Desicritics Author: Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta

Sisyphus And the Israeli-Palestinian Crisis

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:26:57 EDT

Personally, I was happy with the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, as it has saved me a few quid. You see, using software developed in Israel for counter terrorist purposes, the local council has saved hundreds of thousands of pounds by implementing a lie detection system over the phone. So when you call up our council to claim benefits, the operator says that you are being evaluated by this lie detection system, you would either not go ahead with the claim or would have the claim rejected because the system thinks you are telling ‘porkies’. The amount of porkies that are told in the aftermath of the Israeli Palestinian Crisis is monumental.

I have a morbid fascination with this crisis. It’s like a horrific car accident. You know you shouldn’t see the accident, but still you slow down as you pass the accident site, crane your neck and peer at the gruesome details. You know it’s a rather uncivilized behaviour and something that your mum would scold you for, but still you cannot avoid it. It’s the same with this crisis. You know that whenever you pick up this topic, you get hammered because you simply cannot be neutral and unemotional at all about it. Even if you are, then for some participant on one side, you will be biased. As simple as that, there is no independent observer on this issue. Ever!

Which is the reason why this book, The Israel – Arab Reader, A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict, edited by Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, should be an indispensable part of your reference library. These two well known authors have done a great job in collecting some vital historical documents, which can be used - at least - to establish some facts on the ground when debating or arguing this issue. The documents are a treasure trove in a very convenient volume broken up into five parts. The first part relates to the time from 1882 to the end of the British Mandate. This part explains the roots of the problem. After this, the remaining parts four are from 1947 – 1973, Camp David to the Madrid Conference, the peace process from 1992 onwards till the intifada started and the peace process dried up.

This book is now in the seventh edition, and once you see it, you can understand why this is so. It contains manifestos, speeches, documents, interviews, memorandums, laws, declarations, reports, statements, parliamentary documents and speeches, United Nations speeches and resolutions, White Papers and the like. The editors have collected documents from Arabs, Israelis, British, United Nations, United States, Germans, Russians, etc. Once I started, I made it a point to read one document or section per day, and I finally managed to complete it. By this time, my hair was hurting so badly, that it had curled up like a Velcro mat. You know why? Because when one reads this, one is torn between two feelings, one – this is a car accident, drive away and two – it’s a car accident, bloody hell, what happened.

This is not the place to review who is right or who is wrong. Who is right or wrong is no longer the argument; it has gone way beyond that. The thousands of millions of words and pages which have been written, the millions of people killed, tortured, wounded, exiled, the decades of anger, hatred and war, the deep religious entwining, the ancient history of this blood drenched land, all those frankly preclude any rational and objective discussion of this issue.

Mind you, there have been thousands of solutions, such as the Two State Solution, Jordanian Solution, the One State Solution, the Ugandan Solution, the Madagascar Solution, and so on and so forth. The current state is a variant of the Two State Solution, which was established in 1948. There would be a Palestinian state and an Israeli state. There is no point in going for what-if’s, we are where we are. The One State solution is now slowly gaining credence. A recent and reasonably well argued book from the Palestinian perspective is written by my colleague, Ghada Karmi, called Married to Another Man, Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine. If you keep these two books in front of you, you will see what I mean by the great difficulty of trying to be independent and unemotional about this issue. The latter book is something that clearly Israel can never live with, as it is very emotive. But then, being the son of a refugee myself, I can empathise with Ghada about her feelings for her homeland which clearly show up in her work. Unfortunately, that emotional approach to this problem means that the book is more of an op-ed than a balanced and reasoned argument for a One State Solution.

The Two State Solution, unfortunately will be the only way forward for the foreseeable future, the only outstanding questions relate to the boundaries, the state of Jerusalem, refugees and security. But then, I definitely have no suggestions as to how this can be resolved, other than the fact that Israel should speak to Hamas and come to some sort of agreement. But I am also doubtful that this solution would be that easy. You see, this conflict has now reached civilisational levels, with the entire Muslim nation officially seeing the Palestinian cause as its own, while the majority of liberal democracies, broadly defined, are lined up with Israel. Conflicts at these levels are breathtakingly huge in concept, think about the crusades, the final solution, the English – Boer War and so on and so forth. The historical record is not good; solutions are generally imposed when one party is utterly exhausted or eradicated. But the core issue does not go away. Hundreds of years after the crusades were over, the issue still flares up in strange and weird places (witness the reaction of the Muslim nation when George Bush said that he was launching a crusade against terrorism.) But if it will be solved, it will be solved by the efforts of people like Laqueur and Rubin, who try to be independent and clearly want to resolve the issue without taking extreme positions such as what Karmi does.

But for what it’s worth, Israel and Palestine have been facing an existential problem for its sixty years and every year, like Sisyphus, they have been trying to resolve it. I can but look upon this train crash of a problem with deep despair and worry but still I think, at least my council tax bill will be reduced by two quid because of this problem. Now that’s not a silver lining on a planetary sized cloud. It is perhaps a silver molecule on a solar system sized typhoon, but hey, straws are straws. In the meantime, happy reading and lets hope Sisyphus keeps on banging away at this task.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Why is Argentina Boosting Air Force Spending?

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Tue, 6 May 2008 00:36:37 EDT

Argentina has been in a spot of economic trouble, well, for many years now. This week's Economist had this to say:

Argentina is worse off on all three counts ... provoked a tax revolt by farmers ... lost its most important new face when Martín Lousteau resigned as economy minister over a policy disagreement. ... The price of Argentina's bonds has plunged as investors show little confidence in the government. ... According to unofficial calculations, inflation has reached 25% (officially, it is 9%). ... But overheating and inflation are already bringing Argentines some of these woes. ... The statistics agency has stopped releasing poverty figures. Using an independent estimate of inflation, the poverty rate has risen from 27% in 2006 to 30%, with 1.3m Argentines descending into poverty last year. ...

