Desicritics Category: Culture: Bureaucracy

Ending Coercive Land Acquisition - Creating Options

Somik Raha — Sun, 9 Nov 2008 05:37:45 EST

The reaction by India's industrial titans to the Singur crisis has been unanimous. Big guns like Mukesh Ambani, Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji and others have supported the Tatas and warned that the state would become a desert for investment if the Tatas had to leave, which is now a reality. Even the Prince of Calcutta, Sourav Ganguly, has supported the Tatas. Mamta Banerjee seemed to be the lone voice in support of the farmers whose land had been acquired forcefully without adequate compensation. People have called her stupid and an enemy of the state. Her own party supporters have voiced their disagreement with her opposition. In this backdrop, I am going to take on the perilous task of finding logic in her stubborn stance and also to suggest a long term solution for the future. I ask the reader to bear with me and let me explain my position.

Not our problem alone

Land acquisition issues are by no means limited to India. In the United States, there exists a law called "Eminent Domain," which in plain speak says that Uncle Sam can throw you out of your property if it sees a public good that requires the use of your land. Imagine this: a Civil Engineer (from a reputed university) contracted by the government to come up with the most optimal road plan figures out that such a road would need to pass through your grandmother’s house. The authorities send her a notice that she will be paid a certain amount, which would probably be a little lower than the market price. She refuses. Even after the compensation is hiked some more, she refuses. The authorities invoke Eminent Domain and send the cops to throw her out. As the cops arrive, the poor old lady holds on to whatever she can to prevent being dragged away, all the while crying out that this is where she has all her memories, this is where she lived with her husband until he passed away, and this is where she wants to die. She wants to be left alone. But that cannot be allowed, and the official tells her, "Ma'am, you don’t understand. The most optimal road goes through your house, and therefore, for public good, we must have it." And her cries go in vain (unless civil rights groups get into the game and sue the government for doing this). This story plays out in every society in the world (see box 1, box 2).

People all over the world are generally nice and compassionate, and most people feel bad about a story like this, but they ask desperately, "What alternative do we have for building YOUR-FAVORITE-PUBLIC-GOOD?" There is an alternative that ought to be taught in high schools for its utter simplicity. It has to be understood that the only legal power of a government is the power of coercion. And every single time coercion is used for public good, it has unintended consequences. Note all the controversies of land acquisition that have come to light, from the Narmada Dam project in the West, NanoCity in the North, Singur in the East and now Reliance might make the same mistake in Maharashtra. In India, the police knows no better than to use their guns on protesting people, often killing many. The legal costs rise and big businesses get discouraged by the reaction. In the United States, as business after business got stung by the backlash to eminent domain, a path-breaking and simple alternative emerged.

Create Options

This alternative has its roots in one of the most powerful insights that the wise have shared about decision making: you can always create OPTIONS. Taking this insight literally, let us try creating options for land acquisition (not the unrealistic't know a financial meltdown until the train hit them but the decision analytic variety whose math is simple enough to be understood by an English major with a minor effort). Let’s say Reliance plans an oil pipeline that needs contiguous areas of land. If any one of the landowners in the path of the pipeline hold out, the project will not take off, leaving Reliance with several non-contiguous pieces of land and a large hole in their pocket. In an alternative scenario, instead of buying any plot of land, Reliance could choose to buy an option from the landowner. The option will give Reliance the right to buy the land at the prevailing market (or agreed upon) price within a period of three years (for instance). This option can be valued easily using simple decision analysis tools and would be an order of magnitude cheaper than acquiring the land itself. Reliance could then plan multiple pipeline routes and try to acquire options on each of the routes. The moment they have all the options on a particular route, they can exercise the options on that route and acquire all the contiguous pieces of land.

There are several benefits to this approach. First, as Reliance is a private party, they are not required to reveal the purpose of the acquisition. They can send out agents who don't even need to reveal that Reliance is behind the acquisition. The government, on the other hand, is required to reveal the purpose of their acquisition, resulting in landowners realizing that they can make a lot of money if they hold out. The cost of acquisition will now be based on a good deal between the private party and the landowner. Second, as exercising the option is a legal right, there is no necessity for state coercion on the individual landowner. If someone holds out even after selling an option, that will be considered contractual fraud, and we have a legal framework in place to deal with that. The government no longer needs to deal with mass protests, the police no longer needs to open fire on hostile crowds, and entrepreneurs no longer need to sink large sums of money in legal costs. Third, if some people (tribals/farmers/middle class people) have a strong connection to their land and don’t want to leave it, all they have to do is not sell the option to their land. There should be no legal authority on the part of the government or the industry to force them to do so, and any forcible or fraudulent activity on the part of the entrepreneur would be subject to our existing legal framework that prohibits fraud and coercion. Human rights organizations can shift their focus from protesting to educating the tribals/farmers, while respecting the choice of these communities to accept or reject the education.

