization. Myth : The old structures are simply untouchable. This is the one of myths that prevail in our government corridors for outsiders.Even Lord Curzon has complained, "Round and Round like the .... revolutions of the earth goes file after file in the bureacratic daily dance, staely, solemn, sure and slow".

Regarding South Asians obsession with governmental power and aspiring feudal as a role model, Pakistani bureaucrat Irfan Hussian expalins : The essence of the feudal ethos is the conviction that he is always right and that he has a God-given right to lord it over his tenants. This attitude has seeped into much of our society to such an extent that when somebody is promoted to head a state organisation, he immediately flexes his authority and reminds everybody who’s boss, quickly forgetting his own days as an unappreciated subordinate.

A government is always personified form of all the people in the nation. So is ours Indian government. Indians have old mindset of scarcity and risk aversion. We accumulate huge foreign reserve and emphasizing stock piles in food grains. We have an obsession with government jobs that give access to social security without any accountability. Our public issue has been focused on privatization and reservations; No one talk about efficiency or accountability here.

The outmoded bureaucracies are incapable of identifying creative solutions. There is simply no alternative to information flow and dismantling the iron curtain.  The essential culture of government is always pervasive, new incentives or not. Much of dynamism and the risk taking is there because there had no set example to follow.

Change is always painful and hard won if it comes through public debate. A people driven transformation of a country holds a particular power; it is irreversible. Idea of making government transparent in processes has been inserted in common mind. It is happening slowly in India through RTI and huge media coverage.

Clean water, good schools, libraries, theatres, cafés, parks and public transport are clearly public goods – and the planet and its people need more of them. Yet no country has ever pursued an economic policy informed by this concept of maximizing public good while eliminating ‘positional goods’. Nothing happens in the world until people involved wanted it to happen.

My Role: I want to give a voice to society, to take up people's emotions and desires and make them resound in sublime form. This idea can prove explosive as soon as society rises up as a unified force. The collective consciousness as the voice of a deeply rooted, suppressed and yet lively humanism always exist in the background of all noises. Among the many insights Bakunin has left us with, here is a gem I have come to hold at the centre of my personal belief system: “To govern is to exploit.”

FootNote : Those who want to know about Indian bureaucrat, there is a blog: babus of India. About The Blogger (Self Description): Its A journalist with over 15 years of experience in covering economics and politics of India, babu blogger passionately follows every lead in India's Raisina Hills. He is now aided by an enthusiastic team from Indian Admin House, a non-profit trust, created to document various facets of Indian administration. A follower of white ambassadors 24X7, he spends quality time in power corridors of Delhi and elsewhere.

Something about Indian economy

There is huge learning resource by PBS here in this weblink. PBS is sharing with us the interview, profiles, essay and debates of great economists, leaders and entrepreneurs of recent 100 years. Commanding Heights. Few of them are 3,4 years old but are worth reading Interviews :Dr. Manmohan Singh , P. Chidambaram and NarayanMurthy.

Featuring India's Honourable Minister of Human Resource Development Shri Kapil Sibal on MIT.


This video is part of the B&K Securities MIT India Forum with featured speaker: Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Indian Planning Commission.


Crash Lecture on Indian Economy 1947- 2010:

Post 1947, Institutional capacities were created. The social institutions and the legal framework for a market economy were put in place. A system of higher education was developed. Entrepreneurial talents and managerial capabilities were fostered. Science and technology was accorded a priority. The capital goods sector was established. Much of this did not exist in colonial India. They all were started from the scratch with weightage given to huge public sector investment.

Then reform is several sectors were stopped completely. The social sector,i.e. Healthcare and primary education was given very low priority in developmental growth. Our independent India was against anything foreign. Its march to self dependency hindered free flow of information and capital flow in the development of nation. But protective economy was the need of those moment. There was need to move ahead and Dr. Manmohan singh predicted it long back in his days at England. Now its time to swing back to socialist reign to capitalsitic nature.

Indian Bureaucracy:

We've all heard, "It's not what you know, it's who you know.

British invented bureaucracy for India, the Indians perfected it. They built a perfect system of such complexity that nobody could penetrate it,nobody could defeat it. It is immensely elaborate and best brain of India working it. Today, RTI is slowly uncovering the hidden veils and making it more transparent. Still accountability part is far from the dream. The Right to Information Act can be regarded as an aberration in view of the government's longstanding penchant for secrecy, which is a colonial-era legacy. IT sector and bollywood succeed because government did not make it as a national priority. It was just investment of smart people in these respective fields. BCCI working very well unlike other sports bodies. Private Sector has mobilized the youths and enable them to be risk taking.

Bureaucracy liked things to be frozen. That showed their power. Hence, you will find government offices to be always either ruled by the books or moulded in favour of corrupt and powerful. As the social, economic or political events become dynamic, the wheel of power shifts to other person. Hence, the static rule of bureaucracy disappear.

My Graduation Years -2

You can get me out of ITBHU but not ITBHU out of me. (asliyat mein bahut muskil se pass hua hoon). Hence, few days of rehabilitation programme end today with this article.

Graduation Years:
Again, a look on events in near history. Probably history was after all, meant to be a study of human consciousness in guilt. Of course, there is always a need to realize something valuable out of the past, that a study about the past is after all a human being’s reverse-troubleshooting guide. Hence, I retrospect about my graduation days again and again. I may be cutting the branch which has helped me to reach this height. Still a flaw in the system can't be supported in the name of promoting few incompetent like me. When I was passing time casually in graduation years, rest of the world was moving with fast pace. I was provided with good teachers, infrastructure, 24 hours uninterrupted supply of Internet, water and electricity in college to support my study. I had misused them un-proportionally in playing LAN games and watching movies. I have taken cinema as a medium of study and academics as a funny event quite neglected one. It was not a mistake but college life doesn't ask for seriousness, it just asks for your little sincerity a week before exam.