Pretty much standard for a Latin American country, and I did not worry about it that much. But this raised serious worries for me when I got to read about the fact that more budget and aircraft were promised for the Argentine Air Force (Hat tip: DefenceTalk).

You know that the United Kingdom is not going to be able to mount another Falklands-style campaign, not with most of our troops tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bosnia and other places. (Graphic). Those 1,300 soldiers in the Falklands will not be able to stop the Argentines if they attack. At the most, they are supposed to provide a speed bump till reinforcements arrive. How will they arrive? Our main heavy-lift aircraft, Hercules, is up on the blocks because it has cracks. Our naval aviator Harrier pilots are no longer fully trained or up to date on carrier landings. Our political system is currently undergoing massive upheaval and the economy is whimpering. If the Argentines wanted to pick a time to attack the Falklands, then they couldn't have picked a better one. Am I crying wolf? I might be biased because my supervising professor is the official historian of the previous campaign and wrote about it in two volumes, here and here. But remember what happened the first time around? They went to war because the country had economic difficulties and the military government tried to divert attention by launching into a war. That nebulous link with neighbours, as mentioned in the Uruguayan newspaper, is worrying. Is that a reference to Venezuela? If not that, why or which other neighbour will have Air Force links with Argentina?

Dont know, but not getting a good feeling about this.

Technorati Tags: Argentina, United Kingdom, War

Managing Discretionary Spending and Pensions

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Mon, 5 May 2008 01:14:23 EDT

Companies generate funds for investments from various sources. These investments are again allocated to various purposes, such as business expansion, for improving processes, for purchasing new businesses, or what have you.

When you invest in a new business, you usually track the revenue generation or the new business that it has generated and if it has not brought in anything near what you originally thought it would, then you re-evaluate it and then leave it or digest it.

Investments can be measured easily by revenues or costs, but when one is talking about operational changes, technology investments, purchase or implementation of patents and other intellectual property or say buildings, it suddenly becomes extremely tough to evaluate whether your investments are doing well.

Here, I try to shed some light on how one can help manage discretionary investments.

In my short experience, I was continuously surprised at how lazy people are in terms of managing their investments, in other words their capital. I asked the same question when I was at a conference some months ago, namely how many people actively check their internal firm investments in the same manner they do their pension fund investments? Hardly any hands went up in the hall, where numerous senior managers were sitting. This is why so many firms have less than efficient internal investments.

Portfolio management has existed for many decades, since Harry Markowitz proposed his portfolio management theory way back in 1952 (here’s something for the conspiracy theorists, his major work was done in the RAND Corporation…). Since then, three generations of investment managers have grown up and applied the principles of portfolio management to their investments. Portfolio Management is applicable to any form of investments and the basic concepts are the same: diversify your investments, make sure you know what you are investing in, the effective and efficient capacity to disinvest is more important than to invest, the objectives for the overall portfolio might be different from the sub-component objectives, do regular reviews of your investment and finally, be as transparent as possible, etc.

What do you do with your investments in your pension funds? You check them regularly, no? You invest in your pension with the expectation of future gain or benefits.

Depending on your personal circumstances, you decide your investment profile and target areas and then monitor the risk-return profile regularly, you replace badly performing funds with better performing funds if required, etc. In other words, you do Portfolio Management. And frankly, that is what you do within firms as well. Or rather, this is what you should do. This relates mainly to financial institutions, although the concept will apply equally to any firm.

The support areas within the companies also invest, but not in bonds or shares. Instead, they invest a certain discretionary sum in technology, in improving and running those processes, in offshoring and outsourcing, in satisfying regulatory and compliance demands, in revenue generation activities, in setting up branch offices, etc. By their very name and nature of being support areas, they provide some business benefit, either by allowing us to operate as a firm, or reducing cost or satisfying regulatory requirements or increasing revenue or a combination of some or all of them.

In a firm, there are two types of spending: "Business as Usual" versus "Discretionary" spending. The former relates to the spending you have to do to support your existing business, while the latter relates to “new” spending, designed to support growth and explore new opportunities. This second type is that which we would call investment.

Bearing this definition in mind, there are some key questions to consider. For instance: Do you analyse your discretionary spending for suitability? Do you know what you are spending the money on? Do you check whether it is providing value? Do you stop investments? Can you respond to ad hoc information requests from the business on the return on investment footprint for the investments? Often, the answer is "no." So, if you do that analysis with your own pension, why not do so with your technology or operations investment? And if you wanted to do so, what do you do?

The level to which you will go to analyse your investments obviously depends on the size of the firm, how you run your financial systems, what kind of financial governance do you impose internally etc. But for a large global financial institution, what you do is to get a small team of senior chaps together and get initial agreement on what you want to achieve, what will be the methodology, logistics and how will this portfolio management function be governed.

The data you need is simple, such as the name of the programme or project or investment, start and end dates of the projects, which business unit is paying for it, which unit will be involved in the implementation, the status of the spend (committed, authorised, approved, spent…), the purpose of that investment (regulatory, revenue generation, enhancements…), when the benefits will arise and so on.

Don’t complicate matters, a simple Excel spreadsheet is just fine. There is much benefit in keeping things simple but mind you, it would be worthwhile to invest in some good technical expertise in reports, graphs and business intelligence to present the data. But I am getting ahead of myself.

There are two problems which are crucial to manage. The first is the process to get the data and the second is the data itself. Senior management engagement is vital for this, but then, anything of this nature will require senior management engagement anyway. If you don’t have senior management approval and push, then you might as well stop, because your life will be hell.