Creating options is not a new idea, and you have likely already used it in your life. We shall define an option as "the right to a future decision." A little consideration should reveal that insurance is a very good example of an option, where you buy the right to a lower medical expense should an emergency arise. The price of the option here would be the insurance premium you need to pay each year, which is a fraction of the coverage cost that the insurance company is legally obligated to pay should the situation arise. If you have played in the stock market, then you might be familiar with "call/put options" which is the right to buy/sell a stock at a predetermined price.

Who's Doing Non-coercive Acquisitions with/without options?

If this method is so simple, why hasn’t it been tried already for land acquisition? Strange as it may sound, this has been tried – it just hasn’t been spoken about as most private firms don’t want to talk about their land acquisition strategy. I’ve heard from a reputed professor at Stanford that Disney used options to acquire most of the land they needed for their theme park at Anaheim, California, after which people got wise to the purpose behind the acquisition and hiked up the selling price. Even then, Disney saved a fortune in legal fees by using this method. (For other companies in the US, see Box 2)

The intelligent reader may point out that what works in the United States may not necessarily work in India. To which I wonder what is so special about the Indian DNA that it would not like to save lives and lower costs when it could. In any case, options has been in use in India for a long time, without us explicitly recognizing it. If you've tried buying land in India, chances are you've been asked to pay a "roka" as North Indians would call it. The "roka" is an advance that a buyer would pay a seller after which the seller would stop showing the land to others. The "roka" is an option, a right to buy the land within a specified time. "Roka" options are quite common in the real-estate market and are probably referred to with different words in different parts of the country.

Finally, I have anecdotal evidence that after Larsen & Toubro (L&T) had completed acquiring land for the third Howrah Bridge in (hold your breath) West Bengal, neighboring land owners who had been skipped were upset at missing the pie, and begged L&T to consider buying their land too. It seems that landowners in West Bengal also like good deals, like landowners anywhere else.

Challenges

There are some legitimate challenges to applying this solution, especially in places like West Bengal. The business climate in the state is highly interventionist, with entrepreneurs unable to operate without the blessings of the prevailing local political party. In such a situation, talking about free markets is a travesty. The current government needs to realize that it cannot replace coercive prevention of industry by coercive adoption of it. It needs to start with the fundamentals and shrink to a minimal form of government. But then, what will happen to the party ranks? Instead of employing cadre into what amounts to an organized land mafia, they can be encouraged to become social entrepreneurs who combine the best of capitalism (freedom) and communism (caring for the community) while leaving the worst out (greed and coercion respectively). While this might take some time, a first step for India would be people from all walks of life coming together to demand the revoking of Article 300-A so that no government has the right to take away private property through any argument of public good. In today's society, we should realize that governments claim almost any economic activity as a public good, and eminent domain laws become a vehicle for individual abuse.

While economists would welcome the strengthening of property rights, they may raise several objections to entirely scrapping Eminent Domain laws in India. First, they will point out that there are "actual public goods" that a government must provide (e.g. roads, wildlife reserves, forested lands). How is the government to do so without laws that resemble eminent domain? Second, private parties cannot freely purchase agricultural land in India. We would need laws that allowed for land use changes, and we still need to consider if such a change is in public interest. Third, individuals sitting on vast natural resources ought not to have the right to refuse their commercialization - this is an argument for eminent domain laws. Fourth, there are thousands of land holders who have title to a small amount of land. This makes it infeasible for private parties to negotiate with so many, hence, the government is a good intermediary. Finally, you would need a sophisticated buyer and seller to be able to use options.

Lets take these arguments one by one. First, it is a 20th century idea that governments are responsible for public goods. There is ample evidence of societies that did fine in the past without government intervention in every sphere of life. As evidence in our present time, look at all the public goods in India and you will find those are the services that are most lacking in creativity and innovation. In the United States as well, the government builds roads as a public good. This is one sector which has seen so little innovation that you now have cars that are built to touch 200 miles per hour and roads that can only handle 65 miles per hour. Think about all the private toll roads you've been on in India and compare them to the government maintained roads, and the difference should immediately be apparent to you. India is full of examples of social entrepreneurs who have given up on the government's ability to provide public goods and provided solutions themselves, either as a for-profit or as a non-profit. Sulabh International builds public toilets(shauchalayas) that are financially sustainable and pay for their construction cost quickly, while generating employment. See Box 3 and Box 4 for further examples. Second, I agree that private parties should be allowed to freely purchase agricultural land and the land owner should have the right to decide how the land should be used. If the current land owner feels it is important that the land use should not be changed, this can be specified in a contract at the time of sale. The argument is often made that good agricultural land should not be used for non-agricultural purposes. If we truly believe that, then we should immediately proceed to demolish all the government (and other) buildings in Kolkata, which has some of the best agricultural soil you could find being on the banks of the Ganga. Third, it is possible to grant an individual the right to their property while one could also construct rights for what lies below the property and separate the two. Once this is done, there is an incentive for entrepreneurs to find ways to drill for oil or a similar natural resource without disturbing the landowner who is at the surface. Fourth, the argument of "too many land owners" is a terrible one, as the government does no better, and arguably worse, than a private negotiator. In fact, a private negotiator would not have the advantage of guns and would have to be polite and stay within legal boundaries. Perhaps, this is an area where an entrepreneur could provide negotiation consulting services. Finally, the argument of sophisticated buyer and seller is an argument for education, although the Indian market is already using "roka" options without doing sophisticated decision analysis. Companies that need help modeling options can hire decision consultants just like they hire tax consultants. I admit that companies will have an advantage in pricing methodology over individual landowners. However, this is a good reason for the creation of a friendly social venture that offers pricing services to individual land owners. On the topic of decision education in India, there is much that needs to be done. (See Box 5)

Philosophical, Economic and Traditional Reasons

Options should be used for both philosophical and economic reasons.

