Desicritics Author: Gagan

Amitav Ghosh on India

Gagan — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 02:08:14 EDT

A broad ranging interview with renowned author Amitav Ghosh is available here at the Internet Archive in its entirety. Ghosh has written with grace and clarity on a broad range of subjects these last two decades but most compellingly on imperialism in its new and old forms .

Interesting and incisive commentary included the following:

* Referring to his most recent novel The Hungry Tide he describes the blending of Islamic and Hindu tradition seen in the beliefs of the fisherman of the Sundarbans of Eastern Bengal thus suggesting this is the normal course of human affairs when political agendas are not allowed to enter the equation.

* The concept of India: His earnest American host seemed to struggle with it and Ghosh reassured him this was an outcome of the name India failing to encapsulate an immense and wildly varied continental expanse, thousands of years of history, many languages and so on.

* The new India: He clarified the popular perception of IT India as actually still predominantly - try 80 % - agricultural India. A caller chimed in with a reality check of the IT industry amounting to less than a million people.

* Skepticism: He responded to Thomas Friedman's assessment often heard as a mantra nowadays of how after 5 decades spent shackled by Socialism, India was now finally advancing. Ghosh pointed to the the 20 decades when it was enslaved by colonialism, a time when access to education was denied to Indians as a matter of policy. If no other reason than context this needs to stated.

* Democracy is a process not an end: At first an offhand critique of U.S foreign policy in Iraq and then rising to a pointed argument of the futility of expecting a violent process to lead to democratic institutions.

* New Imperialism: He pointed to the rising interference of American foreign policy in world affairs (it went on even during Bill Clinton's term) and so debunking the idea that it has been just a more recent Neo-con phenomenon. It certainly has become more pronounced under the current administration but the political reality of only one superpower has left this as a continuing trend. This notion Ghosh suggests is now challenged by a parity in military technology preventing the old inequalities. An interesting reference to a New Yorker article he was asked to revise with a classic rationalisation.

* Outsourcing: Points out that as India's economy expands it will need its workers for its own needs and no-one need be too alarmed about jobs taken from Americans since the domestic demand is already escalating.

* Misguided assumptions about the rural populace: He corrects the conflation of illiteracy with backwardness as elitist and ultimately mistaken. This is particularly true. The BJP learned this, Ghosh says, in the last election when it tried to divert from its own dismal record by stirring communal divisions. There is also the colossal neglect of the true dormant talent pool of the country.

His commentary could be easily dismissed as anachronistic, of an older method that had failed and now needs to be replaced with efficient ways, as if all of the old was bad and everything new is good. This would miss the point. Ghosh speaks more about forging a unique path without reflexively adopting the much repeated dogmas of the times.

The changes taking place in the economy appear to be barring any cataclysmic disasters inevitable. Improvements in the agricultural sector, improved supply chains, investment in infrastructure, a diversified economy all these things are wonderful prospects.

There do not, however, seem to be enough good reasons to negate a requisite responsibility to all of India's citizens and not just to shareholders. It is what Ghosh suggests is great about India - the recognition of the paramount importance of process over ends: economic growth with social justice.

It's not an unreasonable proposal, Mr Ghosh seems to be saying.

IT Re-Investment: Promising Prospects For Future Growth

Gagan — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 02:05:09 EDT

In a keynote address at a Leadership conference in Mumbai six weeks ago, Nobel laureate and economist Amartya Sen urged India's IT industry to re-invest some of its recent spectacular financial windfalls into helping the country.

He encouraged investment in education programs, infrastructure, and more in a general spirit of public altruism that the IT sector had yet to demonstrate. Such investments, Sen argued, were in the best interests of these companies' ongoing success.

Sen's comments speak to current events across India.

Supply side bottlenecks currently plague a booming Indian economy. There are presently insufficient skilled workers to satisfy an enormous demand. Faced with labour shortages companies are aggressively vying for highly sought after personnel. Bidding wars for scarce talent have seen a dramatic rise in wages in select fields, fueling an already alarming inflation rate that may threaten to undermine all of the success achieved thus far. Meanwhile this inflation reflected in a rising consumer price index has translated into an increasingly unmanageable cost of living for the vast majority of the population, the unskilled poor left outside of India's economic miracle.