Nobody likes their spending to be made transparent and if you do not have backing, you will get trashed, ignored or worse, actively banned. You see, transparency means performance matching. If your head of operations has $10 million to invest, the business can legitimately ask him, where are you spending that money and how do you justify that investment? Also, show your productivity gains (as in return on investment…).

But if transparency is not achieved, then the head of operations can merrily go about spending money without any care for performance or improvement. Even if they are all above board, how do you know where the money is going? Is it going into unproductive causes? How much is left in the kitty? How much of the money is tied up on multi-year spending?

To answer all those questions, senior management support is vital.

Senior management cannot, by themselves, sit in on every meeting with the spending divisions. This requires the second solution, and that is to have relationship managers. Whether you are doing this at the technology level, the operational level, the business unit level or whichever level you are aiming at, you need senior relationship managers who can talk to the business managers at their level of expertise and experience. If you do not have serious relationship managers who can understand the spend patterns, the business that is being supported etc., the process and data will not be good. In other words, you cannot have a fixed income trading background relationship manager talking about investments with the chief infrastructure officer, they simply cannot relate to each other.

The third solution is to invest an indecently huge amount of time and money in the pre-training, communications, workshops, conference calls, etc. BEFORE the process starts off.

This portfolio management process has the capacity to seriously influence your entire organisation, from top to bottom, from trading to procurement, from regulatory reporting to market data. So, before you actually kick this process off, make sure you have talked, discussed, debated, argued with as many stakeholders as possible and then document the agreements and then talk, discuss, debate and argue again. It is easy to go wrong once underway and difficult to change direction when started, so front load all the push, training, motivation, and discussions.

Then come the data challenges. Even though you have a good simple data model, you will be surprised how difficult it is to get the data. Simple concepts become horrendously complicated when seen across national boundaries, cultures, ages, sexes, languages, charts of accounts, etc. For example, a simple question like, what is the difference between a programme and a project becomes exceedingly complicated (Go for a more than 10 million budget as an example, and it’s a programme with sub-projects, and anything below 100 K has to be a task which has to be rolled up into a project).

What do you mean by project / investment start? Does start mean that some steering committee somewhere has given the go-ahead or the capital allocation committee has said, yes or the CFO has signed off or the money has actually been transferred to your cost code? Or does it just mean the project / programme initiation document has been signed?

A data dictionary should be written and training has to be given. Regular training, communications, etc. should be the lot of relationship managers. One has to beware that this portfolio management process might conflict with local financial governance, so having a word with the local or functional CFO before rolling this out would be better. For example, the standardisation of the “start” of a project across the globe and all units could require all CFOs to adopt the same sort of financial governance in terms of signing off and transference of funds to cost codes. So, keep it simple. Remember what Einstein said, "everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

Once the data starts rolling in, then get your business analysts and reporting gurus to work on it. A short, sharp presentation with some smart graphics showing the spending, its type and shape etc. is great, but add commentary to this analysis.

If you find that 40% of your funds are spent on regulatory aspects, which are multiyear in nature, consider asking the business COO and / or the CFO to ring-fence those sums into an SIV or in special codes which do not belong to the business or function.

This has huge advantages.

You do not have the temptation to dip into that pot. That pot of money is not something that you can influence, so you concentrate on value additive aspects of your investments, etc. It’s like the difference between spending your money on electricity versus spending your money on an iPod. Over the course of a year, both amounts would be the same, but you manage each investment differently and the same goes for mandatory spending.

Analyse when spending happens. The number of times I have seen people forget the yearly cycle is amazing. Spending behaviour changes over the year. The months just before accounting closes change as vendors and clients change behaviour, so that costs/revenues hit their books differently. People forget there is something called committed spending, especially in these days of outsourcing and offshoring. So if you want to cut costs, it is not that simple. If you were planning to put in gated funding, it does not work properly with outsourcing contracts. So commentary around that will help.

If you can get figures for return on investment, then there is nothing like it. That will make you the darling of the firm. You can turn around and ask (well, request…) the business owners: “You invested 100 million in that business, show that it returned the funds you said it would in the business case.” This commentary and visibility on the numbers is absolutely golden for senior management.

So what do you end up having? You have a process providing you with investment information which ends up giving management information on the investments. Now what?

Well, now you use this information in various management areas. Budgeting should be one. Performance evaluation should be another. Cash flow planning is another area where this can be used. Human Resource planning is an area begging for good portfolio resource planning. Across the firm, you will have very few good change managers and on the back of this process, you can hang a strategic resource plan. This structure also allows you to make investment changes with the greatest efficiency. This takes the emotion out of decision-making. If you have to cut your costs, then you can home into the areas where they are exactly possible, rather than areas where people “think” and “emotionally” believe costs can be cut. That is not good for the firm.

This structure also allows you to re-jig investments. If a strategic project is overrunning, then this structure and data allows you to make unemotional scientific decisions to take money from another project and give it to the project which is running a shortfall. Another advantage of this process is that it forces the entire firm to start talking the same language. Never underestimate the benefit of the firm using the same functional language and this is very useful indeed.

Think about it, your mergers and acquisitions will go much more smoothly if you have a clear-cut way to handle investments, both the old and new employees are clear about their business functions and their future. Again, the emotion is removed from the argument.

One way to get the language part right is to use a methodology. No point in hiring expensive consultants to tell you how to run your business.

Industry firms such as HP, IBM, Accenture and other firms release pretty good white papers on project portfolio management. If you want to go for a good book, then select this one by Shan Rajegopal, Philip McGuin and James Waller, titled Project Portfolio Management (ISBN:0-230-50716-6, Palgrave MacMillian). The book comes highly recommended and is written by authors who have obviously implemented project portfolio management.

