Some Revelations – Part 2

This is a followup to the previous post . Like i said i might end up writing 20 posts in this series. Can’t help writing ! I am mighty impressed with various speakers here that i am hell bent on documenting stuff from those lectures that impressed me a lot

This post is on the 19th Annual E.F. Schumacher lecture in 1999 by Jerry Mander.

This post may appear negative. But i think it is very important for today’s b-schoolers, engineers and everyone else to understand the system they are in and this talk is a good one in that direction ;)

Economic Globalisation: The Era of corporate rule

Jerry Mander holds degrees from Columbia University (in economics) and the Wharton School of Business. He is a writer and activist. Interestingly, one of his most famous books is titled “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television” !!. From the little i could read about the book here and here… I think i can say that the arguments have some stuff in them and can’t be dismissed right away :).

Anyway back to the current lecture..

“The advocates of economic globalization like to describe it as an inevitable process, the result of economic and technological forces that evolved over centuries into their present form, almost as if they were forces of nature. Although global trading activity and concepts of free trade have existed for many centuries, their earlier forms were entirely different from the modern versions in scale, speed, impact, and intent. The modern version of economic globalization did not grow from nature like some kind of weird dominant plant or animal; it is not an accident of evolution but instead emerged directly from a set of institutions and rules created on purpose by human beings for a specific goal: to give primacy to economic—I should say corporate—values above all others“

Very true. Infact, i sometimes wonder why a lot of us take most of the systems of today for granted without questioning any of them. Like Buddha once said, i think we have to question everything around, reason it out and only then accept ;). Ofcourse, you and me accepting the system or not may or may not have any impact on the overall outcome. But that is not reason enough to not have an opinion :P

“The net result is what many of my colleagues call “monoculture“—the global homogenization of culture, lifestyle, economic practice, and ideology with the corresponding sacrifice of local traditions, values, arts, and traditional small-scale economic practices. The days when it was fun to travel to so-called exotic places on the globe are already nearly at an end. Soon every place will look and feel exactly like every place else, with the same restaurant franchises, the same chain hotels, the same clothes and malls and superstores, the same streets crowded with the same cars, the same high-rise architectural expressions, and increasingly the same television programs, music, and art. With every place the same, there will be scarcely a reason ever to leave home. Our lives will be forever deprived“

Though it might sound a bit extreme… I partly agree with this passage. I myself had this feeling when i visited a lot of places. Infact, take out the towns and villages.. most cities in India look similar for me . I have stayed for considerable time on and off in Hyderabad, Pune .. stayed for a couple of months in Delhi, Bengaluru and also visited Mumbai, Chennai etc in periods spanning decades :P . Today, i feel there is this monoculture in most cities. I see a similar monoculture in Lucknow as well. I don’t know whether it is good or bad. But i think it need not necessarily be the only way :)

“The gap between the wealthy and the poor within countries and among countries is rapidly increasing, and globalization accelerates the problem by separating people from their traditional livelihoods and by creating a terrible downward pressure on wages everywhere—including Third World countries, where low wages comprise the only so-called comparative advantage, meaning that if wages are not kept down, there might be no jobs at all“

In the past few months.. these two things interested me the most. In most of my economics classes Ricardo’s Comparative advantage theory is considered as a holy doctrine. I wonder why!  And the thing about losing traditional livelihoods is the reason for the insanely large urban slums we see today :(  Tough times these

“Such is the degree of concentration of wealth that right now the world’s 475 billionaires are collectively worth the combined incomes of the bottom 50 per cent of humanity”

“A recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., shows that American CEOs are now paid, on average, 419 times more than assembly-line workers. That’s the highest ratio in the world.”

This was a 1999 article. From wiki i understand it is now 325 times instead. Not that it makes it any better though :P

“If anyone still clings to the idea that big corporations are more likely to employ the world labor force, to the idea that size begets jobs, here’s another shocking statistic from the Institute for Policy Studies: the two hundred largest corporations in the world, and they are getting larger and fewer all the time, account for approximately 30 per cent of global economic activity, but they employ less than 1/2 of 1 per cent of the global work force. Economies of scale! By that I mean that as companies get larger, it becomes more efficient for them to replace thousands of workers with robots and other machines“

“And as large companies begin to dominate their industries, they drive out smaller competitors who would have duplicated certain tasks, creating duplicate jobs. Such economies of scale are intrinsic to globalization. They include mergers and consolidations, and they inevitably result in fewer jobs, not more“

I am searching for the 2011 figures on this. But i think this has been the norm of late. “Downsizing” is the buzz word these days. I myself was a part of a downsizing routine in my previous company during 2008-09. Again, nothing right or wrong.. it is just interesting to observe the paradoxical nature of “Scale”. I have always been told.. “if you axe some jobs and make the company more efficient, the guy who lost his job will soon find a job in some other company ie., the markets will take care of him”. Is that mechanism really working is what i am not sure of at this point of time :). The brute fact end of the day is .. companies will always say.. “listen.. we are not a charity“.

“These bankers, who had made very bad loans, found themselves in a desperate panic soon after. Their way out was, in effect, to make the taxpayers pay them for their horrible mistakes. Bankers were rescued, not countries. So much for free-market ideology. What we actually have here is free market for taxpayers, workers, and middle-class consumers but protectionism, socialism, and cronyism for banks and corporations“

This is not an article about 2008 recession mind you! .. It is about the 1997 east asian financial crisis. So what has changed really ? Nothing :P . I myself would be working for a corporation soon .. i think it is important to be aware of what is happening and atleast have the intent to change the business-as-usual . Going by the fact that between 1997 to 2008 nothing has changed i don’t really hope for big changes in the future too :P .. but it is important that such things are read ;)

“To use terms like “empowerment” to summarize the benefits of computers to us is to thoroughly misunderstand what power is about in a real political and economic context. Computers may help individuals feel powerful or competent, and I don’t deny that they are useful in many ways. But they do nothing to counterbalance the corporate centralization of power via these very instruments. Quite the opposite. In my view computer technology will turn out to be the single most centralizing technology ever invented. For while we sit at our personal computers editing our copy and sending our e-mails, transnational corporations, bankers, and speculators are using their global networks, spread out everywhere on the planet, using them twenty-four hours a day with far greater resources and with faster and better machines at a scale and speed that makes our level of empowerment pathetic by comparison“

So truly, what kind of revolution is this? Why do we fail to see who the big winners are? Despite the considerable usefulness of the electronic revolution to us as individuals and activists, it nonetheless has far more to offer the multinational enterprises than it ever will to you and me. So as you use your computers for your good works—and I do not suggest you stop doing so—just keep in mind who else is using them. And let’s stop calling them “empowering.”

This perspective of computers is very shocking to say the least :P I know of one other person who can say such stuff .. Kirkpatrick Sale. May be i am too easily convinced or may be he is really correct i dunno.. but i still sort of like this line of argument.

“The Union Carbide explosion in Bhopal caused tremendous damage, killing and injuring many people. In the same series of stories in my book I also told about the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, which caused an enormous amount of pollution and killed many animals. In both cases the heads of those corporations made announcements the day after the accidents occurred; they said they were horrified at what had happened. One of them said he was going to devote the rest of his life to correcting the damage his company had caused and he was taking personal responsibility for it. Within two weeks time he’d been told not to say that again. The board of directors pointed out that taking responsibility for what happened would affect the company’s bank loans and their stock prices and would put them in a bad position in terms of having to compensate for losses, and so on. Both men were obliged to defend their corporation as not being responsible for what happened“

Scary thoughts these! Though the part about bottomline pressures, stock prices is real. I think corporations can do damage control in a much better way.On that note i end this post.