The Economist reports the uneasy relationship of development ventures in resource rich but otherwise traditional agricultural areas. The drive to create specialized economic zones for new industry through Eminent Domain in rural farmlands has further pushed a wedge between landholders stripped of very old property rights and large industries seeking to grow.

The conflict appears to lie in the perception that development in these areas does not promise sustainable returns for landowners' sacrifices. The article appears to suggest the current Naxalite uprisings are a symptom of the collective insecurity arising out the rising disparity between rich and poor: the growing pains of a necessary nascent industrial expansion.

In this current flux there signs of hope taking shape in ventures that Sen argues is the way out of the current impasse.

The Guardian reported recently of a new venture sponsored by IT giant Satyam to tap into the unrealised potential of the rural poor using the established success of the call center business model. Half of the Credit goes to Ramalinga Raju, founder of Satyam, and the non-profit organisation Byrraju Foundation that underwrites this venture.

What began as a fairly typical NGO development project to improve standards of sanitation and education in an under-served community morphed into something far more broad sighted as the article quotes co-founder Verghese Jacob:

"But it rapidly became clear that lasting health gains were impossible without better education and sanitation; and that even together these advances were at risk unless they could be locked in place by new village livelihoods. The foundation now espouses the larger intent of securing 'holistic, sustainable rural transformation' by releasing human potential."

The project is already showing great promise in its pilot ventures: 3 call centers in remote parts of Andhra Pradesh. Costs are low, employee turnover is rare and remarkably the quality of the work is on par or better than urban locales. The association with Satyam has already meant that the prospect of introducing economies of scale is not far away. This is not charity. This is, as Sen has brilliantly argued, good business.

V.K Krishna Menon: True To Himself

Gagan — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:41:17 EDT

V.K Krishna Menon's colorful personality emerges from the pages of modern Indian history in dramatic relief to what has sometimes been a personally featureless political landscape.

A recent article in Outlook captures some of the engaging peculiarities of this enigmatic and unpredictable man.

Scion of a prominent and wealthy Keralite, family his early life played out the archetype of the educated elite in Pre-Independence India. He transitioned smoothly from an undergraduate degree at Presidency college in Chennai up to higher studies at the London School of Economics. In the U.K he fell under the spell of the director of the LSE, Harold Laski, as well as the prevailing intellectual fashion of the time, Fabianism, a uniquely British and enlightened variant of Socialism.

On return to India he served as secretary of the India League from 1929 to 1947, becoming in the process a prominent figure in the Independence movement and a close confidante of Pandit Nehru.

Following Independence, appointed to the the position of High Commissioner to the United Kingdom he managed to rankle British authorities in so many interesting ways during his 5 year stint at the job. Sunil Khilani's article captures the enigma of the man whom both British Intelligence or MI5 and the Americans regarded as an almost Mephistophelean figure; they had him under almost constant secret surveillance .

Much was made of the angular lupine features, the Communist sympathies,the shady associations, and the unpredictable love life. The unfocused picture that begins to emerge, cleared of all of the real politik misrepresentations, is of an intensely loyal, passionate, intelligent, albeit mildly disturbed man who lived an atypically unprescribed life.

Consider a few of Menon's interesting asides and try not feel an affinity toward him:

* He delivered the longest speech in the history of the United Nations spelling out in only 8 hours and in no uncertain terms India's position on Kashmir.

* During the war he had made friends with a shady figure, Bob Cleminson, whom the British later regarded as an agent provocateur of some kind. Menon had befriended him once and continued to remain loyal even when it was no longer politically expedient.

* Menon kept the strict control of funding in his own department in his own hands and yet did not pocket any of the money for his own needs. Instead he used the funds to among other things bolster Nehru's book royalty checks so that the great man would believe that the public actually cared about what he wrote.

* Sir Alec Cuttleback, the British High Commissioner at the time, referred to him as "Nehru's Evil genius".

The last alone stands out as a kind of testament to the man vilified for an unwillingness to play the old cliche: the sycophantic Indian. Menon may have only been guilty of being hard to understand and fiercely independent and thus refusing to offer the assurance he could be manipulated.