There was a great movement of locals in Mehendigunj near Varanasi by people against Coca-Cola. I was not even aware of it at that point of time. There was life out there in university with people coming to study different subjects from all class. I was happy with my limited ecosystem of ITBHU. I had also missed many guest lectures of eminent speakers [ even like Professor Kevin Warwick ] due to lethargy, not mentioning here academic lectures. And I was even worst in academics. My only concern was why my college has not got deserved IIT tag. So, my world was revolving around me only. I was a product of environment or a selfish elite unaware of his responsibilities. I was having cocoon type of life style. I was eyeing on secured IT job depending blindly on the placement records of IT-BHU. If the recession has come 2 years back, I would be literally passing out without any job in hand. Such was my state of affairs. Few positives were there inside me but that are in traces in everyone. Today, I learnt a bitter lesson that immaturity and short sightedness is not dishonesty but not performing to your potential due to laziness is wrong act. In short, a worthless life on priceless freedom.

General Life at ITBHU:
The quality of a university is measured more by the kind of student it turns out than the kind it takes in. An average ITian becomes too casual and consider ITBHU as break of his life. There is lack of seriousness in the atmosphere. Lots of us would have better careers than what we are left standing with today. I think this under utilization of the potential within and resources given is felt somewhere by each of us.

How ITBHU Administration works? :
Our administrative work in IT-BHU or any government college is mostly run by the bureaucratic way, hence its tough to have progress in them. Decisions are taken from the top and imposed on the students. Their is no official platform to raise voice of students except itbhuglobal.org for big issues. Also, dissent is neglected and often taken as indiscipline and disloyalty. Bureaucracy liked things to be frozen. That can show their power & pomp, that can show their status quo. Best example to support this is of Ambassador car. Indians inherited the Ambassador model, decided not to change an iota of the design. Till late 80's, Ambassador was the least innovative company and was much prized possession used by our government.

Hence, you will find government offices to be always either ruled by the books or moulded in favour of corrupt and powerful. The fact is government institutions work on directives from the top. It does not matter, whether they like your idea or not, see merit or not. There is no incentive for them to take risks and improve efficiency. The trick is to lobby at the highest level for reforms. Because if one person at the very top accepts your suggestions it will be accepted and implemented at the way down. No doubt this requires a lot of patience and persuasion, but the effort is well worth it.

Academics:
We have a typical system of studying the subjects which are given by the university and not selected by the students which they like. For an instance the recent Nobel Price winner De. Venkat is a PhD in Physics and got Nobel in Chemistry, can it be possible with our education system in engineering college. The course structure is killing human potential to learn something new and of their choice. IT-BHU has very rigid academic course structure. It needs to rearrange something like IITD undergraduate mechanical engineering programme. Check the number of compulsory core and elective subjects for learning. And now look at academic course structure of ITBHU undergraduate mechanical engineering programme.

We still follow the traditional methodology of teaching. Very few in India have implemented the Case Study, Role Play, Skits, Management games way of teaching. We are here running fully on [lecture] model, not on as proposed [lecture+ tutorial] model. Atanu Dey's article on IIT shocked me and helped me to change my stance on IIT system of education. Our fancy education is funded by denying a very large number of the really poor the opportunity to even get a basic education. Our fees have been a small fraction of the true cost of education. This self-absorbed and delusional state is harmful for the us and the country.

Blast from Past:
On higher education, Banaras Hindu University enquiry committee report 1957 ; Page 325- 348
Committees and commissions in India 1947-1973, Volume II , 1955-1957 By Virendra Kumar.

I Write What I Like.

Usually, I write what I like but was taken back by a witty remark. Vijay Tendulkar has said a gem about writing - “It’s never about the writing. Anyone can write. It is about the observations.” So astute is his observation in this regard. Procrastination is the disease of lazy person like me and preparation of irma is lacking in honest efforts. Bahut ho gayee mere kahani, Ab duniya ke samachar padiye---

Caste: The ongoing session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva looks set to recognize caste- based discrimination as a human rights violation. This is done, despite India's opposition and following Nepal's breaking stand in support on the culturally sensitive issue. Hence, ours dream of caste annihilation is finally getting solid paper work. ( TOI report & Official version in pdf). Thanks Anu for bringing it to my notice.

Rewriting History: Some new studies done on the basis of genome project and anthropology are focusing evolution and human migration at India in new light. Soon our history will be changed with the backing up of more scientific evidence.

1- Most modern Indians descended from South Asians, not invading Central Asian steppe dwellers, a new genetic study reports.

"The finding disputes a long-held theory that a large invasion of central Asians, traveling through a northwest Indian corridor, shaped the language, culture, and gene pool of many modern Indians within the past 10,000 years"

2- Modern humans migrated out of Africa and into India much earlier than once believed, driving older hominids in present-day India to extinction and creating some of the earliest art and architecture, a new study suggests :-

"University of Cambridge researchers Michael Petraglia and Hannah James argue that similar events took place in India when modern humans arrived there about 70,000 years ago."

Attendance Issue: The bureaucrat's way of ensuring accountability is: Make sure people are physically present in the office, whether they work or not. Babushahi pretend to work and show off as they are busy. In most of our colleges only, we apply the bureaucrat's way of ensuring accountability of student by attendance: Make sure students are physically present in the classroom, whether they study or not. I may be wrong in my argument, but the need of min. percentage (75%) of attendance by students is same as new rule of min. 40 hours of work per week by teacher. [Even, Animesh Sir supported my observation]. And the funny point is that most of the teachers ensuring students attendance with tour de force are opposing this rule. Life hits hard, you never know........

Quote of the Day: Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, Mark Twain said, it is time to pause and reflect.