 

Some Revelations – Part 1

Over the past few months i have been reading a lot. “Lot” by my standards. Obviously there will be a zillion people doing a zillion things better than me so i am not doing anything better than them :P . I am just doing more of what i was doing less before :D One of the things that has kept me hooked for a long time are the writings at Publications | New Economics Institute . In this series of posts i will try to summarise stuff from articles that really really interested me a lot.I think i will have to write some 20 posts if i really have to finish coz almost all of the articles will make you think! :)

The Ice is Melting

I will start with this one titled “The Ice Is Melting” by Oren Lyons. This is a 2004 piece, the 24th Annual  E.F.Schumacher lecture.Oren lyons is a champion of the rights of the Indigenous peoples. This lecture is about a lot of things .. i will try and cover some of them ;)

“The population of Indians in the United States is less than 1 per cent of the total population. And yet in the decade of the 1980s 33 per cent of all cases that went through the Supreme Court were about Indians and Indian lands. Thirty-three per cent, and yet we’re only one percent. What does this say? It says there is a lot of unfinished business, which has to do with land, with land claims because of lands taken illegally, and with indigenous rights“

I am not an expert on this topic. But sometime back i did read bits and pieces about the american history before and during the european conquest. Scary really. Very scary.

“Chief Seattle in Washington state said, Brothers, one day you are going to suffocate in your own waste. He was a great visionary leader. He spoke of the web of life. He said everything is connected—which it is. You cannot destroy one thing and expect nothing else to happen. We’re in that position now, with too many people, six billion people and probably two billion more within the next ten years. We’re having trouble feeding people now, but really, the trouble is not that there isn’t enough food. It is a lack of equity. Some people have too much while at the same time there are people in the world who have nothing to eat but grass and bark. That’s not fair. This country consumes 25 per cent of all the natural resources of the world, yet it has only 5 per cent of the population of the world. And it’s telling the rest of the world to aspire to be like us“

This is some idea that keeps coming up again and again in the stuff i read these days. This consumption part of it was also mentioned by Al Gore in his documentary “Inconvenient Truth”. Hmm.. very very piercing thoughts these.

“At Onondaga we have land in common. We don’t own this land. We can only take care of it. The land is held by the Nation because it belongs to the future. We cannot buy or sell it outside of the Nation. We can exchange it inside, but we have only the use of it. We can’t put up a no-trespassing sign because the land belongs to everybody. People can go across our land; they can pick berries there, pick nuts there, get water there—because it belongs to everybody”

Collective ownership is now ridiculed as utopian by many. Infact the mere mention of that is blasphemous in some pockets.. I think i live in one :P But i think as long as it is done in a “human scale” it is perfectly implementable.

“Whatever happens to us will not have a lasting impact on the world. In time, the world will regenerate. It will come back green, and the waters will be clean again. It’s just that there won’t be any people here. That’s all. We’re not needed. We’re parasites. We don’t help the Earth, we take. So if all the people disappear, then the Earth is going to regenerate because there’ll be peace here again“

Hmmm. Deep deep thoughts these. That we are slowly living a parasite life is what was cautioned by J C Kumarappa in his Economy of Permanence. 

The article talks about a lot of other things as well.. primarily about how US might have lost its way of Natural law propounded by its founding fathers.

“Four million acres of spruce killed two years ago by beetles. This was caused by global warming, which allowed two cycles of beetles instead of one. The second cycle killed the trees. You can’t negotiate with a beetle. You are now dealing with natural law. And if you don’t understand natural law, you will soon.

The founding fathers of this country—Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin—all talked about natural law. It was common-day usage for them. It was part of their vernacular to talk about natural law, and they knew what they were talking about–because they learned from us! Natural law prevails. Either abide by it or suffer the consequences. I haven’t heard any reference to natural law coming from an administration in a long time. That’s how far we’re drifting from reality. We’re drifting, and it’s costly. We have to get back on course. The chiefs, and I personally, feel that we have not passed the point of no return. Not yet, but we’re approaching it. And the day when we do pass that point, there will be no boom, no sonic sound. It will be just like any other day“

Natural Capitalism: The next industrial revolution

This article is by Amory Lovins who is an environmental scientist who works on energy policy. He was named by TIME magazine as one of the World’s 100 most influential people in 2009. That is just to say that the man knows what he speaks :).This is a 2001 piece the 21st Annual E.F.Schumacher lecture.

“The last time people in an industrialized country were seriously limited by a shortage of something was a quarter of a millennium ago at the dawn of the first Industrial Revolution. At that time, to oversimplify a bit, there weren’t enough people in England weaving cloth, for example, to make it affordable for most customers. Yet the notion of increasing labor productivity was unknown then. If anyone had gone into Parliament around 1750 and said, “Don’t worry, we’ll just make weavers a hundred times more productive,” nobody would have understood this idea, let alone thought it was possible. But that is exactly what happened as profit-maximizing capitalists teamed up with technological innovators, and soon a Lancashire spinner could produce the cloth that had previously required two hundred weavers. As that capability spread through one sector after another, creating a middle class and affordable mass goods and purchasing power and all the artifacts we see around us, we came to call it, rightly, the Industrial Revolution. Its logic was simple and correct, at a time when the relative scarcity of people was limiting progress in exploiting seemingly boundless nature, the obvious answer was to make people a hundred times more productive.

That logic of economizing on the scarcest resource remains perennially valid, but meanwhile the pattern of scarcity has quietly reversed. In the next Industrial Revolution, now underway, we’re dealing with abundant people and scarce nature. It is no longer people but nature we need to be using far more productively, wringing four or ten or a hundred times the work from each unit of energy, water, materials, topsoil, or whatever we’re borrowing from the planet”

The problem of our era summarised in 2 paragraphs! . Sheer magic of words i would say :D . He then talks about the second principle of natural capitalism—to design production along biological lines, with closed loops, no waste, and no toxicity. This was touched upon in our sustainability course here in the session on “Bio Mimicry” and in the session on “Cradle to cradle models“

“There’s a wonderful book about this by RMI’s Director, Janine Benyus, called Biomimicry: Innovations Inspired by Nature, in which she asks, for example, “How do spiders make silk?” Spider silk can be stronger than steel and tougher than the Kevlar in bulletproof vests. Yet making Kevlar requires vats of boiling sulfuric acid and high-pressure extruders. Spiders don’t need that: they make silk in their bellies, at ambient temperature and pressure, out of digested crickets and flies. How do they do that? How do trees turn air and water and soil and sunlight into a sugar called cellulose, as strong as nylon but three times lighter? And then they turn that cellulose into a natural composite called wood, which can actually be stiffer and stronger than steel, aluminum alloy, or concrete—yet trees do not have blast furnaces, smelters, or kilns. How do they do that? How does the abalone, in seawater at 4°C, self-assemble an inner shell twice as tough as our best ceramics?“

Very interesting questions these. I think by assuming that our methods are inherently superior we are just belittling mother nature :)

“I want to tell you a story from Borneo: in the 1950s, the Dayak people had malaria, and the World Health Organization had a solution. They sprayed DDT, which killed the mosquitoes, and the malaria declined. But there were side-effects. The roofs of the houses started to fall down on people’s heads because, it seemed, the DDT had also killed tiny parasitic wasps that had previously controlled thatch-eating caterpillars. The colonial government solved this problem by giving people sheet-metal roofs, but then people couldn’t sleep because of the noise of the tropical rain on the tin roofs at night. Meanwhile, among other side-effects, the DDT-poisoned bugs were being eaten by geckos, which were eaten by cats. As the DDT built up in the food chain, the cats died. Without the cats, the rats flourished and multiplied. Soon the World Health Organization realized that it had created a risk of typhus and plague, and hence felt obliged to parachute many (by one account 14,000) live cats into Borneo—Operation Cat Drop, courtesy of the British Royal Air Force in Singapore.

This nicely shows that if you don’t understand how things are connected, often the cause of problems is solutions. Our challenge and opportunity is to harness hidden connections so the cause of solutions becomes solutions“

Funny story that one and a sad commentary of our times at the same time :) . By the way these articles are not mere cribs or the works of cynics. These guys are actually “doing” a lot of things to address these issues. Links for the same are in those articles :)

 

R Narayana Murthy and Telangana Post ;)

R Narayana murthy Bit

I happened to watch this movie titled “Devarakonda Veeraiah – Kuthuru kosam” by R Narayana Murthy .For those who don’t know him.. he is known for his rebel/red/communist telugu movies .