India And Canada: Polling Well

Gagan — Wed, 7 Mar 2007 09:41:50 EST

A recent BBC International popularity poll placed Canada on top of the list of Countries universally perceived to have the most positive reputation in the world today, while India was the most improved nation, apparently moving up leaps and bounds in international esteem.

"Canadians are nice" seemed to be the word on the street in different countries. Nice is one of those words that no-one is especially proud to claim as their own; sexless, neutral, bland, disinterested but yes really nice, a catchall for innocuousness. Yet you won't see many in Canada getting too worked up over it; that may be why the world sees the place that way. Canadians, if you indulge generalities, just seem to roll with the punches and get on living.

India, on the other hand, is that brilliant underachieving student who has just been gliding by without much effort. Well, it needs to be noted that first he was not allowed into the school for years, even though he was easily capable of handling the curriculum. Now in, given a little leeway and allowed to hand in his own ideas everyone is taken aback by the once lackadaisical dude's work. Mind you, he is just building up steam and everyone knows what's coming now.

There're other links to be found between India and Canada, or for that matter between India and the rest of the world with its sometimes ill regarded NRI diaspora; the sometimes quietly whispered Non Required Indians, and so on in that vein. The distinctions may be based in economic jealousy that in some contexts is provoked by a habit of flaunting advantage, but the flaring of acrimony does not remove the fact that Indians are Indians wherever they end up, in terms of expectations and behaviour and all the little things that make them, well, Indian.

If there is any doubt take the example of Russell Peters, the talented Indo-Canadian comic. For years Peters spun his shtick and although it was raw, original, deeply funny stuff he did not make a lot of headway, kind of grinding through the stand up comic tour. That was until, someone put up a video of his routine online and the wider world caught wind of his talent. Indian populations the world over got him and so did the non-Indians, although not quite as well. Now Peters is on easy street living in Los Angeles and selling out wherever he goes. There is a just arc to the story.

Indian and Canadian and doing incredibly well - and, of course, living the American Dream.

Fiction: Mumtaz

Gagan — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 17:17:17 EST

Many years later lying still in the night he would vividly recall the precise moment he lost his moorings.The clarity of that time still remained while everything else about him had sadly declined, infirmity now like an intestinal worm eating him from inside. Then as now there would still be no admission of his private thought to anyone.

The past was never dead as long as he held it within himself, locked deep inside.

He had ordered the clocks and calenders stopped all across the city. Time would be brought to a halt till, by his imperial decree, it turned backwards toward the new direction of his life, back into the past, to the time when the sun would still rise and then set to always awaken the following day.

A year he spent hidden away. Then, re-merging a spectre, black hair turned to white, certain purpose turned wayward and in dissarray . Time had moved on as much as the markers lied. He knew and still he could not look that way.

Another 20 years had passed, him now cast aside, his family reduced by fratricide, his daughter his lone imprisoned aide and a marble mausoleum that could not fill the void.

Tonight, at last he knew he was going home and he would no longer have to hold his secret inside, because he knew she had never really died.

Medical Procedure Outsourcing: Truly Alternative Medicine

Gagan — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 03:50:36 EST

A recent story on doctors using Google search as part of their practice has caused a ripple of controversy. The implied suggestion of possible incompetence hanging over the whole process, i.e "shouldn't my doctor know what's wrong with me without having to check on a search engine? Hell, I can do that myself."

A study conducted in Australia approved of the practice in difficult cases: Using 26 difficult diagnostic cases published in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors from Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital Googled three to five symptoms from each case

There was indeed a signifigant improvement in diagnosis using the search engine.

The controversy seems needless considering the larger trends that have been occurring in Western Medical Practice.

The two trillion dollar U.S Health industry is increasingly forcing financially overburdened Americans to seek other avenues for their health procedures. The internet has opened their eyes to the possiblity of affordable health care in foreign destinations, India being a particular hot spot.

Consider the comparative prices and it seems inevitable that companies forced to foot the bill for their employees health care plans will turn to the foreign alternative:

Procedure Costs
U.S. Insurer's cost U.S. Retail price India Thailand Singapore

Angioplasty
$25,704 to $37,128 $57,262 to $82,711 11000 13000 13000
Gastric bypass
$27,717 to $40,035 $47,988 to $69,316 11000 15000 15000
Heart bypass
$54,741 to $79,071 $122,424 to $176,835 10000 12000 20000
Heart-valve replacement (single)
$71,401 to $103,136 $159,326 to $230,138 9500 10500 13000

The overall trend towards outsourcing is not restricted to procedures and work that requires patients to actually physically travel to other locales.