They have written an excellent manual based on their experience with their clients. The only couple of criticisms one might have with the book is that they do not consider discretionary spending more widely, but rather take a perspective of technology spending only. However, that complaint is perhaps unique to Banking and Financial Services compared to other industries. Second, some more case studies might have been useful, but I suspect this kind of data would be very difficult to get. Still, you can do much worse than to keep this book on your reference shelf.

It is not an easy exercise. It needs much senior management attention and support, months and quarters of work and talk. You need to overcome a lot of cynicism and you have to work against the inertia of rest.

At end of the day, the data that you will get will be rich and will definitely be worth it. Don’t think that this is only for senior management; this can be done by any manager in charge of investments.

How do you know if you have done your job of portfolio management well? If your presentation to your management is received by raised eyebrows and the sentence, “This is interesting”, then you know that you have done a good job of it. But treat your investments as you would treat your pension, and your future life will be much safer, smoother and exciting.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Technorati Tags: management,financial institutions

The British Government and Corrupt Practices

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:11:39 EDT

It has been days since the Court said that the Serious Fraud Office has "seriously" erred in stopping the fraud and corruption case against BAE for allegedly bribing various Saudi people. Now, who from the government have you heard saying anything about this case?

This government is very quick to pronounce on everything and everybody under the sun, but not on this. So what gives? (besides the fact that Gordon Brown usually hides and bottles out whenever there is a problem, and wakes up months after the problem is screaming for attention. He met with the British banks months after the wholesale markets problem was identified)

I will tell you what gives! It means that the government knows there is something wrong in this bargain. I have been tracking this for some time now and I am positive that BAE has indeed paid bribes. Why do I think that? Well, see here. The American Justice Department is on the case and I quote:

Another US official said the justice department had concerns that approval could hamper an investigation into whether BAE violated US laws by allegedly bribing Saudi officials over a previous arms deal known as Al-Yamamah. BAE has denied any wrongdoing.

If everything was tickety boo and overboard, why on earth would the Justice Department express concerns about it? It is, after all, not just a banana republic and a tin pot dictator we are talking about. We are talking about, oh!, sorry, a banana republic after all.

What people do not realise is the damage this step has done to the country's internal political and social consistency. For a political government in the form of ministers to interfere with an independent body - which is answerable only to Parliament - is critically insane. This has violated the basic structure of the checks and balances built into our society. Between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, this finely balanced and widely admired system of checks and balances has been tampered with.

For those who think that this is a problem for another country and is just the normal cost of doing business in those countries, no, it is not. Bribing a corrupt Saudi Prince means that each and every Saudi and Saudi Arabian resident is paying that bit more for those planes, because that excess money could have been used to build some roads, fund some scholarships, pay for some nurses...

It also means that the Saudis think that the Brits agree and accept corruption and bribery. So if they think so and bribe one of the incorruptible British Member of Parliaments, I suppose that would be fine, no? After all, if its acceptable for the Brits to bribe a member of the Saudi Government, it should be also acceptable for the Saudis to do the same, no?

When will these people in government understand that corruption drives away good money and ruins the governance of a country resulting in decaying the country from inside? Perhaps never, because if they wink and nudge at the BAE corruption, then they are also corrupt. For further details, see Transparency International and the OECD Anti Bribery Convention which the OECD have signed AND ratified.

Shameful!

Technorati Tags: BAE, United Kingdom, Corruption, Bribery, Saudi Arabia.

Photo Essay: I Love Beauty Parades

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 02:24:07 EDT

Yes, Sir. I do love them. I was in sunny Bangalore when the whole hoo haa about the Miss World beauty pageant blew up in 1996. Well, I have to thank Ganesh, Imhotep, Confucius, Zeus and the great Pasta God aka Great Flying Spaghetti Monster with meat balls in the sky, that I stayed in the same hotel as those lovely ladies and my eyes were almost perpetually on stalks. So while it was young spotty hormone driven time way back then, now I have moved on (I think).

I know all the very well known arguments against female beauty parades. Here's a great article by Choodie Shivaram on this issue and I am taking the liberty to quote few lines from her article.

""demeaning to our culture," "devaluing to our tradition," "promoting vulgarity and obscenity," and "a disgrace to womanhood." ...... Communists deplored the event as capitalist exploitation of women and part of the multi-national corporations' carefully planned plundering of India. Women's groups found the event degrading to women.

Quite so, but at the same time, hey, I am an observer and while at the same time, I can slightly see the objections, I also am an appreciative lover of human beauty. Take this joke "photoshopped" picture for example on the left while the real David is on the right

I am sure Michelangelo would be rolling in his grave but that's not beautiful to me even though it is just a plump version of his David. And irrespective of which statue you like, you do know that one arm of that statue is broken and then repaired? You still like and admire that statue, no? A disabled statue, so to speak.

So then I read the news that now Cambodia will play host to Miss Landmine 2009. I quote:

Miss Landmine parades beautiful female landmine victim amputees on the catwalk as they compete to win prosthetic limbs....

See this line?

the pageant has drawn howls of protest from rights activists and feminists, who brand it colonialist, racist, sexist and exploitative.

Sounds familiar? But go back to the woman. Since I have started working in London (many decades now), I have known many colleagues who have lost their breasts after a mastectomy. And one thing was common on every piece of advice and gossip and reading and research and talking about it, that it is not the loss of the breast(s) or the surgery itself that hurts the most, it is the fear that they will no longer be attractive.

And spare me the gumpf about how sexist it is. Everybody likes to look good and feel appreciated, nothing wrong in that. While I am not so sure about the fact that the contestants have to compete to get prosthetic limbs (give it to them, that's what a public health service is all about), but generally, the idea of a disabled beauty pageant is not bad at all. And I am not even touching the topic of landmines at all (but promise to do so later on).