Now, i am no big communist really. Though there was a point of time when i really loved the idea (I think at a certain age everyone does!) At a later point of time i realised centralisation is centralisation no matter who does it and much later i felt that anything that crushes individual enterprise so heavily and harshly needs to be curbed ;) . Hence, gave up my pursuit of the ideology long back. But i still like the root-cause analysis most of the times ;) .

Some of his movies are also openly pro-naxal. I am totally opposed to the overthrowing state propaganda of naxals. However, i sometimes do sympathise with their cause.. which is basically lopsided development .. poverty etc. I am sure everyone does sympathise on this .. including Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan singh :D. Sympathy for the deprived isn’t a crime i guess ;)

(Recruiter Alert# Does this make me ineligible for the job ?? This is only arm chair activism. I promise i will be a loyal employee :D)

So this movie is not very entertaining and he digresses a lot here and there. He shud’ve either stuck to the anti-globalisation part or the girl child stuff. He tried to mix both and i think that is where the movie bombed. I loved some parts of the movie though.. there is this one part about how traditional caste based jobs are now being lost and the indigenous village culture is totally degenerating. There is also this wonderful song that captures the discontents of globalisation titled “ఎక్కడుందిరో మన ఇండియాకు స్వతంత్రం” (Where is freedom in India) . Lyrics are i think by “Vangapandu Prasad Rao“. I think only Vangapandu can write such lyrics! :D (Talk of Vangapandu i am also reminded of this gem from another  R Narayana murthy movie titled “రండిరో కూలన్న సంఘం పెడదాము” (Come lets form a labour union) . This one again has some pretty powerful lyrics )

So after i saw this movie suddenly my admiration for the man grew by leaps and bounds :P I have always been a fan of sorts of his movies if you may call it so ;) . But suddenly i realised i have neglected his works of late :P So i saw this 73min long interview of his on youtube.

It is a very very charming interview so to say :P . The interviewer could have done a better job though ;). But a must-watch for all those who are curious to know more about him ;) My admiration for his work is purely because he doesn’t really do it for money. If only he wanted to make money he would have long stopped doing such pro-poor rebel movies. Like he himself says in the interview.. he has made a movie on almost every single social problem in the last 25 years. He also makes some fun remarks like “Every mass hero in Indian cinema is a Naxalite. In every mass hero movie.. the hero defies police, courts and takes law into his hands” .. Interesting perspective really :P .  It is in this interview that he mentions about why and how he made “Veera Telangana” and “Poru Telangana”. Now, i was always curious to know why a man from North-Andhra is so obsessed with the telangana cause and this interview sort of answered my question. So i thought why not watch Veera Telangana then. Fortunately these days..youtube channels like “Maa Movies” “Telugu One” etc offer superior quality original videos of many movies.. Piracy guilt-free gult movie watching basically :P .

The “Veera Telangana” bit:

So the little i read about the Telangana armed rebellion was way back in 2006.. thanks to this novel titled “Salaam Hyderabad” (That is a 5+yr old post. I feel old already! :D) . This time around i happened to delve a lot deeper into the history of telangana thanks to this movie. I  think without wikipedia/google it is very very difficult to understand the significance of this movie. It is easy to dismiss this one as just another R Narayana Murthy movie. But the more i read about the characters and the context of the movie the more captivating the movie was. I think it is a phenomenally well made movie (considering all the budget constraints he might have had) except for the last 15mins where it is a bit hurried up.

The movie traces the history of the armed telangana rebellion from the 1940s to the formation of the state of Hyderabad. Interestingly as i read from wiki i realised that Gautam Ghose also made a movie in the 1970s titled Maa Bhoomi on this issue. I’ve added this one to my to-watch list ;) [Edit: Maa Bhoomi with english subtitles available on Youtube here]

So the movie talks about exploitation of telangana peasants by feudal lords, rise of communist movement, the impact of andhra maha sabha, the rebellion against feudal lords, the guerilla wars against the armies of nizam, the atrocities of razakkars etc. Like i have said prevly a lot of this has been covered in “Salaam Hyderabad” .. but what i loved about this movie is how it brought to life a lot of characters from the telangana rebellion which were totally unknown to me. I knew some of them by name.. but some were totally new.

Before i go further… there is this review by The Hindu  that captures everything about the movie. I particularly liked the initial lines of the review :P “His commitment to progressive cinema is total and unquestionable. He is perhaps the only filmmaker who has made all his films based on the ideology that he has strongly believed” .

Again from the review .. “Like Gandhi for Richard Attenborough and The Legend of Bhagath Singh for Raj Kumar Santhoshi, for me it will be Veera Telangana,” . Agree totally ! . Infact, from the start i was thinking about “Legend of Bhagat Singh” :P .. I think this is R Narayana Murthy’s Magum Opus.

Here are the characters/issues that i got to know better thanks to the movie. All these people are a part of the rich history of Hyderabad/Telangana and have somehow missed my history books. I think SCERT, Andhra Pradesh has some work to do here :D .

Oo and btw i found this article in “Social Scientist 1996″ is very interesting to get a quick primer about the movement. (interestingly enuf i think i did meet the author of this paper 8years ago :P). I have however downloaded a 600 page pdf by Puchalapalli Sundarayya ((founding member of CPI-M :P) to get more insights  on the armed struggle. Hope to read it soon.

Makhdoom Mohiuddin: He was a Urdu poet seen in the movie as an active leader of the communist movement. This is a hindu article aptly titled “The forgotten romantic” that talks about his contributions to the movement.. amongst other things.

Qasim Razvi : The chief villain in the movie and the commander of the razakkar army in reality. The artist in this role was simply superb in the movie. As per wiki, government of india apparently called him “Nizam’s Frankenstein Monster“.. Very much!

Ravi Narayana Reddy : He is supposedly the chief architect of the armed rebellion. I liked this interesting piece of trivia on wiki.. in 1952 General election he reportedly polled more votes than Jawaharlal Nehru . Now isnt’t that interesting ;)

Sheikh Bandagi : This is a very touching story from the movie about a peasant’s struggle against the deshmukhs. He is brutally murdered later after he wins the case against the deshmukhs. Same is quoted in the wiki article on Hyderabadi Muslims.

Chakali Ailamma: This was another prominent character in the movie. From what i understand from the wiki she was also just as prominent in the movement as well. Looks like they are making a movie on Chakali Ilamma as well :P. Good good.. if they bring on more meaningful historical fiction movies i am not complaining. Better than the dinchuk dinchuk run of the mill stuff.

Bairanpally Massacre: As per the makers.. this incident is comparable to the jallian wala bagh massacre. Well, that i don’t know but i think it is just as grim as that. A whole village was massacred in this incident. I see this book on the internet about the Bairanpally incident. The monument on the book coverpage looks exactly like the one in the movie.. wonder if they really shot the movie there :). If yes, hatsoff once again to the makers :).

Renigunta Ramireddy: This part of the movie again was very wellmade. Initially i didn’t understand what renigunta near tirupati has got to do with telangana movement. Later i got to know from the P Sundarayya book that the surname is related to Renigunta in Bhongir Taluk of Nalgonda district.

Doddi Komaraiah: His death was one of the triggers for the movement.

Andhra Mahasabha: This was the nerve center of the movement. This part i remember was covered in some detail in the “Salaam Hyderabad” novel and also i happened to read about this before as well. So no surprises here thankfully. There was a song in the movie about “Telugu” language which is directly related to one of the action items of the Mahasabha in its formative years. So full marks to the makers again for this one ;)

Other prominent characters/mentions were Baddam Yella Reddy, Chandra Rajeswara Rao, Arutla Ramachandra Reddy etc.