Philosophically, even if everyone around me says that murder and theft is the best way to get what I want, I refuse to do it, and I will argue that India, with its deep spiritual tradition of acceptance of all religions, systems and ideas, should stand firmly behind non-coercion. Just as the tool of coercive land acquisition is the use of a police force with guns, the tool of smart non-coercive land acquisition is options. Economically, let us be clear that while using options has lowered the cost of land acquisition for many, the method itself is not going to guarantee that industrialists will get the land they want, which is no different from the case of using coercion as we have just seen the Tatas getting thwarted even with government support. If both methods cannot guarantee success, and the coercive one consistently creates more headaches, takes lives and increases costs, then we ought to throw our weight behind the non-coercive methods.

Finally, traditionalists might point out that in the Indian tradition, the individual must sacrifice for the family, the family for the community, the community for the state and the state for the world (a maxim approved by Sri Krishna). While this is a noble spiritual idea, it is not what is followed today. On the other hand, a more accurate maxim for the practice of the modern day is, "the individual must be coerced to sacrifice for the family, the family for the community, the community for the state for the world." Every spiritual tradition in India recognizes a supreme internal freedom asks its followers to acknowledge and become aware of it. It is but natural that India lead the world in giving expression to this internal freedom in our external environment. We can start by recognizing that individual sacrifice is a decision to be made only by the individual, and coercion has no place in a society that wants to call itself free.

Almost every country in the world has a legal mechanism that resembles Eminent Domain laws. In the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Ireland, these laws are referred to as "Compulsory Purchase," while Canada and South Africa call it "Expropriation." India used to consider right to property as a fundamental right under Article 19(1)(f). This meant that your land could not be taken away except under the Land Acquisition Act of 1894, or a similar state law, which allows the use of forcibly acquired land by the Government "in the interests of the general public or for the protection of the interests of any Scheduled Tribe". The Land Acquisition Act of 1894 empowered the Central and the State Governments to acquire lands that they felt was necessary for a "public purpose". Public purpose was defined so broadly that even land use by state-owned corporations was included, thus turning this law into an all-powerful mechanism for the British. While this British baggage continues to this day, in 1978, the right to property was shifted out of fundamental rights so as to make it harder to challenge land acquisitions by the government, and Article 300-A was introduced which said that "no person will be deprived of his property save by authority of law." In other words, the state/central government can take your land away if Parliament or State Legislatures make a legislation/order/rule to do so, in exchange for compensation determined under the Land Acquisition Act by the Collector. You can challenge the action of the government in a court if you think the government has acted unfairly, and in most countries (except authoritarian ones like China), this leads to protracted legal battles, civil rights headaches for the government and spiraling legal costs for the industry involved. The Land Acquisition Amendment Bill (2007) is an effort to reform the 1894 law, but how much band-aid can one put on a gaping wound? Senior Advocate Bishwajit Bhattacharyya recently outlined in the Statesman (Oct 29, 2008) how even passing a law under Article 300-A has been successfully challenged in court. How many people have the resources to take on the government when their rights are violated?

At this time, the United States probably has the worst eminent domain laws on the planet. In 2005, a controversial Supreme Court ruling upheld (by a 5-4 vote) the government's use of eminent domain powers to take private property from one owner and transfer it to another owner under the pretext of economic development. This ruling was criticized publicly by many noted people, including Bill Clinton. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who voted against the law in the famed Kelo v. City of New London case, warned that this new addition would "wash out any distinction between private and public use of property." For the first time in US history, governments could use eminent domain powers to declare ordinary private use of property as a "public use." In a report by the Castle Coalition (a network of homeowners and activists in the US determined to stop the abuse of eminent domain), there have been more than 5,000 instances of abuse since the Kelo decision. This figure includes cases where private property owners have threatened the use of eminent domain on reluctant sellers to agree to their price or risk having their property taken away by force. This situation is quite comparable to India where the government acquires lands for private parties under the argument of "economic development."