Still, here are women, who due to no fault of their own, no longer have all their limbs. Still for a wrong purpose, they are going to show off their beauty, something like this. Beautiful girls, the fact that they are in a wheelchair is incidental. They still look beautiful and attractive.

I am going to get slated for this, but hey, here goes nothing. Here are some photographs of women who I would find attractive.

Both have a lovely smiles, twinkling eyes and that shows a very attractive persona.

How about this debate about the disabled pregnant woman statue in London's Trafalgar Square?

The statue on the left is said to be the personification of Venus de Milo in the Louvre. So if you can admire the right hand side, can't you admire the left hand side? Once you have seen that, read the story about the real life woman behind the statue.

Now see this real life photograph of a disabled naked woman which resembles the two statues above. Attractive? Beautiful? Wonderful? Sexy? Adorable? Lovely? Cuddly? All these and more. Nothing wrong with it at all.

Would I wolf whistle at these beauty pageant contestants shown below? Yes, Sir, I sure would.

Below is a photograph of a lady who won one of these pageants. You go girl, and she is damn attractive. She is beautiful and wonderful, and the loss of a limb does not take anything away from her. Her eyes display a determination and a love of life seldom found these days.

And there is a swimsuit competition as well as. And yes, I am sexist in saying that I find these women attractive too. So yes, I do love these pageants. I find these women attractive, and yes, even if they are disabled (and no, I do not suffer from apotemnophilia), they are beautiful because beauty is not just the presence or absence of some limbs but is in the eye of the beholder.

The Angry American Generation

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 05:00:58 EDT

Have you heard about the greatest generation? This is the generation which was born around the early part of the 20th century and fought in the Second World War. These are the people who fought because it was the right thing to do and went on after the war to build one the most prosperous societies known to mankind. The next big war, Vietnam War, produced what I would call as the bewildered generation. Between drugs, peace, liberalism, a whole generation was lost to society but just when life was settling down, 9/11 happened. It is too early to say but between 9/11, Afghanistan, the Bush Administration and Iraq, a new generation is forming which will define America for the next thirty years at the least. I call it the angry generation.

Surprised? Well, yes, so was I when I read the book We were One by Patrick K O’Donnell. This is a fascinating book about the Marines of the 1st Platoon, Lima Company, Third Battalion, First Marine Regiment and its operations in Falluja primarily over a period of few weeks in November / December 2004. The book ends with the following sentences which I am taking the liberty to quote. “The individuals I met in Iraq, especially in the Marines of 1st Platoon, showed me clearly that they truly do constitute the next Greatest Generation. Make no mistake about it; America’s best is in Iraq. After surviving the battle, I made an oath, a blood oath, that I would tell their story”. Quite an emphatic statement, no? But I am moving too far ahead as usual.

My first introduction to the Greatest Generation was predictably via a book. It was a fiction book, by Leon Uris, called Battle Cry. This was the story of a bunch of volunteer Marines, who had enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and fought across a variety of islands in the Pacific. The book is also about their loves and hates, their lives and deaths. It is a brilliant book and I have read and re-read that book a zillion times. Then I read about the economics, history, sociology, science, education etc. of post war America and then I slowly understood what the term “Greatest Generation” meant. It is difficult to explain, perhaps more of a term to be felt. These marines were in the Marine Corps for years on end and therefore formed a bond between themselves, inside the Corps and most importantly, with society that was crucial to them being great.

If somebody has to explain it, then it will never work, but perhaps one has to empathise to feel what this term means. Walk around one of the great American cities and observe the tall confident buildings, travel the highways and witness those ribbons of concrete wrapping the country, observe the factories and witness the bodies at work, walk into a campus and see the minds at play. All these were due to the Greatest Generation. This is a broad generalisation, but I do hope you understand what I mean. War, in this case, brought the country together and gave rise to the Greatest Generation.

But the Vietnam War tore a hole in the fabric of American society. Between the late 1960’s to 1970’s, cold war, hippie culture, drugs, the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon and the 1973 oil shock, the country seemed to emerge a bit confused and a bit bewildered. The American Army was in literal shock, society was a bit disorientated as well, and that is why I call the generation which lived through and participated in the Vietnam War as the bewildered generation. Individuality was celebrated, societal thinking was out, under-classes started to develop, corruption flourished, the legal system started to jam slightly, the political class started to stink a bit more, and the economy was creaking under the oil shock. The generation did not know what to do because the old certainties had gone away, the economic levers did not work, unemployment had risen, insecurity was high, politics was dirty, society as a construct was weakening, divorce rates were rising and so on and so forth. People were bewildered, they did not know what to do or how to react. That’s why I (again, a very broad generalisation here) call them as the bewildered generation.

It took the late 80’s and 90’s to get going again. The fall of the Berlin Wall and end of the cold war, the peace dividend, the rise of the internet and the computer, globalisation, Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton all meant that there was a buzz around the country, things were starting to happen again. There was hope for the future and people walked around with a spring in the step, a song on the lips and a smile on the face.

It took 9/11 to shock America. I think almost everybody across the world who was an adult on that day remembers the shock and horror as the twin towers collapsed. As somebody said, America lost its innocence that day and I add, anger was born. I am sure you would have read about how USA waged war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And till then, the world was with USA, but the Iraq war drove a coach and horses through the international support for USA. But what happened to the common American? Not the Americans who are in big city New York or Washington, but in the small town America which Senator Obama calls as “bitter”. These people, to paraphrase his words, “cling to guns and religion" as a result of economic uncertainty. The people that Alexis de Tocqueville believed were the bedrock of democracy in America.