A New England Journal of Medicine article observed the increasing practice of outsourcing diagnostic radiology work to India, threatening, in a very real way, the luxuriant incomes that these professionals have enjoyed. Predictably protective alarm bells are being sounded by members of the profession but as the article seems to suggest the process will take place far more quickly than has been supposed.

More interesting is how Intensive Care Practice is also falling under the purvey of distant surveillance thanks to the comprehsive communication of all physiological data over digital pathways.

The practice of Medicine underneath the veneer of disinterested vocation remains a business. Increasingly it is also becoming subject to the tidal shift in international economics as a consequence of Globlalisation.

Website Review: Robert Wright's MeaningOfLife.TV - In Search of Ultimate Meaning

Gagan — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 10:31:35 EST

Questions on ultimate meaning often invite responses generously laced with irony and avoidance. Perfectly understandable reactions, given such questions, at first glance, seem overwrought, impractical and so expansive as to not to offer any hope of resolution, appearing to be essentially, just intellectual conceits.

The reservations, however, seem to largely vanish at an intimation of mortality. Almost inevitably a sense of mystery occurs at the the loss of a loved one. For those buttressed by faith there is some comfort to be had. For others amid the sorrow and the doubts the questions multiply and the quest for answers begins in earnest.

Robert Wright offers the seekers a palatable survey of the ideas of some of the leading luminaries in varying fields of Science, Philosophy and Theology in his excellent MeaningofLife.TV site on Slate's on line magazine. Wright is no lightweight in his own respect. His book Nonzero:The Moral Animal published to wide critical acclaim six years ago, uses a benign interpretation of Game Theory to re-cast our whole history as as a species as one progressing upward toward a social ideal.

In this series of interviews he brings his own views to bear challenging the assumptions of varied speakers and sometimes catching them off guard. In one notable example, he appears to get an acknowledgment from Daniel Dennet well known philosopher and part of the vanguard of the new Atheism to admit that there is a sense of higher purpose behind the process of evolution. Dennet has since denied the inference but it is there on video for all to see. Perhaps more significant than this pained admission is how Wright's thoughtful and articulate questioning casts light on the apparently circumscribed nature of Dennet's views.

Wright's skeptical inquiry is not strictly reserved for the non-believers. He is similarly questioning of the various faiths and beliefs of the other thinkers he meets. In his questioning his choice of subjects is as broad as it is deep touching on the Anthropic principle, mysticism and the nature of consciousness to name just a few.

Personal favorites among the interrogated surely must include Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete and Freeman Dyson.

Albacete, initially trained as a physicist, later becoming a Roman Catholic priest and going on to holding prominent positions in the Roman Catholic Church he also finds time to write, contributing essays to New yorker magazine and producing one well received book God at the Ritz: Attraction to Infinity.

Albacete gives a humane face to the Catholic doctrine on the association of belief and ultimate salvation, suggesting the doors are equally open to atheists and those of other faiths. According to Alabacete the road to Grace is not marked by doctrine but rather the sincere expression of selfless love. This is a departure from the commonly understood sense of divisiveness and insularity that appears to mark the claims of competing faiths. There is a worldly informality about Albacete that considerably adds to the appeal of his inclusive outlook.

Freeman Dyson's reputation today assumes almost mythic proportions, a mathematician who has had a hand in advancing the understanding of Quantum Mechanics and developing nuclear weapons technology and policy he is more popularly known for his well reasoned speculation about future trends in science and technology.

Early in the interview he quickly dispels his association with the so called Dyson Sphere as the idea of another. The borrowed idea proposed as a casual joke has assumed a life of its own, earning him a place in Star Trek Lore among other popular sci fi.

On video, Dyson comes off unassuming and yet deeply engaging. There is a wonderful sense of clarity in his answers as he treads the line between science and religion with a sense of perspective not often seen in our current polarized political climate. He claims to be Christian minus the theology. At one point he says he is agnostic in the true sense of the word,claiming simply not to know. As such He rails against any reductionist argument in science that claims to have all the answers offering a remembered metaphor: science being a small clear green meadow in the midst of a vast dark, unknown forest that stretches to infinity. Each year the area of the meadow is expanded but it is still in the embrace of an infinitely large uncharted terrain.