The report also goes on to debunk the myth that eminent domain laws are needed for economic development by citing several projects that did not use eminent domain. Walt Disney's construction of Disney World, The Rouse Company's construction of a new city in Howard County, Maryland and Focus Property Group's creation of a 3000-acre community called Mountain's Edge are some of the examples. Disney World is particularly interesting to us as they used options quite heavily. Further Reading: http://www.castlecoalition.org

Box 3: Social Entrepreneurs in India, a powerful force for public good
Arvind Eye Hospitals in Madurai (and other cities in South India) treats patients who cannot pay; free of cost and make up their money from people who can. Exnora in Chennai (and now several other cities) has created a system of garbage cleaning where an erstwhile scavenger now collects garbage from each home and dumps it in the proper place, for a fee. LaserSoft Info Systems in Chennai employs "disabled" people and puts them to work in the field of banking software. The Sangini Mahila Seva Cooperative Society is for, of and by sex workers in Kamathipura, Mumbai's oldest red-light district, where sex workers gain access to banking services and rise out of destitution. A similar and older initiative has been quite successful in Kolkata's Sonargachi district. The popular Lijjat Papad is made by a social venture, Shri Mahila Griha Udyog, founded by Sarvodaya members. This is an organization focused on creating a dignified work environment for women in a decentralized manner, and its success should inform case studies in any serious business school. Most Indians are familiar with "utterly, butterly delicious" Amul butter. Amul stands for Anand Milk Union Limited, a social venture inspired by Sardar Vallabhai Patel, which is privately run as a cooperative to give milk farmers a good deal and provide high quality milk products to society. Anandwan is a social venture in Maharashtra founded by the late Baba Amte, and run as a self-sufficient rehabilitation center for people afflicted with leprosy. Anandwan has incorporated environment-friendly processes into the local lifestyle without your tax money.

Box 4: Environmental Social Entrepreneurship in the US
The Nature Conservancy (http://www.nature.org/) is a US charitable institution that acquires forested land using existing land acquisition laws as a private party in order to conserve it. Aimed at preserving bio-diversity, this organization has been voted as one of the most trusted national organizations in the US in online polls. Their work has led to the creation of several national parks. The Proactive Carnivore Conservation Fund is a private initiative by an organization called Defenders of Wildlife that finds innovative solutions to prevent people from killing wildlife (such as compensating farmers for the livestock they lose to wolves in return for sparing the wolf's life). The Property and Environment Research Center has an instructive article by the founder of this project, Hank Fischer, at http://www.perc.org/articles/article319.php

Box 5: Decision Education
It is a pity that most business schools in India either skip Decision Analysis or teach it as "Decision Tree Analysis," which is like stripping all the philosophy from yoga and teaching it as a bunch of stretching exercises. There is only minimal benefit in doing so. This is not just a problem in India but also in the United States (as you can see from the massive financial crisis). What is even more pitiable is that people need to wait till they get to a university (there are only a few that teach this as a philosophy) to learn good decision making. To remedy this, the Decision Education Foundation (www.decisioneducation.org) teaches high school children the basics of good decision making. Perhaps it is time to start a chapter of the foundation in India.

Here is a very brief introduction to the philosophical foundation of decision analysis (DA). DA does NOT help you predict the future or maximize the chance of the best outcome. For that, you are better off going to an Indian astrologer or a financial engineer (though I wouldn't trust the financial engineer - I recommend the book "The Black Swan" for people who call themselves statisticians or financial engineers). DA is an amoral method that helps you stay consistent with your preferences, information and alternatives. DA disabuses you of the notion of "objective decision making," making it clear that you can only judge the quality of your decision, not someone else's. Even more fundamentally, the quality of your decision must be judged before the outcome, as you cannot judge a decision from the outcome. If you knew the outcome, you wouldn't have a decision to make. Another fundamental tenet is the principle of sunk cost - the past matters only for learning, not for accounting.

To Leave or Not To Leave

Cine Cynic — Tue, 7 Oct 2008 14:37:45 EDT

A year and a half ago, particularly inauspicious planetary positions conflicting with my time of birth have made me blurt out "Pune", in a choice of destination between Chennai and Pune. I should have stuck with my old and old-fashioned Tamil da's and dei's. Today, when a PMC bus conductor gives me a ticket, it becomes all the more painfully clear.

My grandma used to tell me in my childhood that nobody can cheat an educated man. She remains unhappy of not having "higher education", and I figure she will be unhappier if I told her that it didn't matter. I have what she considers "higher education" and am cheated daily by those who don't have them.

I fell in love with Pune when I reached here: the slightly sweet cuisine in the over-crowded restaurants, the vibrant art scene reverberating in the newspaper supplements, the trekking destinations all of which seem the same, the coldness of winters that forced new jerkins against my body, and the mysterious women wearing colorful masks outdoors.

I forgave the auto-driver who threatened me with dire consequences, the Pune drivers who have what is called "traffic nonsense", the pothole-ridden road which gave me my worst accident making me bed-ridden for months, and started calling the apartment I live in "home".

When I see the bus-ticket with Marathi letters and numerals, I'm reminded of my foreignness. The conductor doesn't reply to my enquiry about the ticket's cost, nor does he return change. I love the auto-drivers now, especially the eight-seater guys. Not only do I get a seat, free banter in Marathi or Hindi, and preferential stops, I also have an idea how much the journey is going to cost.

Not so with the buses. Yesterday it was six rupees, the day before only three. On most days, it is five. Today was a particularly bad day, so ten. I once asked a conductor about these rates, and he assured me that the rates were changed only that morning and suggested I walk towards the front, because my journey is only two bus-stops long. Who am I to argue that? He is in that line of business and is the most-informed.