This is where O’Donnell’s book comes in. It talks about a platoon of Marines who go through house by house, clearing out the whole stinking nest of Jihadis / insurgents in Fallujah. The author actually accompanied the platoon through the operation, had bullets whizzing past his ears and stepped into blood shed by dead Marines. He is one of the very rare breeds of historians, called as combat historians. This is as opposed to the embedded journalists who live in relative comfort and safety. He sat by while RPG’s blew up doors and rockets exploded houses. He witnessed drug addled Jihadis who would simply not die despite being literally peppered with bullets. He witnessed men who relied on each other and fought for each other, the platoon, the Corps and for their country. You might be thinking, but Iraq was an illegal war and Bush is not liked etc. etc. But that has nothing to do with these Marines whose job was to go from house to house, clearing them out.

For those who might know, house to house fighting is the most expensive and most grinding of all types of fighting. All the advantages are with the defender and almost none with the attacker. Presence of civilians means that the attackers are fighting from the beginning with one arm tied behind their backs. In other words, the probability of death or injury is very high and this is the important bit, they know it. But despite this, they keep on waking up each day and fighting. O’Donnell talks about how they feel, what they talk about, what makes them cringe and what makes them laugh. Why they started to smoke and how they dealt with the calls back home. And underlying this entire book was the constant reminder of 9/11 and how that drove each and every Marine. It was the shattering of the hope and innocence which gave rise to the Angry Generation. So what happened to this platoon? It took very heavy casualties, was shattered totally after the battle, went back to a hero’s welcome, but every grunt came back for his next tour of duty.

And this is where I step out in the future and make a guess-estimate of what this angry generation will do to USA and the world. Well, for one, I think USA will become more insular and isolationist, but at the same time it will be more unilateralist than it has been historically (George Bush’s presidency was a blip). That anger will make it take steps which it will not let the world influence. That anger will make USA become more protectionist in its treatment of the outside world. It will become more and not less religious and it will definitely become more conservative.

And believe you me, there is no point in telling this angry generation that it is wrong or USA is wrong in its foreign policy or what have you. It does NOT matter to the common American, those Americans for example who are in the Marines. This is not a polemic but my firmly held belief that the people we are going to be faced with in America are mostly going to be people like these Marines. If one has to frame public policy or try to understand America, it should know these people. The fact that they are backed by an immense country with huge assets, people, technology, universities, economies, companies, is almost incidental but not unimportant. But at end of the day, it is the man. I firmly believe that the American in the making is in the Angry Generation.

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!

Technorati Tags: USA,World War II,Greatest Generation,Iraq

Foreign Investment Causes Child Labor?

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:34:54 EDT

It is almost a truism in the modern day and age that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is bad, and one way that the negative effects manifest is that it causes child labour. What nobody sees is the impact on the child itself (see here for an interesting email discussion that I partook in). Blame the foreigner for making our children work, while we are quite happy to have children work as servants or not to provide any other economic way to allow the children to actually study. But its better to kick out the foreign investor, no?

Here is a study which checks what is the impact of FDI on child labour. The authors find that FDI is negatively correlated with child labour and even after controlling for per capita income, the effect totally disappears. Nothing, no impact, zilch, zero, nada.

Another very interesting conclusion that the authors come to is and I quote, "A key policy implication of this finding is that policies that increase the income effects of FDI may be especially useful in combating child labour. Such policies include payroll tax reductions that encourage multinationals to increase employment and wages. Thus, rather than interpreting these findings as an indication that FDI has no effect on child labour, we believe that our results point towards the need for nuanced policy that exploits these indirect effects."

This was a very curious conclusion to draw. I can understand concluding that dont swear at FDI, guys, if nothing, there is no relationship to child labour at all. But why talk about income effects? How will reducing payroll taxes actually help improve child labour? Well, the fact remains that child labour exists because of a variety of factors, not least because their parents are not gainfully employed. Get their parents into employment and you will lop off a very large number of children having to work. Which parent would want to see their children work when they could be playing and studying? But, all those payroll taxes do is to make it difficult to increase employment.

Ronald B. Davies and Annie Voy, The Effect of FDI on Child Labor, Journal of Development Economics In Press.

Technorati Tags: Childrens Rights,Employment,Labour

Photo Essay: Pinner Parish Church

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:41:52 EDT

It was the day my little munchkin dressed up like a princess to go to her boyfriend's birthday party. It was at Pinner Parish Church. I have passed this Church many times. It lies at the end of a winding narrow road which has beautiful period homes on both sides. But given the fact that it is on a corner, I could never stop and properly admire this lovely little church, but now that I had an hour and half to kill, I dug out my little Sony Ericsson camera and off I went. I couldnt go inside but stayed outside. See here for a bit of a background of the outside from the official site.

The building on the far side is the Church Hall which is used for school purposes and other community reasons, such as birthday parties. A lovely little path, very quiet and peaceful leads up to it. Even though it has been recently constructed, it blends well into this 12th century church.

This is the view of the churchyard on the north side.

This is a Calvary garden. The memorial plate on the wall gives some more details about the person who funded this garden. This word, Calvary, threw me a bit. Never heard of it before and after researching it, am still not very clear that I understood why this is called as a Calvary garden. It is because of the memorial plaque? Or because it was built by devotees? or what? Not sure.

On the left hand side, you can see a long narrow sign, just underneath the tree. It is a memorial to somebody who died 2 centuries ago and the reason why it is interesting is that Wm Skenelsb, the person whose name is on the memorial plaque, was more than 100 years old when he died.

But this is also quite interesting, most of the gravestones in the churchyard are for people who have lived on for amazingly long periods of time, 60, 70 years of age. And considering the time period involved where the life expectancy was hardly 25-30 years, this is amazing. Something in the water perhaps?