Charting unknown terrain is a suitable way to describe the ideas of these individuals. Wright does a commendable service in offering if not the answers then a deeply intriguing set of further questions to consider.

Atheism and Creationism: A Call for Balance

Gagan — Sun, 5 Nov 2006 02:41:21 EST

Richard Dawkins, reknowned scientist and author of the seminal work in Evolutionary theory, The Selfish Gene is foremost among a current group of intelllectuals who zelously promote the idea of Atheism as the way, the one and only true way.

If this has a familiar ring then you may also be aware of the subtle Evangelical crusade to marginalize Darwin in school curricula throughout America, placing the theory of Evolution, at the very most, on equal standing with intelligent design the thin veneer for creationism, the way, the one and only true way.

In an interview on a cover story for Wired magazine, Dawkins explains how he feels compelled to avert the slide into any kind of supernatural belief or any belief that is not based on proven science to forestall the spread of faulty thinking, thinking that he argues is propagated in the form of cultural memes: inheritable concepts that are passed on to further generations regardless of whether they are in fact true.

Cultural memes are Dawkin's own belief as yet not proven but undoubtedly based on soon to be validated science.

The mind reels at all of this assurance in the face of so much mystery.There seems to be little ground in either faction for the vast middle ground that most of the world occupies, or for that matter the world of subatomic physics which at present appears mystery incarnate.

This would all seem like so much white noise in the background were it not without its political consequences.Herein lies the tragedy. Fundamentalisms, both religous and scientific seek to impose sweeping simplifications on the richness of human history apparently in the interest of a current political agenda.

Dawkin's casual revisionism denies a history that has been driven and filled by the poetic attempts of relgion to capture mans'yearning to grasp the great mysteries of life and its ultimate meaning; the pursuit has been illuminated by visionary ideas and many instances of events that defy known laws of the universe. Accepting the phenonmena has been, in large part, an act of faith by the many who were not direct witnesses. This does not by any means negate those experiences.

Life is full of unexplained mysteries, unaccounted for happenstances just as it is also predictable in other ways. To wholesale dismiss many millenia of religous thought as so much useless detritus that clouds clarity of thought does not only do a collossal disservice to the manifestations of that religous desire in art and civilization throughout the ages, it seeks to deny who we are.

It is a rejection ultimately of metaphor, the thing that imbues our lives with so much beauty in its many variations.

Apparently similarly immune to a sense of metaphor, and ignoring centuries of exquisitely nuanced theological tradition in Biblical study, Creationists seek to impose the strict literal interpretation of the religous doctrine of a particular minority as a subsitute for the profound and elegant theory of Natural Selection.

The urge for the assertion of the totalitarian idea was reoccuring theme in the work of Albert Camus. As part of the resistance movement in WWII France he was all too familiar with the resolutely sef-affirming nature of Fascism and later Communism. He held no illusions about their promises, and while he also entertained few doubts about the existance of a higher meaning he still urged the classical Greek idea of balance without excess as a solution. Camus would be a welcome moderating voice in the current debate, urging for balance at the risk of Hubris, excessive pride, or in this case to great a degree of certainty, in the face of all that exists.

Music Review: The Arctic Monkeys - Defying All The Rules

Gagan — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 04:05:37 EST

The Arctic Monkeys, Sheffield's own, are proof that talent can indeed rule the day.

This group of four unassuming Yorkshire lads formed a band in 2002 that has quickly fired the imagination of fans across the world. After quickly conquering their native Britain they ventured across the Atlantic where they have grown out of the alternative American college scene to become a mainstream success. Today, polititicians refer to them in their speeches. Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer claims to listen to them every morning. They have become,if reluctantly, cultural icons.

Listening to them for the first time elicits an immediate visceral response - this is something special, you think all at once.

Then, not long after your thoughts coalesce, you are struck by the unique individuality of their sound and their infectious enervating energy.