You might wonder whether I don't have problems worse than PMC buses. Until recently, PMC harrassed residents in my area in the name of laying roads for the Commonwealth Youth Games. This lasted nine months. All they did was dig them, let people fall in this pothole and that, and finally fill them up with cement or tar, whatever they could lay their hands on. I hope they didn't bury anybody in the potholes.

Then there is MSEB. We have no power for hours, sometimes half-days at a stretch. First, they blamed rains. Then, the roads. Now, it varies from the price of the power to the absence of engineers. However, we now have power failures only for a couple of hours a day. Thank you, MSEB.

Had this been any other city, I would have filed complaints in the respective departments and written publishable rubbish to the newspaper editors. I know that might not be of much use, but it has the advantage of assuring me that I've done my duty. In Pune, thanks to a gentleman called Raj Thackeray, I keep mum and inaudibly mumble desperate nothings. It has been months since he and his sena have chased out thousands of blue-collared workers from the city. But I'm constantly reminded that I could be next, along with the other south Indian "immigrants" making a living here.

I am thankful for the feeling of a second-class citizen; there is a chance I might not have experienced that feeling in any other Indian city. The new city commissioner is especially strict, what with his first priority being to remove the masks off the women's faces. He wants as uniform tans as possible.

Now I must think if I should shift to Chennai, or even better, Hyderabad.

Rape victim uses RTI to get case moving

DeeptiA — Sun, 5 Oct 2008 14:58:11 EDT

The Indian Right to Information Act, for all its slowness, and huge backlog, is still proving to be beneficial to common citizens. I am fond of describing the RTI Act in a phrase - a lightning torch that exposes sloth and shines the beacon of openness on the red tape present in our Government. This feeling gets reinforced when you read about cases such as this one where a rape victim was running from pillar to post to get her case filed and investigated, and the police was not exactly the picture of cooperation:

Now, Right to Information (RTI) Act has brought justice to a rape victim in Umarpada taluka in south Gujarat. Following a notice by Gujarat Information Commission (GIC) in May, an FIR was finally lodged and action taken against the accused. In its notice, GIC slapped a penalty of Rs 25,000 jointly on two police officers for violating provisions of the Act. This followed an RTI application filed by a 15-year-old rape victim demanding to know why action had not been taken on her complaint.

The girl was raped in February last year but the accused was roaming free and police was refusing to register an FIR. GIC has penalised police sub-inspector and public information officer (PIO) DN Patel and assistant police sub-inspector Chandubhai Chaudhary, the deemed assistant public information officer (APIO) of Mangrol police station in Surat district, Rs 12,500 each.

RTI, in this legal form is a very effective tool. It allows citizens to get information about matters that concern them either personally or affects society, and enables this information not to be hidden unless it can be proved that the information being sought is either for commercial purposes, or affects national security.

There is an ongoing debate about whether the Central Information Commission (CIC), the nodal body appointed to hear RTI cases is actually not working as well as it should; on the other hand, there are numerous cases where RTI ensures that people get beneficial effects. In addition, RTI cells and mobile units that seek to empower people by making them aware of their rights are also on the job.

The writer of this piece still believes that to get rid of corruption, all other instruments that have been tried, whether they be strict laws, exposure, penalties for people caught, etc, all have failed to work; the RTI Act however, by its very nature is meant to get information. This availability of information to the common man is a welcome first step to reduce corruption and inaction in our society. If any of you have had personal experiences with RTI, please share.

Book Review: The Ten Commandments for Business Failure

Aaman Lamba — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:49:58 EDT

In this time of failing corporate giants, it feels appropriate to review a slim cautionary book called The Ten Commandments for Business Failure, written by the President of a company who has survived quite well so far. Donald Keough was former president of the Coca-Cola Company, and provides us an invaluable how-not-to guide, bolstered by a foreword by Warren Buffett, and reccomendations from the likes of Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, and Jack Welch.

As Warren Buffett puts it in the foreword, Mr. Keough is a human personification of the Coca-Cola Company, in all its multi-dimensionality, and has an ability to 'cut to the chase on an issue' and keeps his prescriptions simple, grounded in deep experience, and it is interesting to see how many of the dicta in this book were ignored or outright flouted by recent large failed corporations.

The very first commandment, 'top of the list' as it were, is 'Quit Taking Risks'. This might seem obvious, but as the examples of Xerox and many other giants shows, often enough, the companies that get complacent and believe themselves to be secure in their business model, stop trying to rock the boat, take risks, and bet the farm on the anti-thesis of their core ideas. This was illustrated efectively by Clayton Christansen in The Innovator's Dilemma, and more recently we have seen all the Indian IT Service majors continue to propagate their low-cost services model, venturing only marginally into alternative business models, purely because the current ones have served them well for so long.