The north side of the bell tower, the tops are lost in a misty low cloud, it was quite snowy that day. But you can see where the repairs and restoration have taken place. See here for details of the construction.

This grave was interesting. There was no legible inscription left, but the base was all jutting out of the ground and it is obviously extremely old. The earth has settled down around the grave and bits are exposed. And to top it all, somebody has stuck a sign, Please Keep off the Grass. A bit late to say that to the old chap now, no? And that white bits on the bottom of the sign is snow. It was a very cold and crisp afternoon.

See the building in the background, this is the kind of architecture you would find around the village, just shows that the history of this village goes back to 900AD and beyond.

The west tower. The large window was beautiful, even from outside and so were the top smaller window but the clock was a disappointment. For such a lovely church tower and church yard, that manky looking clock with that faded blue paint does not fit at all. And then to put it in that frame was criminal. The only way they could have ruined it more would have been if they had put in a flashing neon digital clock.

Then you keep on walking around to the south side, lots of very old graves line the path. The foremost grave had an interesting shape, a tapered cone shaped grave. But if you walk down that list of gravestones, you find some very graves and of people who lived on for a long period of time.

This is a grave of a gentleman (and some more people) who lived on till he was 72 years of age! it was encased in a spiky iron cage which looked like it was put up some time after the grave was up up. Curiously, many graves showed signs of multiple occupancy. So if you had a wife buried there, you will also have the husband who would be buried there afterwards. I suppose it is because of saving costs and land.

This was a very curious monument. Read the background here. And yes, that is indeed a coffin in the middle of that A shaped monument which contains two bodies.

The main entrance. The statue in the alcove just above the main doors is of St. John the Baptist. But look on the roof, the windows are beautiful. I would never have expected to see windows like that on a church, house yes, church no. I wondered what purpose they would serve? And then looking at a picture here, it became clear. Usually churches are dim and dingy because of the long narrow windows. But this church is light, airy, bright, wonderful, really can get close to God in this place. The door was also very intricately carved.

The next two photographs are of the lych gate. Very curious structure, only found in Britain. This is the gate where the corpse is first rested and the burial starts from this point onwards. In this particular case, it is a very well constructed gate. Inside, there are two notice boards with various church and community notices stuck up on it.

A close up of the arch, which states, "1914 - In the honour of those who served in the Great War - 1918" notice the intricate carving.

A centenarian, quiet if dignified gravestone tucked away in the corner.

The garden was very well maintained, if a bit cold and snowy.

As before, here is the full slideshow link with some more photographs of this lovely little parish church. Perhaps one day, I will be able to go inside and take some more photographs.

Recycling Ships

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:40:55 EDT

Ships are living creatures. Ask any sailor and he will agree and he will further say that ships are feminine. That combination of steel, paint, oil, blood, sweat, tears, sand, sea, wind and waves can be nothing but feminine. But unlike ladies, when ships reach the end of their lives, they are treated rather brutally. They are driven up dirty, oily beaches, and then are ripped apart unceremoniously till the only sign that a living breathing ship ever existed would be some oil stained patches of sand and a heap of unidentifiable steel pieces. The process of recycling a ship in the countries such as India, Bangladesh, China etc. has been highlighted in the western media. For us poor innocents who saw those videos and photographs that entire process looks horrifyingly like the personification of Dante’s hell. So I went poking around.

First of all, do you think I am exaggerating? I am not. Here, take a look at some of these links on this ship breaking industry.

Ship breaking in Chittagong, Bangladesh.
The science behind the complaints
Two photo essays here and here.
A video essay here.

See what I mean by Dante’s hell? Naked feet treading over hot oily sand, breathing in noxious fumes, no safety equipment, clearly devastated ships, fires and sparks around the place, dark eyes and mud, earnings in the bottom layers and garbage pickers. It is indeed a hell on earth. But, according to some estimates, there are more than a million people across the world directly engaged in ship breaking. Almost 200,000 in Bangladesh itself.

And for very poor people in poor countries such as India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, etc., the fact that they have employment is important. It will make the difference between starvation and existing. But this thought seems to have passed people by. When people get shocked at the sight, think about why ships are not being broken up in the USA, UK, Japan, Greece or the shores of Italy? Well, we in the west have put in so many rules, regulations, laws, notifications and ordinances that recycling equipment is simply not cost effective to break up ships here especially when you have lower cost locations available. You have to wear special shoes, wear a gas mask, worry about decontamination of the ground and so on and so forth. And if you lose your job, you will always have a welfare cheque or you can move to another job.

But there are no such human health and safety or environmental requirements in Alang in Gujarat in India or in Chittagong in Bangladesh. And still people are glad to have those jobs. If you put in those requirements for gas masks and decontamination in Chittagong, then you know what will happen? The ships will go to Sierra Leone to be broken up. The 200,000 people in Bangladesh will starve because as you know, jobs or welfare cheques are not really that readily available there. So while you blanch at the nightmarish conditions, do look at the smiles on the faces as well, they are doing honest jobs which the west has made it uneconomic to do in their own lands. But here is the Greenpeace site, quite an interesting site to read. The judgement call to judge employment versus environment protection is very difficult to read and make. Not an easy one at all.

There is an international convention which bars the transfer of hazardous waste between countries. The full name is, Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. Quite a mouthful, eh? It was setup in 1992 and almost 170 countries have signed up to this declaration but it does not seem to be stopping the trade very much. An example of a successful usage of this convention to stop a dirty ship from landing on the shores of Pakistan or India was the case of the scrapping of the French aircraft carrier Clemenceau in 2006.