Some time later, enthralled, you venture an idea of what their sound might signify. It gives a voice, if for a moment, you surmise, to the true raw and combustible passion that inhabits the council flats, the clubs,the schools, the coming together of young minds living in a fast paced world, the confluence of many musical influences and cultures from everywhere intersecting and yearning to capture it all at once, in a way unfamiliar to any corporate prediction of market trends.In essence they are the new spirit of rebellion.

Hearing Alex Turner's driven stream of consiousness lyrics written and sung unapologetically in his native Yorkshire patterns against the backdrop of insistent bass and rhythm guitar and drums hints at a sense of the modern Britain.They have risen, it can be argued, as a consequence of this new Britain more egalitarian and informed than in past but imbued more and more with the groundswell of the common man.

The Arctic Monkeys came up the hard way with the surprising ease that characterises the digital age. Foregoing the careful assessments of consumer interest and well crafted marketing plans, they got the nod because they were good and people talked. In the past this might have left them trapped in a niche for years. Today, talk is global and word spread.

Actively handing out free CDs at their early concerts and encouraging file sharing set the whole thing into momentum. Other bands have tried this approach but unencumbered by the talent of the Arctic Monkeys they have not gone nearly so far nearly so fast

An Arctic Monkeys MySpace site formed and before long they were tapped into a huge wellspring of young fans in America and the rest as they say has been history.

They have since signed a contract with Domino Records and have been accused by some critics of cynical manipualtion of the Internet medium: a baseless charge considering the new territory they have unearthed with their success.

Chris Anderson, senior editor of Wired Magazine, has written of the coming new economics in his excellent book The Long Tail.. He argues that the accessiblity and efficiency of marketing and buying on the internet has allowed a wider range of products than ever before catering to the widespread diversity of tastes in the consumer public. Gone, he argues, is the age of the single hit that sets the barometer of consumer intererest. In its place is the new reality of more products available for a disparate public, producing, in effect, many smaller hits, all of them sustainable. The Arctic Monkeys may be artifacts of the old idea of the hit but they have used this new technology to propel themselves into this place, putting Anderson's thesis on pause, on talent alone.

OPEC: A Fractious Cartel

Gagan — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:04:23 EDT

OPEC, the Orgnanization of Oil Producing Countries, is a highly influential organization in world affairs today. Jad Mouawad's recent article in The New York Times refers to a level of concern among some OPEC nations about decreasing oil prices in current market conditions.

Energy is the principal driver of modern economies and oil is currently the major currency and source of energy. "Oil continues to be the world's most important fuel, contributing 39 percent of the global energy supply." (Kohl, 2005). In economic terms OPEC is, for all intents and purposes, a cartel. Examining OPEC's unusual orgnanisation and the economic questions it inevitably raises offer some insight to our complex modern world.

OPEC today consists of 11 nations from the Middle East, Africa, South America and South-east Asia. The Middle Eastern contingent includes Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar. From Africa there is Algeria, Libya and Nigeria. South America and South-east Asia contain the lone members of Venezuela and Indonesia respectively.

OPEC originally formed in the early 1960s in response to the imposition of US quotas on oil production in the area. Initiated first by Venezuela and then joined by a number of the Middle Eastern countries, an attempt was made to try to control production of oil in order to garner higher prices.

This is a classic example of a cartel, that is an organization that limits production and thus supply ensuring a higher demand, and in turn higher prices. This flouts the idea of competition in the marketplace but it has been possible because the OPEC nations collectively have a majority of the world's oil reserves and the status of political sovereignty.

Political factors have played a huge role in the running of OPEC's organization. There are many factors to consider here.There have been many conflicts between OPEC nations and the dominant buyers of the product but the most prounouced has occurred in the Middle East.

The contentious history of Israel's existence in the region has led to many problems. US support for Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war led to a reaction by the Middle Eastern countries represented by OPEC, and they responded by reducing production of oil leading to a crisis across throughout the world. The shortages that were seen in North America during this time were also worsened by President Nixon's policy at the time of setting a fixed price for oil leading to widespread shortages.

The equilibrium of the oil market like all markets is influenced by the stability of the regions in which it is produced. The Middle East in the postwar period has been characterized by a high level of political instability. This has been reflected in the volatility of this market. Saddam Hussein's 1992 invasion of Kuwait was a case of one OPEC nation infringing on the political sovereignty of another. Considering the levels of vital oil reserves that were threatened by this act it was hardly surprising that it precipitated the military intervention of the United States in the first Gulf War. Mouawad's article makes reference to the recent conflicts between Hezbollah and Israel. The seeming current state of truce between these groups has reduced the level of anxiety about security in the region, and this has seen itself manifested in more balanced prices.