All in all a nice rich lesson in history :) . Btw all this has nothing to do with the present day telangana movement. My views on the present day telangana movement remain the same and haven’t changed by an inch because of this movie ;) . Not that i have the legislative power to start or stop the formation :P .. But my opinion matters to me :D

The Bathukamma bit:

I also happened to see this movie titled Bathukamma starring Sindhu Tolani . A pretty decent movie. One thing i liked about this movie is the fact that almost all characters spoke in telangana slang and there was a certain bit of telangananess in the movie throughout… which is good. For a long time i have wondered why there is only one dominant accent in most of the telugu movies most of the times ;) . This movie was a welcome change that way speaking.

Conclusion and Vote of thanks :P

For all those who complain about the lack of good telugu movies i think these movies are a must-watch . With that i end this post ;)

 

Desi post

I know i am blogging a lot these days. Partly because i have realised my student time is ending fast and i need to finish reading way too many things before the corporate drudgery starts again :).

This post is about my reading of the book “Asking the earth – The spread of unsustainable development” by Winin Pereira and Jeremy Seabrook. I got to know about this book from Arvind Gupta book gallery here.

Before i talk about the stuff from  the book.. a bit about Winin Pereira.

Winin Pereira was trained as an atomic physicist,and worked at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and with Homi Bhabha at the Atomic Energy Establishment. Increasingly perturbed by the danger posed by India’s uncritical assimilation of Western science and technology,he resigned.He then set up the ‘Centre for Holistic Studies’(CHS) in Mumbai. This was devoted to an analysis of the impact of 500 years of colonialism,and to the recovery of alternative,indigenous social and economic values.

So that is that.

Excerpts from the book (Published first in 1990)

Firstly i liked the coinage “Two-Thirds World” in lieu of the Third world because “Two thirds of the world live in what is commonly misnamed the Third World“. Nice :)

The author says that most of the two-thirds world had sustainable systems in place before the advent of colonialism and he thinks that a retreival of those sustainable practices is the most urgent task facing humanity. I agree. But only today in the papers i read about someone saying “only way to regain India’s past glory is through rapid industrialisation and modernisation” . So if we assume that this is the line toed by the government as well.. then i don’t think we are anywhere close to the “sustainable system” spoken of here.

The wonder that was India

The book starts off with a lot of stuff i think inspired from Dharampal‘s Beautiful tree (as i understand from the references). This is more on the lines of how the pre-colonial India was not as “backward” as it is thought of today.It has references to some quotes by British officials which make a interesting read and also touches upon the by-now famous Macaulay Minute on Indian education discourse. The advances of ancient indian science and technology , astronomy, medicine etc are also discussed in detail next. I particularly liked the section on “Iron and Steel” . I didn’t know about India’s legendary Wootz Steel before(btw this is a thoroughly enjoyable 90page pdf ..i havent yet finished it .. but i can pass judgement .. coz this is my blog :D). The pic above is that of Tipu Sword made of Wootz steel and has been taken from this article where a nobel laureate claims india was well aware of nano technology 2000 years ago!!

The first chapter ends with a statement .. “while the british can be held responsible for much of our poverty, we can only hold ourselves responsible if we allow that poverty to remain and increase“. True. The solution as per the author is to look back at our past and work out our own solutions rather than continue being cultural and technological slaves to others. In short get back the “self-reliance” of the bygone era.

The lifestyle of warlis

The 2nd chapter talks about “Sustainable lifestyle of Warlis”. This research about tribal lives forms the one of the core areas of the author’s life and this book as i understand. I liked somethings in this chapter and i quote them one-by-one.

I have always read negatives about tribal shifting cultivation in my textbooks. But this one liner argument makes a lot of sense to me.. may be there is more to it but i am convinced by this as of now. I have this swadeshi bias you see :P . “Shifting cultivation is being blamed for much deforestation and soil erosion. But it only causes damage because most of the forest has been devastated for commercial purposes, thus forcing the cultivators to leave too little time for regeneration“

I enjoyed this short story :) Not to insult the modern day engineers but i find this indigenous knowledge aspect very interesting.

“A person from Bombay bought a piece of agricultural land in a Warli area and called in an expert water-diviner to point out locations for wells, at a cost of Rs 500 for each. He then drilled a borewell at one of the spots, going down more than 20 metres, for which he spent about Rs.22,000 and got not a drop of water. Lahanu then suggested that he dig open wells at two places which he indicated without charging him a single paisa“.

“Lahanu and other warlis locate water by observing land crabs. The mounds of wet mud that crabs excavate and leave around their holes indicate the presence of water below. The larger the number of crab holes at a given spot, the greater will be the availability of water“

Industrial solutions

This part i found very thought provoking as it sort of questions what i had learnt in the business sustainability course in term-IV.

The author says “changing to “less polluting” products is not enough to provide sustainability. No industrial product is fully “green” and making slight improvements to claim viridity will not prevent drastic degradation.

The carbon tax thing that is in news these days also meets with some criticism on two counts by Winin. Such taxes will allow the rich to continue polluting with impunity while the rest will continue to suffer. Nor will such taxes be used to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere: the basic problem remains untouched.

On Development

On aping the western mode of “development” wenin says .. “There is no way in which all the people in the Two-Thirds world can achieve the rates of consumption of those in the One-Third world without essential resources running out and pollution making life on earth impossible” .

I think years later Al-Gore said the same in his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”.

He also dismisses the criticism against alternative development thinkers that they are “idealistic” or “romantic”. He says “Those who advocate the supremacy of “bottom line” must learn that the real bottom line is not profit and loss, but what the battered planet can bear”

Anti-TNC Tirade ?

There is some stuff about HLL in 1987 using its buying power to deliberately keep down the return to the tea growers while at the same time retaining a high profit margin through retail sales. He also goes on to quote some sources about the traffic between top government posts and top posts in the company. And there is a lot more of criticism on HLL’s export policy etc. Btw the source is authentic .. this is one of them from EPW ‘ 86.

But HLL is now HUL and its been over 20yrs now. So let us hope all is well now. (Else .. I can’t survive in b-school please understand :D)

There is more such in sections titled “Procter’s Gamble on P&G” and something on Cadbury’s Cocoa cultivation policy and Colgate Palmolive’s rock bottom wage rates for sub-contracted labour.

Again i will assume that if they were all real then they have all been resolved now(since its been 20yrs) and all is well (Else .. I can’t survive in b-school please understand :D)

Superstitions

While the author very well agrees that while some of practices followed by tribals/indigenous people may be deemed as blind superstitions.. that is no reason to dismiss all of the indigenous practices as junk. I found this one instance fascinating.

Our farmers, for instance, sow seeds at particular phases of the moon. They believe that if so planted, better crops will be produced. This has always been discounted by the “educated” as superstitious, because the calculable effects of lunar gravity and light on plants are insignifcant. Recently, however, it has been found that many of the insects that attack these crops have life cycles in phase with the lunar ones. The crops, particularly vulnerable at certain stages of growth , are dependant on the time at which the insects are the most destructive.

The Future

The author drawing from jainist, buddhist, christian, hindu teachings suggests that the future lies in moving beyond the narrow definition of self-interest and embracing simplicity and in understanding the holistic view of man as a part of nature. He suggests that people should adopt a life of “joyful frugality” which the accumulation of goods and services clearly does not furnish. He says that reducing consumption increases well-being as it eases the burden of imposed appetites.

I also liked this stuff from Richard Lannoy’s “The Speaking Tree” quoted in the book

“One feature of universal significance is the importance which the Indian civilisation has attached to the simplification and reduction of needs through self-scrutiny. At its most positive a means to reduce social conflict and the dehumanisation inherent in the pursuit of material gain, this kind of humility is rare in Western science and technology. It is also the touchstone of our success or failure to reduce tension even within the domain of our personal lives. In an overpopulated world with severely limited resources the current Western method of expansion and cultivation of needs is plainly unrealistic. The wisdom of smallness and the zero principle, encouragement of small-scale pluralistic activity in community living, a nonviolent ecological perspective, all of which originate in self-scrutiny, are age-old Indian responses to life’s dillemmas….“

Desi-ness sort of overtook me while i was writing this post. So if it sounds overtly jingoistic or patriotic please excuse :P . But if you are from India and thinking this is all piece-of-junk.. then i think it is time you strongly considered your nationality again :D. Hehehe.. joking :) .. Phir-bhi-dil-hain-hindustani :D

 

Some questions some answers

Note1: I dont belong to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh :P .. I am not preaching anything to anyone.. I myself do all these things that i am ridiculing.. so i have no authority watsoever to preach anyone :P

Note2: Most of the times the “we” here in this post will be the typical modern urban indian.