After a huge global protest campaign by Greenpeace who protested against the French violating the Basel Convention, the French decided not to send the ship to India to be broken up and the poor ship is currently tied up at the Naval port of Brest, gently rusting away. Quite a big victory, eh? It would have been if at exactly the same time, several other ships loaded with asbestos would not have been in the process of being broken up in Alang, India. And if no more French ships loaded with asbestos had landed in India. Or if Greenpeace had continued to campaign to make sure no more asbestos laden ships landed in Alang. But life goes on. An indication of the importance of this subject to Greenpeace can be seen at their main site for ship breaking. Notice the last date of update? It is early 2006. I suppose the camera’s and reporters have gone away but the labourers who are breaking the ships are still there.

The other main reason for scrapping in these countries is that they provide good quality steel at rock bottom prices. Bangladesh is notoriously lacking in raw commodity materials and by some estimates, this ship breaking industry provides up to 90% of the iron and steel usage in the country. Similarly, other countries utilise scrap steel in their domestic iron and steel industry. Have you sent the prices of steel recently? They have gone up through the roof. The Global Carbon Steel Composite Index has gone from 138.3 in February 2006 to 217 in March 2008. So for the poor countries that have to purchase steel, it makes more sense for them to get it in this way.

The European Union and the International Maritime Organisation seem to be working up the courage to implement a convention on doing pre-cleaning of the hazardous materials on the ships before they end up on the breakers beach and ship breaking in general. These hazardous materials are really bad, such as asbestos, dioxins, oil, chemicals, you name it. Now this is a very tricky area. And will be very difficult to implement. Who pays for the clean-up? Does the last owner of the ship pay for it? Does the owner of the last cargo on that ship pay for it? Who will enforce the ruling? Do you enforce the ruling where the ship has been tied up at the last port of call? Or where the ship has been registered? (Can you imagine a country like Liberia or Sierra Leone taking action?).

Or do you make sure that every cargo owner pays some element of the cargo fees aside for eventual cleanup? And if the fees are not paid, then where is the money to clean up going to come from? General taxation? Which general taxation? Do you wish this to be paid out of EU funds? Or national funds? If so, why would say Luxembourg have to pay for clean up of ships while it is totally landlocked? Who will enforce it? Do you change the penalties by size of the ship or by the cargo capacity of the ship? There are quite a lot of questions to be answered, but seems like some form of a convention will emerge and very slowly, with loads of holes and exclusions, take shape. Then countries will sign up slowly, the industry will shift its patterns, and over many decades or so, get to a stage where a global standard has been agreed, implemented, operationalised and policed. Long way to go yet. If you think I am joking, head over to the International Labour Organisation website and see the conventions they have written, the number of parties who have signed up and then look around to see if that has made much of a difference, these things take time.

I love ships, I adore their shapes and I love their behaviour. They are definitely human to me and could be the inner sailor in me speaking. They are definitely contrary, need to be handled very gently and carefully and very expensive to run. So much so that Admiral Chester Nimitz said, "A ship is always referred to as 'she' because it costs so much to keep one in paint and powder." Ships talk and murmur. Seriously, they do. Listen to them and you can listen to them talking, murmuring, creaking, screeching and whining. Not on those cruise ships, they are not ships, they are gaudy ornaments, sound proofed and carpeted all over. But a warship, a tanker, a container ship, a cargo vessel, serious vessels, who treat the sea warily and with respect, they talk to you.

Docks talk about ships taking birth in yards, joy you feel when the ship hits the water in the rush. It is very much like a human birth. Signing of the contract, the bringing together of men, materials and money in a womb like yard and the final birth as the ship rushes down and splashes into the water to be finally born. When a ship sinks and dies, it cries. Submariners who have torpedoed ships frequently talk about the sadness they feel when the ship dies. They talk about the haunting ship’s death groans when they hear the crumpling of the ships hull as it sinks down to the ocean depths.

But perhaps that is indeed the right grave for ships, the ocean depths. To be driven up a beach and then stripped naked, all the hull and steel cut away with flame torches, all the furniture and fittings unscrewed and unbolted, the oil drained away, till nothing is left but a patch of oil stained sand is somehow very distressing. But perhaps the fact that in the ship’s death, she has given back something to the humans who built and rode her while she was alive, makes the manner of her death worthwhile.

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!

Technorati Tags: India,Bangladesh,Pakistan,Turkey,China,European Union,Transportation,Shipping

Student Suspended For University Criticism on YouTube

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 08:54:15 EDT

A student was suspended after criticizing an Anglia Ruskin University Course on YouTube. Is this going to be related to a freedom of speech case or a defamation case? Well, this step by the university is frankly silly. Here's the video. Take a look at the comments, what defamatory comments?

On the other hand, students demanding to be like consumers? Absolutely, why ever not? They have paid good money for it and if the offering does not match what was given, then they have a perfectly good right to complain. I would complain as well. If a student has not learnt, a teacher has not taught. And after having had an MBA, having taught in business schools across the world, recruited from several across the world and having been on advisory boards, I firmly believe that business schools should practice what they preach. And Universities should realise that they are running a business.

But why on earth is the university not listening? I will tell you why, because business schools are almost always looked upon as cash cows by the university. They take the money from the business school and use it to pay for the salaries of people who are investigating the Mongolian cultural significance of the Argentinean blue bean. I am joking, of course, but this is fairly typical of what I have seen.

But again, if you are a business (and lets get this very clear, universities are businesses now), this is your customer complaining. What are you doing about it? Threatening your customer with legal action is NOT a great way to improve reputation or getting additional customers.

Also, what the university has forgotten (or is perhaps stuck in the 18th century) that removal of comments does not mean that comments are removed. This episode has now created an internet electronic footprint which will be available every time anybody searches for Anglia Ruskin University. Not good, their internet, student and media management leaves much to be desired (even if their education and teaching management is perfect).

Technorati Tags: Universities,United Kingdom,Freedom of Speech