OPEC is an unusual organization. "The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) stabilizes petroleum prices to promote the economic prosperity of its member nations for which oil is a substantial export." (Moore, 2003). It brazenly operates as a cartel but it is able to do so with impunity since the member nations collectively own the rights to two thirds of the world's oil supply and presently are responsible for over 40% of the world's oil production. This is further reinforced by the rights to sovereignty that each of the member nations have and their ongoing argument that they work in response to potential unfair market practices against them.

Since OPEC works as an organization of states its policies are not always uniform. As a cartel it depends on the individual member states not breaking rank and maintaining the agreed-upon prices of the organisation. In practice this agreement does not occur as cheating goes on all the time. Saudi Arabia, the largest producer among the OPEC nations is often undercut by the overproduction of smaller OPEC nations that seek to gain their own particular advantage. This oversupply released to the market inevitably offsets prices that OPEC tries to impose as a group.

Price in free markets occurs at the intersection of the demand and supply curves. By limiting supply, namely by reducing production or keeping production at fixed levels OPEC nations attempt to keep the demand high and as a consequence prices high as well. The practice of imposing a price ceiling where the meeting of the supply and demand curves is ignored only works as a control of market forces when the prices are below the competitive price. Imposing a price control of this nature, however, will inevitably lead to shortages as supply and demand curves are not abstract entities, they are indexes of the real availability of the products in question and these are finite. "The OPEC nations finally faced the consequences of their arbitrary price escalations. Since petroleum is a politicized commodity and pricing is as much determined by the law of supply and demand as it is by the political factors that remain outside the Global Oil Market, it is not surprising that political decisions can have a direct bearing on the price." (Dorraj, 1993)

OPEC nations principally achieve their controls by controlling production. This is a complicated proposition since oil is such an important commodity and such an important driver of world markets. It is not in the interests of OPEC nations to impose too high a price for their product since eventually this would lead to crises in countries who depend on this resource. An economic recession in these countries from high oil prices would inevitably negatively effect demand for oil. "The past 15 years should have made clear that the world oil market's problem is not high prices or low prices per se but price instability, which underlies the boom-bust cycle not only in the world energy market but also, because of oil's centrality, in the world economy as a whole." (Georgiou, 1987, p. 295).

The mutual nature of his relationship is further compounded by the currency of exchange for oil reserves in the US dollar. Weakness in this currency seen in decreased economic performance of the U.S would result in far reduced revenues by the OPEC nations. Therefore, it becomes in the interests of OPEC nations to ensure that the American economy is strong. This requirement is often at odds with conflicts with American foreign policy such as the aforementioned area of conflict regarding the status of Israel in many Middle Eastern countries.

Mouawad's article highlights some of the discord that exists within OPEC. As the article indicates Saudi Arabia the largest producer in OPEC is currently content with the demand pattern for oil. A decrease in price eases the pressure of maintaining increased production on them as the largest producer of oil.

The situation is reversed among the smaller OPEC nations. As the article indicates these countries are more than disconcerted by the reduced demand reflected in decreasing prices of oil since so much of the driving force for their own economies relies on overreaching their reduction quotas, so they are at a loss when there is a glut on the market.

OPEC formed in the 1960s, gradually increasing its membership through to the 70s to its current contingent of 11 nationstates. This organisation was formed in reaction to a perceived sense of grievance with the dominant nations of the world, mainly in the Western world. The organisation is a cartel. It has attempted to control the price of oil by mutually agreed upon production quotas among its nationstates. This has not always been an easy agenda to achieve since there has been competition within the organization between the larger and smaller suppliers.

The relationship has also been a complicated one between OPEC and the developed world which depends so highly on the oil produced. Conflicts in foreign policy such as between Israel and the Middle Eastern nations to name just one are often at odds with the deeply embedded nature of OPEC's success and the success of Western economies. Mouawad's article shines a spotlight on the current state of flux in OPEC's relationship with its markets.