The second commandment, "Be Inflexible" is an even more powerful mechanism for ensuring failure. The resitance of the auto industry to shed existing product lines has meant their return to near-bankruptcy. Other classic examples of inflexibility are the IBM PC, Digital Corporation, and as Mr. Keough acknowledges, Coca-Cola's own inability to move beyond the iconic bottle for years, losing market share to Pepsico. The movie industry's avoidance of television for a long time, and more recently, the music industry's Internet blind spot, are compelling examples of the power of inflexibility to destroy an industry's market positioning and value.

"Isolate Yourself" is equally effective, creating a culture where bringing good news is rewarded, and bearers of bad news excoriated. This ivory tower syndrome was observed most recently in the case of Dick Fuld, CEO of Lehman Brothers, who refused to see reason and sell out when he could have got at least a meaningful value for his firm, instead of pennies on the dollar, which will go to creditors rather than the stakeholders. Bringing bad news early is an invaluable skill that advisors must cultivate, and CEOs/leaders reward. The supporting corollaries to this rule are to only listen to those who agree with you, and take all the limelight for successes. As Mr. Keough puts it, "Watch out for bright lights who surround themselves with dim bulbs!"

"Assume Infallibility" means passing the blame for failure, typically on subordinates, but even more effectively on customers - after all, the boss is always right:) A grand alternative is Warren Buffett, who, as Mr. Keough notes, provides a full accounting of successes and failures in his annual letter to his shareholders, as opposed to CEOs who make their annual report 'an exercise in fingerpointing'.

The next commandment builds on the previous, "Play Close to the Foul Line", by highlighting the assumption that since one can do no wrong, whatever one does, no matter how gray, must be right. This enables effortless flouting of ethical boundaries to achieve one's goals, such as when loans were disbursed to people who patently did not qualify for them, leading, in part, to the subprime crisis. N R Narayana Murthy, the iconic founder of Infosys, is fond of saying that the softest pillow is a clear conscience, a dictum that might be the exact opposite of this one. The American International Group failure could be attributed to some extent to the rampant accounting irregularities in the 2000s, inculculated by then-CEO, Hank Greenberg. Mr. Keough notes the pressure for short term results at the cost of longer term perspectives, or outright fudging of earnings, as a pertinent example of 'playing close to the foul line'.

"Don't Take Time to Think" is another easy path to follow in the frenetic data-driven business stream. The author looks at the costs of such an attitude to business, from the Human Toll to the masking of reality, to finally the dangers and foolishness of not taking time to think about consequences. The volumes of data flowing through the corporate ecosystem do not necessarily contribute to more accurate decision making, and can cause leaders to overlook critical insights.

"Put All Your Faith In Experts and Outside Consultants" is a caution against the millions of con artists who have their own companies' interests ahead of your own. The compelling example used by Mr. Keough is that of New Coke, where the company made a famous and costly misstep, finding out before the Internet-driven meme age the costs of taking the word of consultants to switch the core product that consumers were used to. He notes research that shows 'experts' were 80% confident about their predictions, yet right only 45% of the time. As the old saying goes, we don't know which half was right. Statistics, that favorite tool of the marketer and consultant are counterpoised by the observation of the classical economist Ludwig von Mises, a personal icon, where he said "Statistical figures tell us what happened in a nonrepeatable histocical case."

The author segues into another, perhaps more dangerous constituency than external consultants - the bureaucracy in the organization. He recalls Jack Welch's final letter to General Electric stockholders, where he noted "Hate the bureaucracy in your organization" to coin the counter-intuitive commandment "Love Your Bureaucracy". The support systems and middle managers often enough become obsessed with micro-managing, sustaining their internal power centers, and perpetuating the rituals of their functions. He illustrates how these 'choke points' often become primary causes of attrition, and worse, stifle the company culture, leading to atrophied superstructures of busy workers producing little output.

"Sending Mixed Messages" is an extremely common phenomenon, almost inevitable in large organizations. An interesting example is sending the mixed message "It doesn't matter what you do, you will be rewarded". When a company harps on excellent customer service and delivers piss-poor service through multiple channels, it is sending the worst mixed message possible - that they don't care about their customers. Similarly, the same company, say Coca-Cola, is marketed in different geographies as a low margin, high volume product and at the same time as a high value product in others. A positive example touched on briefly in the book is that of IBM - its shift from a closed organization to an open, customer-friendly society is worth considering, in part, because it entailed the elimination of mixed messages and bringing a consistency to the entire global company on how they approached and engaged with customers.

Finally, "Be Afraid of the Future" is the anti-thesis of "Quit Taking Risks". This refers to the creeping malaise of pessimism that envelops organizations particularly successful ones. Fear-mongering and focusing on failure becomes the norm, leading to decision paralysis and demoralizing the organization.

A hidden eleventh commandment adds a final spice to these recipes for failure. "Lose Your Passion For Work - And Life". This essay goes into more mystical territory, dealing with notions of self-esteem, presentation, and making an emotional connection with one's work and life pursuits. The analogy of any food tasting better in a McDonald's box is an apt one, and tapping into the emotional aspirations of one's people is the critical factor in organizational or individual success.