So from times immemorial.. i had lot of questions. These are questions mainly on how slowly slowly we are losing our indianness in things we do etc and how it has become so so difficult to stick to ur roots considering the fast paced modern urban life and its demands there of. These include questions i got in one of our dining etiquette workshops here at IIM-L.. the attire we follow for our placement interviews and otherwise at work place .. etc etc. Some of these and more came up during my reading of J C Kumarappa’s “Economy of permanence”. So i would touch upon them in this post.

Eating with fingers

“The Diners themselves, who eat with their fingers, invariably wash their teeth and rinse their mouths also after meals, which is a most desirable and hygienic habit. But those who use forks and spoons have abandoned this custom. The farthest they may go in this direction is to dip their finger tips daintily in a finger bowl of water and after moistening their lips wipe them off with a napkin! Wherein lies the superiority or higher quality of the most complicated Western style?”

Hehehe.. Interesting ;) .. I remember when i was a kid i used to eat with my fingers alone.. then “graduated” to spoons .. now when i go to McD .. i don’t even wash my hands or mouth . After i eat a burger .. i use a tissue paper and do the act of cleansing lips at best :D . Infact, i am wondering on an average how many people who come to McD go the washroom and clean their mouth and teeth? Very interesting :D . We are a changed people now :(

You may dismiss all this as an argument of a traditionalist.. or an old-timer or an orthodox. But i find it very interesting :) Infact, we have become so “corrupt” if i may call it so.. that we have started to think that it is more “civilised” to eat with spoon and less “civilised” if we eat with fingers.

Sigh! Swami Vivekananda also had some such thing to say on our ways of eating i think.

On Hunger

So i sometimes used to wonder.. why only humans eat so much why not animals :P. As in.. dogs cats eat only when they are hungry. They don’t have Lays, Pepsi, Coke, Kellogs so on .. or even Laddoo .. Jalebi so on :P. Here are some thoughts on that. They may seem similar to some extreme jain teachings.. but then again worth a read ;)

“Generally, all animals that lead a natural life follow their instincts. They eat to live and are healthy. Man too can do likewise. But, Unfortunately for him, in many cases man uses his freewill, not to appease his hunger but to ponder to his palate with overcooked and highly spiced savoury dishes. They enjoyment of taste frequently makes him eat more than necessary. He lives to eat. This misuse of freewill to gratify his tongue is often the cause of most of the ailments modern man is heir to“

Hehe.. hmm. Not that obesity was unknown in ancient india.. but i think yes modern humans eat a lot more of the bad stuff and lot less of the good stuff ;).

On polishing rice

This is something i have been hearing from a long time about the loss of nutrition due to polished rice. Here is what JCK says on this. While praising man’s freewill in using canal water etc for irrigation by “co-operating” with nature .. he criticises man’s efforts in polishing rice as follows:

“For instance, he may use machines to polish rice and wheat to make those products look pearly white to gratify his ill-conceived and misdirected aesthetic sense. In doing this, he upsets the balance of harmony in nature which has carefully provided in a grain of cereal, the germ to afford nourishment and a coating of bran to aid digestion. Both these essentials are lost in the process of polishing“

On Fruit Products

“Similarly, nature blesses us with wholesome fresh fruits like apples, dates, grapes etc. Instead of eating these as they are, man extracts the juice and ferments it into cider, toddy, wine etc., to exhilarate him artificially”

(Slightly extending the statement above)

I have always wondered on this… as in .. why do we have so much of cooldrinks/ tropicana type juice and so less of real fruit these days.

When i drink frooti or appy or tropicana in some shop.. the same shop sometimes will be selling the fruit as well … but due to whatever reason.. I dont buy the fruit and end up buying the concentrate with all its chemical preservatives :P . Infact .. these days i am reading the ingredients as well… sometimes the Litchie juice will have apple juice concentrate :P .. and stuff from cola majors which they claim as “the real lemon drink” etc will infact have only 5% lemon :P ( Real data this.. i read the ingredients on the back of the bottle).As we buy this product the shop next door may have lemon being sold for 2/- and u may have enuf water in ur room. But we don’t buy the lemon and make the juice ourselves :D. Its funny really ;) .

On Imitation

Note3: I do not have anything against christianity. I am quoting JCK verbatim …he himself was originally a christian. So no bias at work here really.“In our own country, many of our friends, especially Indian Christians ( I write this in regard to the community to which i belong in humiliation and shame) fall into this group. They imitate the westerner in every possible way even to the extent of abandoing their own mother tongue for english. They dress like the westerners, they keep house in the best foreign missionary style and in their well-to-do circle even their food habits have been borrowed from the West inclusive of many tinned imported stuff. Their recreation follows all that is held fashionable in the west, such as racing and ballroom dancing“

I think going by this quote .. the entire urban india is “imitating” now. Long back raj kapoor captured this change in his song… But like JCK says in his book.. we have discarded Indian customs by measuring them with a western metric and giving it a “F” grade.. while if it was measured with an Indian metric it would have got an “A” grade perhaps ;). We are strange people :D

On Fashion

I found this one particularly interesting.

“For a while the fashion will be to eat soup out of a soup plate with a rim round the bowl, with a large elliptical spoon. A few years later the fashion will change. A soup bowl without a rim will now be used and a spoon more or less circular in shape will be the proper style. These frequent changes are productive of snobbery and are good for business. The poor cannot afford to scrap their crockery and silver off and on to adopt new ways and so are easily eliminated from the “County Set”. From the business point of view if the same kind of things are to be handed down from father to son, the capacity of the market will be limited, while if such changes in the material modes of living are effected, the artificially created demand will widen the scope for more business“

Makes Business sense :P .. He goes on to say that people who follow such fashions tend to have high inferiority complex as they associate their social status with the goods they carry and not their work/intellect/ creative faculty etc. Partly true i think :)

The Gold Mine Story

I particularly liked the story for its wry sense of humor. This is about JCK’s visit to some gold mine district in India (Kolar may be).

“There in the darkness made visible by small Davy’s lamps men worked in tunnels, blasting the rock , in dust, dirt, and danger from morning till evening for a pittance that hardly helped to keep the wolf from the door. The strain of this labour was so great that men were completely done up when brought up into fresh air and light. This district contributes to greatest revenue from liquor to the state. Is it a wonder that after the nerves of the miners had been strained to this extent they should find refuge in the oblivion provided by the merciful alcohol? Venereal diseases are also rampant among such miners”

“At the end of my visit, when the manager of the mine asked if I could suggest any social welfare work that he can introduce for the betterment of the conditions of life of the miners I gave him these two alternatives — 1. The best welfare work will be to restore the dignity of work and labour by closing down such a mine, or in  the alternative , 2. To provide more liquor shops to enable to men to drown their miseries”

On Democracy

This paragraph i liked as i found it very relevant to the modern times considering all that that is happening across the world of late.