This slim book is eminently readable and works best if the nuggets are mapped to one's own perspective and experiences. It should come with a handy flash card of commandments of failure. Surprisingly, they work more effectively when worded the way they are rather than in the positive sense.

Attacks on Churches and Christians in India - Violence in Mangalore

Kim — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:31:13 EDT

Section 144 has just been clamped on Mangalore city.

Police resorted to lathi charge and throwing tear gas grenades at peaceful protesters where a number of nuns and women were injured and had to be taken to hospital.

What the hell is wrong with our country and its people? (I would not normally use such strong language in print, but it doesn't even begin to demonstrate how strongly I feel)

Today morning between 9am and 10am, Bajrang Dal activists attacked and destroyed 4 churches in Mangalore City.

Why? Because New Life members distributed pamphlets which said "Do not Worship Hindu Gods"
While I admit that this could be an incendiary statement, does this justify attacking people and churches who do not even agree with the methods used by the New Life preachers?
Does this justify attacking members of a church, who have not had anything to do with conversions or preaching and just listen?

Let's look at the issues here:
1. The Bajrang Dal resorts to violence because of something that is printed that they do not agree with.
2. When the Bajrang Dal says that conversions are illegal, (and all the other things they do with tis as their cause) aren't they infact enforcing that "you cannot worship any God other than a Hindu God"
3. The New Life Church is a relative newcomer, known to be more hardline than most other churches which distance themselves from them. Shouldn't the Bajrang Dal have at least distinguished that?
4. Even if they did not agree with what was printed by the New Life church in India, couldn't they try having a dialog with them first, before resorting to violence.
Looks like the hooligans behind these attacks are only interested in breaking bones and getting their adrenaline pumping rather than really trying to sort out any kinds of problems or misunderstandings.

The ruffians broke all the religious statues in the Sisters of Poor Clare's Adoration Monastery. They threw the Holy Eucharist on the ground and desecrated it.

Is this OK, just because it is being done against Catholics/Christians in India who have historically been as non-violent as the Jains and buddhists (other minorities) in India?

Concerned members of the churches gathered in the church grounds during and after evening mass in a peaceful way to seek assurance and guidance from the priests and other religious. Wasn't this a peaceful gahtering compared to mobs rampaging and torching buses because of some mud smeared on Meenatai's statue? or The countrywide riots following a desecration of an Ambedkar statue in Kanpur? The second incident was also of smeared mud. Both the desecrations happened on public roads. This does not make it right, but compare this to religious statues being broken on private property, the Holy Eucharist (which Christians believe is the body of Christ once it is blessed) thrown on the ground. Do not Christians have a right to congregate to discuss their fears following such incidents.

Remember the Christians were gathering in peace outside their place of worship (since the insides of the church were full) not going out and torching buses or hurting other innocent people.

To add fuel to the fire, the police arrived. No issues with their arriving where crowds had gathered, but they started lathi charging the gathered people and seriously injured nuns and women among the crowd and threw tear bombs inside the church where Sunday evening mass was being held. A religious ceremony, a peaceful ceremony, held everyday inside these churches.

Was this responsible on the part of the police to use force and violence against unarmed, peaceful members of the public?

People present at the scene said that the police themselves were pelting stones at the crowd and caning them, hurting both people and damaging property in the vicinity.

The news channels started to broadcast about this and then completely hushed up. I turned on my India feed of NDTV which promised for 15 minutes to show an update and news about Mangalore city and suddenly it stopped showing those banners without showing any news about what had happened. Looks like someone high in the political chain, got to them and yanked the news off the air.

Now take 2-3 other incidents into perspective.
On 29th August over 40,000 Christian Educational Institutions across India stayed closed to register a peaceful protest against the continuing violence against Christians in Orissa which has now spread to 13 out of 30 districts.

On the same day, the government of Karnataka announced its decision to take action against Christian schools in the state for closing without prior permission.

This same government has yet to take action against the Akhila Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishat and RSS workers, who had launched violent protests when the JD (S) failed to hand over the state reins to the BJP last year.

Is it any surprise that both Karnataka and Orissa currently have the BJP in power?

The VHP held violent protests in Madhya Pradesh and other places asking why the Christians had killed Saraswati? (by shutting educational institutions for a day) What about all the occasions when the BJP/VHP/Bajrang Dal/Shiv Sena and other Hindu organisations force schools, colleges and business to shut shutter for their own bundhs which destroy all normalcy in the cities?

Why are these double standards in play? Why are Christians being given the short end of the stick? Religious Christian institutions have a large role to play in education, medicine, caring for the orphans, abandoned, old and dying in India. Christians have been one of the most tolerant minorities in India (imagine what would have happened by now if by chance the Bajrang Dal hooligans had desecrated a mosque this morning) who have contributed immensely to the growth of the country. Why this treatment? Do they deserve it?

Do they deserve a government that is apathetic to their religious sensibilities being trampled upon?

Christians have always believed in being peace loving, patient and tolerant. Will the Christian youth of today continue to be as tolerant when they see the atrocities being committed against their brethren in Orissa and the North East?