“We cannot have dictatorship in economics and at the same time, democracy in politics. Such claims to democracy are mere smoke screens. Democracy in economics must be based on decentralized production in villages on individual basis“

The first part of the statement should be looked at in the context of the income disparities today and the goverment-rich nexus. The second part of the statement ofcourse is Gandhi/J C Kumarappa’s solution to the problem. Hmmm :)

Conclusion: “Economy of permanence” by J C Kumarappa is a must read for anyone with an iota of interest in India and its erstwhile economics. It touches upon various aspects of the economy like .. education, employment, industrialisation, agriculture, planning etc and ofcourse nature, people and happiness :)

 

Another forgotten Indian great-II

This is a follow-up post to my previous one. This one is mainly about “Why the village movement” by “J C Kumarappa”. Gandhi summed it up very well in his foreword about this book… “No lover of villages can afford to be without the booklet. No doubter can fail to have his doubts dispelled“. However, he also cautioned “It is of no use to those who have made up their mind that the only movement worth the name is to destroy the villages and dot india with a number of big cities where highly centralized industries will be carried out and every one will have plenty and to spare“

The pack and herd thing

This book is like a seminal thesis of sorts.. it starts from evolution to the present day world while addressing the significance of the village based movement. In the initial parts of the book Kumarappa talks about two fundamental styles of living or cultures.. the “pack type” and the “herd type”. In management lingo this can perhaps be overtly simplified to individualist cultures and collectivist cultures (Hofstede i.e., ;) ) . Or like he put it subtly one civilisation is like the “Pack of wolves” is highly individualistic and self-centered and gathers in a pack only when they have to hunt down their prey. They are ferocious and aggressive and do not consider the rights and priveleges of other creatures.Another is perhaps like a “Herd of cows”. These civilisations are charectarised by strong social dependence and are generally passive and peaceful.

The analysis of the west

As per kumarappa western people had no time to settle down to an agricultural civilisation which they had only just attained when industrialisation overtook them, we find a great number of points at which their economic organisation dovetails into the hunter and nomad stages of evolution i.e., the “pack type”. He classified the western civilisation into five groups so to say. (i) “The dynasty of might” – Feudal system (ii) “The dynasty of finance” – Imperialism and mercantile trade (iii) “The dynasty of machine” -Rise of american economy (iv) “The dynasty of labour”  – Communism (v) “The dynasty of middle classes” – Nazism and Fascism.

I won’t get into details of the analysis as i cant summarise it in a 3 line paragraph here. But here are some interesting snippets which interested me in this analysis.

Britain- Imperialism- Team games

“The recognition of the importance of discipline in the form of joint effort for the success of the financial dynasty is evinced by the fact that “team work” is always deified in the Great Britain. Games which are based on team work such as cricket, football, hockey and boat-racing have become national sports and those who excel in those games are considered national heroes and fit to carry on the work of the empire”

Interesting perspective to the evolution of team games and the economic system ;).

Nervous America ?

I happened to read some articles recently about increasing number of citizens with nervous disorders/suicidal tendencies in India’s IT Capital Bangalore and increasing sale of anti-depressants in US etc. This part of the book sort of explains that line of thinking. Remember this was written in 1936 ;)

“Already, within a period of one or two generations, we find in the most well-organized capitalistic country, America, the nervous diseases, due to the strain involved in the system of economic production, are giving cause for alarm. In New York state 1 person out of every 22 is said to be in a asylum. There are 81,000 feeble minded and 40,000 insane in hospitals”.

“It is because of this nervous strain that the clamour for “leisure” in industrialised countries of the west is so loud. Under their system, leisure is a necessity as their organisation is unnatural. Again the nervous strain calls from something to soothe the nerves. This makes the worker to resort to drink and other vices. Natural work, on the other hand, causes physical weariness for which rest and repose in sleep are sufficient recuperatives“

Now … Pause here ! . When did this craze for weekend holidays start ? When did this friday night party thing start ? When did the craze for trekking holidays etc increase exponentially ? .. You are right sir :P… only after we became more and more westernised. When i was a kid living in a small town called Kurnool.. i remember none of these were there. But i seldom remember seeing “frustoo parents” .. you know the typical software engineer kind .. who get very restless and are extremely extremely stressed half the times :P .

I know this well coz i myself was a software engineer. And sometimes it really used to get so stressful .. though we try to act smart and say.. we are jobless :P . The amount of stress the modern day jobs put you on is also clear from the clamour for “work life balance” .. “pranayama/yoga classes in offices” .. so on so forth. So Kumarappa Sir.. Full marks to you on this “nervous strain-clamour for leisure” theory :D

On Eastern Economic Organizations

He has some strong words for the west here. So foreign audience please excuse ;) ..

He says “The civilisations of India, China, Japan are results of philosophical and conscious social planning. The western systems are haphazard growths without any thought behind them. In this sense the west can hardly be said to have a civilisation at all. It is more refined barbarism“.

Though i think they are very strong words .. partly he is correct. In the sense.. the USA we know of today is what 300 years old ? .. we only know the new USA so to say. The indigenous native indians have long lost their prominence. So in that may be it can hardly be said to be a civilisation at all.. as it has vanished by and large. The orient still seems to have retained some of the old world stuff.. hence may be the civilisation might still be considered alive.

He also says that eastern civilisations are of “herd type” as their focus is always on getting/staying together for internal safety and consolidation.

“In Mongolian countries, foreigners were excluded until very recently, and India foreign travel was looked down upon and definitely discouraged. Merchants alone went out of the country for commercial purposes”

Remember Gandhi’s Oaths ? Interesting perspective :)

Schools of Economics:

He divides the various of schools of human activities as follows:

(i) Economy of predation :

Hunting,Fishing etc. Consume but don’t Produce. How primitive man lived

(ii) Economy of enterprise:

Life of self indulgence and gratification. Create supply and keep to yourself.

(iii) Economy of gregarianism:

(a) Imperialism: Man realises he can’t be alone i.e,. his own self indulgence is not enough. He forms homogenous groups held together by selfish interests as in cartels, combines, trusts and monopolies. One group contrives to exploit the labour and resources of another.

(b) Fascism, Nazism, Socialism, Communism: Self-centered group interest. Intense nationalism. Man is to live by bread alone. Cog in the wheel for the greater common good.

(iv) Economy of Permanance: (This is where India “was/is” as per Kumarappa. This part is interesting so i will elaborate a bit on this. And as Indians me thinks we should know this much abt why we are the way we are)

As per this school of thought Man is seen as a piece of the divine (For athiests lets say divine == Nature).

“We have to be sparing in exploiting natural resources and must base it on the consumption of labour and of materials that can be created by man which can be available always, rather live by predation by drawing on natural reservoirs (like coal, oil etc non-renewable basically).There lies the emphasis on distribution. Such an organisation will give expression to a mode of life very different from what is considered “modern” in the west. Iron will be used sparingly as mines are reservoirs which will be exhausted in time. As far as possible all our  requirements must come from things that can be produced by man. The supply of wood can be increased by carefully planning the growth and adminstration of forests. The “modern” world is of Iron and Steel. We cannot afford to draw on our inheritance too freely and extravagantly. Brick and mortar, cement and wood  belong to the regime of the Economny of permanence while reinforced concrete buildings, steel doors and cabinets are of the transient order. Strange as it may seem the mud-huts of India belong to the Economy of Permanence while the steel and conrete sky scrapers of the New York are symbols of the Economy of Transience. Similarly, in all other departments of life man has to rely more on his own efforts than the apparent abudance of nature to supply his needs. This will give a fresh orientation to our standards of life”

Well, i think he is right. India was fundamentally a different kind of civilisation as compared to the west. We shouldn’t really measure the Indian life by a western metric/scale. Ofcourse, the India of today has basically lost it :P .. but there was a time when we were actually different and distinct and shall i say better ? .. “The wonder that was India” ?? :)

On the beauty of the caste system:

Let me warn beforehand.. i am not a blind supporter of caste system. Any sane person can’t justify stuff like untouchability. So don’t get judgemental on that. Kumarappa himself has some very very harsh words about the perils of the caste system in this book. This is only pure economics here.

“The chamar makes the shoe and in effect exchanges it for food. The rice producer gets his shoe and gives a part of his production to the chamar. This completes the cycle.  If, on the other hand, the rice producer buys a japanese shoe, he cuts the ground from his own feet, for, the village shoemaker is to that extent impoverished and unemployed and so he is unable to buy the rice producer’s product, while the chances of the Japanese producer buying the rice from the buyer of the shoe are very remote. The greater probability is that the Japanese shoe manufacturer will exchange his purchasing power for obtaining his raw materials from other foreign countries, and if there is no economic friction, the money might, by taking a circuitous course, return to the rice producer in India. But as things are today, there are so many economic barriers between the shoe manufacturer and the rice producer that the purchasing power, for all intents and purposes never returns to the rice producer in India. Such an outgoing with no return constitutes a considerable national loss of wealth“

I end here. There is atleast 70% of the book that i haven’t even covered yet in this post. But i think the inquisitive reader will be interested enough and he would read the book to understand things better. Rest i know, would have slept by now :P

 

Another forgotten indian great – I

This post is about my recent reading of J C Kumarappa’s “Why The Village Movement” and “Philosophy of Village Movement”. J C Kumarappa’s bio can be found here. The reason i say forgotten is becuase if i were to do a survey today of the students of all the IITs and IIMs and some of the other best colleges and ask them “Who is J C Kumarappa” i think barely 5% will be able to answer. You ask me why ? .. in telugu i would say … “మన దౌర్భాగ్యం నాయనా” .. (which means “Our misfortune mate”)

Anyway these books and a couple of others are his musings/reflections on gandhian economics or the village economy or  the decentralised self-sustenance based economy. Very well written i’d say. The logical flow of arguments is undisputable. One thorough reading and you’d be more than convinced ;).

So in this post i just put some quotes from these books which somehow left a strong impact on me. Btw he studied economics, business administration, public finance etc in Columbia Univ and Syracuse Univ back then in 1920s… so we can safely assume that the man knows what he is speaking and that he has seen the west and east both :). I say this because the first argument against Gandhian Economics is that it is something that is idealistic and impractical or that it is not in sync with times etc.

Oo and btw if someone needs softcopy of the first book drop a comment here. It is not available online and i had to speak to people in Kumarappa Institute of Gram Swaraj, Jaipur to get a copy. I am not sure if it is correct if i upload on scribd or somewhere.. so do drop a comment if you need a copy ;) .

I’d like to start with something i picked up from Schumacher society’s webpage. This is something relevant to B-school junta and consumers by and large and seems to one of his more famous quotes ;)

“If the raw materials for making cocoa are obtained from plantations on the West coast of Africa which use some form of forced native labour, are carried by vessels on sea routes monopolised or controlled by violence,
manufactured in England with sweated labour and brought to India under favorable customs duties enforced by political power, then a buyer of a tin of cocoa patronises the forced labour conditions in the West coast of
Africa, utilizes the navy and so partakes in violence, gains by the low wages or bad conditions of the workers in England and takes advantage of the political subjection of India. All this responsibility and more also is put
into a little tin of cocoa!

Are we prepared to shoulder this grave responsibility and pander our palate or shall we content ourselves with a cu of nutritious milk drawn from a well-kept cow at our door. These conditions are not far-fetched but actual. Anyone who looks on life seriously and as a trustee cannot afford to ignore these far-reaching consequences of his/her actions“

The argument for “local production local consumption” is put wonderfully well in 3 lines as below.

“If we feel it is beyond us to guarantee the concomitant results of all our transactions, it necessarily follows that we must limit our transactions to a circle well within our control. This is the bed rock of swadeshi. The smaller the circumference, the more accurately can we guage the results of our actions, and (the) more conscientiously shall we be able to fulfill our obligations as trustees.”

The disintegration and degeneration of the indian society is very well illustrated in this talk below. I am not a big supporter of the caste system but i think i am in agreement with one metaphor.. we as a society by placing brahmins on top of the hierarchy valued wisdom over everything else. The typical order we followed was Wisdom – Power – Wealth – Labour representing each of the varnas.

“Western society glorifies the multiplicity of possessions, rather than simplicity of life. However ignorant the person may be, as long as he has wealth- it makes little difference how he came by it- he can command respect and if he has not got the claim by reason of birth to the first rank, he can obtain it by being ennobled by the king. The whole western economic organisation pivots on competition, which has encouraged individualism to the extent of even weakening family ties. While our society is maintained by force of public opinion and sanction, the west has to depend on force of civil and criminal law to maintain order and regulate the individual life of the citizen. Unfortunately the glamour of power which is a concomitant of Society as organised in the west has caught our imagination and we have forsaken the foundation laid on the rock, to build on sand. The brahmin has abandoned the privilege of learning and teaching and has taken to the profession of law to exploit the quarelsomeness of human nature. The Kshatriya is fraternising with the foreigner to hold his own country-men in bondage for pecuniary gains. The Vysya has entered the international speculative market the ruin of our farmer. The sudras have joined Government service in the menial departments or have embraced Christianity to better themselves and have thus become alienated from their country men by adopting in toto foreign ideas“

This is another .. from a 1935 speech titled “Prostitution of Art”. This argument against standardisation of art is in direct contrast with the arguments for standardisation of art in Ludwin Von Mises’ “The Anti Capitalistic Mentality” ;) .. as expected ofcourse ;).

“In Olden days every article was produced according to every man’s taste. If one wanted a thing one went to the workman, gave him a model according to one’s own taste and in the use of it one derived the pleasure of one’s own creation. Now today we find the foreigner who is ignorant of our tastes, producing articles for us and we have forgotten what talent and art our country possessed. Thus our art and culture are slowly deteriorating. Today tastes are cultivated for the things manufactured by machines, instead of things being manufactured to suit tastes. This is not the propagation of art but the prostitution of it. The same kind of prostitution is being carried out on every walk of life”

The whole philosophy behind the decentralisation movement is captured as below here. Why decentralisation is a mean between the twin extremes of Capitalism and Communism is illustrated here.

“While we do not reject profit motive, we may attempt to curb the capacity of the individual to accumulate profits and wealth. We human beings are so built that human progress can only be possible with the advance of each individual. For the advance of each individual, it is necessary to allow a certain amount of self interest. This is fully demonstrated in every day life. When a man works for a fixed salary in a Government post, the contribution he makes to the society is generally of a routine nature. The greatest inventions and discoveries have been the results of venture, some spirits attempting to give expression to their inner urge. Decentralisation of production ensures the producer the product of his labour. Therefore if group production has its disadvantages the alternative is decentralised production“

The supply-demand dichotomy of the pre-machine and post-machine is era is explained below. I think this one sort of sums up the whole thing very well.

“Supply has made larger strides than demand. In the earlier stages the struggle was to increase the supply, now over production loudly calls for an increase in demand. Machinery spells standardisation and large scale production. Even then this does not meet the demand correctly.  A man wants a pair of shoes in Bombay. He goes into a shop and he is presented with large numbers of footwear made in Northampton by a shoemaker who had never set eyes on the customer. The shoe manufacturer makes standard sizes and without trouble he easily multiplies the numbers. He does not stop to wait for orders. Like pat-a-cake the bakers man , he makes them as fast as he can and ships them to various parts of the world for sale. The supply comes into existence without knowing the demand and then it seeks out demand. Again, in an industry like the steel industry  powerful vested interests influence the government to find outlets for their products. The government seeks out “Backward” peoples and builds railways and bridges for them while the children of these “Backward” peoples are starving physically and mentally”

“In the past, directive forces which stimulated economic activity were natural hunger of the savage and the discomforts of the sensitive body of the agriculturist. These were nature’s urge or goad. But now we have to artificially increase demand by habits cultivated by imitation or custom, so that excess production may be absorbed. Food, Clothing, Shelter were nature’s demand, but tobacco, lipstick, rouge and face powder are examples of demand cultivated by imitation and custom. In many cases even if consumer is indifferent, the producer, by modern methods of advertisement and other means of propaganda, persuades the public to use that which has no utility and makes business for himself and sells his goods”

“To dispose of excess production markets have to be found. Competition has assumed a keenness never before known. To increase the consumers i.e., the demand, it is necessary to complicate the lives of simple folks – “Civilize” them. The eagerness to capture markets and “civilize” backward peoples has led to jealousies between industrialised nations and resistance among the victims and in both the cases it has led to armaments and violence on a scale in keeping with the large scale of production, the root of the trouble“

In the next post i will try to summarise some stuff from the bigger and more exhaustive book “Why the village movement” .. this post was largely excerpts from his collection of speeches/essays “Philosophy of village movement”.

I think it is important to know what is going wrong in our world today. We may or may not be able to correct it. But that shouldn’t be the reason to stop exploring why things are the way they are. For all that i know i will be sitting for placements in some months and all this may become irrelevant soon. But i think it is still important to know :)

And the break from the fraud blog break has been described here.

 

Like the dog’s tail ..

So i think it is near impossible to stay disconnected from the e-world really. I have done this before and i have failed before as well. So atleast i am back to blogging though i have stopped facebooking i.e, posting 2-3 post per day on my wall. I am a leecher by choice now ;) . But end of the day i think if the intention is to spread and share whatever you read with the larger audience then perhaps both are needed. Btw when i say spread or share i mean doing it passively. Not to bombard people’s emails or IMs or SMSes and asking them to read :P.

Its very dangerous these days to let people know that you have time to read all this. Its very easy to pass statements on people really (Even i do it .. infact this itself is one such :P). You have all the time in the world to watch movies .. party.. travel around .. gossip.. get sloshed .. what not .. and then if someone is reading stuff and writes blog posts about it you say .. “you seem to be having a lot of free time  these days” :P. I protest ! :P

Bulls not Pigs

This was one piece by thomas friedman in NYT which i read via Indian Express. This is how it starts .. so now wonder that is how it ended ;)

Citigroup is lucky that Muammar el-Gaddafi was killed when he was. The Libyan leader’s death diverted attention from a lethal article involving Citigroup, saying it had to pay a $285 million fine to settle a case in which, with one hand, Citibank sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers — securities that it knew were likely to go bust — and, with the other hand, shorted the same securities — that is, bet millions of dollars that they would go bust.

Point is not to mock any company. But just to say that this is not really the best way to do business. And the reason why bschool students should focus more on this is not to become anti-companies anti-capitalists but to realise that they have a tough task up their sleeves if they want to right the wrongs ;) . ( This is infact a pseudo #recruiter alert :P)

The food business stuff again

Like i mentioned in my last post ever since i read about the patent violations due to GM seeds and the documentary “Food Inc” … anything about the food industry is grabbing my attention. So this article in Indian express again interested me.

It talks about regulating the sale/production of less healthy fast foods and sugary bevarages manufactured by food majors and how it is impacting the obesity “epidemic”. Very interesting questions raised.. like this “can an industry that is seen as a big part of the problem also be part of the solution?” .

I liked this line by the Pepsi Co people.. very clever lines business executives can mouth. Hope i too get a chance some day. No i am not being sarcastic :)

“We want consumers coming back to us in the long term, enjoying products that are good for their health, or we will lose them, from a purely business point of view,” says Derek Yach of PepsiCo.

The article goes on to talk about many such paradoxes. Very very interesting piece and a must read for people who have some minute interest in this space. But i think the question of who has more clout is answered in thsi statement from the article

“60 per cent of the world’s nations have an economic output lower than the annual turnover of the top five food and beverage companies” :D

Bill Gates again

So sometime back i spoke about how i am impressed with Bill Gates and  his “Creative Capitalism” speech. I happened to read this article a couple days ago titled “Idolise Bill Gates, Not Steve Jobs”. Amongst other things i liked this part of the article ..

I hope you will reflect on what you’ve done with your talent and energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you work to address the world’s deepest inequities, on how well you treat people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.

Well.. Umm.. We all know this .. but more often than not we end up doing our jobs .. go home and spend time with family and go to office again. I know.. we suck :D

Citizen Lawmaking

For a long time i used to hate the anna hazare movement for not getting into direct politics and trying to make laws from outside the parliamentary system. But recently i happened to read this piece from economist again via IE . It is very enlightening to say the least.

It talks about efforts in russia like Wikivote which aims at some kind of a collaborative law making. The brazillian efforts are noteworthy as rightly pointed out in the article.” it channels comments straight to the parliamentary agency that advises MPs” .

Interesting stuff really. These days even Indian govt is doing this i believe. I saw stuff about the planning commission seeking suggestion about the 12th plan .. the jan lokpal bill story .. land rehabilitation act so on so forth.

Good :)

Sustainable Philanthropy

ET had this interesting interview on the topic of “sustainable philanthrophy” . No that is not an oxymoron ;). The article tried to distinguish between the philanthrophy of Bill and Mellinda Gates foundation Vs that of an Omidyar Network. I think the world can do with both ;) . Btw i got to know of Omidyar network thanks to  the article. Very impressive :) (Pierre Omidyar is the founder of ebay)

This 2006 article on WHO page also talks about some such initiative by Deloris Jordan M/o Michael Jordan in the healthcare sector. There is so much good happening in the world really and we barely get to know :)

In our individual capacity we may or may not get to do/involve with all this. But always good to know ;)

The Johnson and Johnson thing:

This is another story thats been doing rounds in the newspapers of late on the lines of what i wrote here .

It is about some harmful chemicals being present in the baby care shampoos of J&J. As per what i understand from this public statement by J&J they are phasing out the formaldehyde releasing preservatives in question from their products slowly. They apparently also have another “Naturals” variant which doesn’t contain any such chemicals and they advocated the concerned parties to also consider buying it. But that is twice the price of this disputed chemical variant :P .

Anyway like J&J themselves say “For more than 100 years they have remained committed to providing quality babycare”. So obvly they will not make more money by building bad reputation like this ;). But i think this consumer activism is required as most companies like to be “reactive” and not
“proactive” on such things. Infact, the companies would a lot of good to the world by pre-empting the activists and doing such things beforehand. But then i think the argument in the boardroom would always be .. “As long as they are not complaining i think we can stay quiet. Why increase our costs unnecessarily” :)

More on the food system thing

This is another article about “Local production Local consumption” another one of my pet topics these days. It talks about some contradictions in our farming techniques like why we export stuff that might be neeeded at home or why we import stuff that can be grown at home and the imbalances there of. There is a mention of “The Santa Barbara system: evidence of a broken food chain” … Though Indian food chain hasn’t become that crazy yet given the intensity with which we ape the west in every other thing i think we are not too far ;).

This is a bit unrelated but an equally shocking piece of news nevertheless. The swedish mining town of Kiruna is being moved 4.5Kms to facilitate mining activities. Funny people we are :D . We move cities like we move tables and chairs :D

Tribals .. Barbie dolls so on

I close the post with this stuff.

This piece is about the Barbie toymaker Mattel’s decision  to stop sourcing paper and packaging from vendors involved in deforestation of rainforests. This is very much like those case studies discussed in Business sustainability course ;). Yet again it took massive activism by greenpeace to get this done. Like i said in the previous paragraphs.. companies always seem to wait for some activist to come and tell them .. “This is wrong. Dont do this”. Strange :) . The whole story has been documented here. Very interesting to see a combination facebook+youtube+twitter activism. Guess that is the norm these days :)

This is about how an indian tribe in Karnataka secured unprecedented rights to use their ancestral land they were evicted from as it was classified as a tiger reserve. I like this statement ‘We have been the ones that look out for tigers. You remove us and you remove the tigers” . The article says that governments should start recognising that tribal people are the best conservationists and they should stop evicting tribals from their ancestral lands. I think i’d agree on that :).

Btw the organisation quoted in the prev article “Survival International” seems to be doing some super cool stuff :). This is another  one from them about the struggle of the Kalahari Bushmen . Tribals Zindabad ?? :)

And finally i end with more such stuff :P .. This is one amazing photo-blog if i may call it so about some such stuff in Uganda. Just like in India these days .. displacement of tribals .. acquisition of land etc seem to be the biggest issues elsewhere in Africa too :(.

This one is about Indian farming traditions in Punjab.. the other side of green revolution ;). I remember listening to a talk on this topic during my IIIT-H days. It is about the work being done by farmers from Kheti Virasat Mission. Do check

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