Why are these atrocities against Christians being downplayed in the media? (Try googling for the attack against Christians in India and see how many Indian media links pop up) Why aren't they being given coverage? Is it because the powers-that-be know that they aren't doing a thing to control, controllable situations and the miscreants in their party? Is it because the powers-that-be know that the Christians haven't ever retaliated with violence? How long will the Christians community be able to react with tolerance and peace? (2 values that a lot of Indians in the news seem to have completely forgotten about)

Final note of irony: Union minister of labour and employment Oscar Fernandes (a Christian) was in Mangalore today to inaugurate the opening of a (Hindu) temple.

And so we debate endlessly in the media about terrorism coming in from across the border while we burn our own own citizens in their homes and places of worship.

Book Review : The Appeal

Kim — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 02:53:48 EDT

The latest bestseller from John Grisham after - The Innocent Man.

Given that the Innocent Man was a work of non-fiction, makes this book all the more frightening. Grisham himself was very excited about his first real legal thriller in years.

In this book (I wouldn't call it a novel) Grisham exposes the nexus between big business, politics and the law. While these have always been recurring themes in his books, this time in "The Appeal" it is the sole focus of the book.

The book starts with a chemical and environmental pollution case in small town Bowmore, Mississippi, now nicknamed Cancer County, where Krane Chemical is the accused and Jeanette Baker the plaintiff.

Jeanette has lost both her husband and son to cancer. This makes hers the strongest case to start with for her lawyers - Wes and Mary Payton. There are plenty of mass tort specialists and ambulance chasers waiting in the wings for the decision on this case, so they can all get themselves a piece of the pie (30% to the lawyers) while the Paytons themselves are over $400,000 in debt by virtue of working and following up on this case (to the exclusion of all others).

The jury orders damages of 41 million dollars to be paid to Jeanette and here is where the plot actually takes off.

It is an intriguing ride that Grisham takes us on and is an excellent medium to learn how the Supreme Courts in the US work. Most states choose their Supreme Court justices by election, which leaves plenty of room for interested parties to skew the process. How that happens, is the meat of this book.

The ending may not please a lot of readers, but it is extremely realistic and I admire Grisham for leaving it there rather than neatly tying things up.

The book is extremely interesting and educating on the political and legal intrigue that takes place behind these elections. While this may be a work of fiction, it could very well become reality, any time in the near future and that is what is so scary about this book.

Sporting Bindra, Unsporting India

Kartikeya — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:41:12 EDT

Abhinav Bindra gave an interview after his winning effort at the Beijing Olympics, in which he basically underlined the fact that the Olympic medal was just one moment in his life, and that in his sport, the difference between winning and losing is so miniscule, that some luck is inevitable to success.

I think it is an important and non-trivial distinction between wanting to be better at something relentlessly, and wanting to be an Olympic champion. The former is an aspiration, the latter is a reward.

The overwhelming narrative about Abhinav Bindra has focused on his ambition and his success against the odds (tremors, a tampered gun). This narrative misses the point and in constructing a bollywoodesque hero myth, does Bindra serious injustice.

The whole point of Abhinav Bindra's success, as revealed in his interview, is that he wants to be the best shooter that he can be - that he's obsessively interested in training and working hard, enjoys the tough training regimens and has basically committed his life to his sport. The Olympic Medal or the World Championship Medal (both of which he has won now) are merely the biggest prizes on the way.

This is not unique to Bindra.

There is a difference between focusing on a given contest when it is at hand and bringing the entire might of one's powers to it, and aiming for it obsessively — coveting the prize. The point of being a sportsman is not being an Olympic champion. The point is to be the best sportsman you can be. Because we don't seem to understand that, we are unable to respect those athletes who have qualified for the Olympics but may not come away with podium finishes.

I have read more than one news article in the last couple of days which says something to the effect that "Indian athletes have a habit of not performing when it matters". That is not only rude, it is also hopelessly misguided.

There is a whole other aspect of this issue which has been written about ad nauseum, and Dileep Premachandran has this version of it. It refers to unprofessionally run Sports Associations which makes a complete pigs breakfast of managing and helping athletes compete at the international level.That is a bureaucratic problem, and as such is not too difficult to solve.

What is far more important, as Rajaraman points out, is our view of sport and sporting ambition. Cricketers who wake up in the morning in distant suburbs in Bombay and make their way to dawn training sessions on the maidans in town don't do it thinking about playing for India at every stage. They do it because they love playing the sport.

What does this mean? It means that there is inherent value associated with participating in sport — serious, organized sport — that contributes to the sport as well as to the sportsman. School cricket is competitive in Bombay and children who are serious about cricket move to better cricket schools, in order to pursue better cricket. A very famous cricketer once moved from IES English in Bandra to Shardashram Vidyamandir in Dadar in the mid-eighties, so that he would be able to play cricket. A illustrious friend of his travelled 50 kilometers a day to study at the same school so that he could play good cricket as well. Both went on the perform well for Bombay and India.

They did this not because they were driven by the ambition to play for India, but because they were interested more immediately in playing cricket, and in being as good at it as they could be.

Gold and Cash

We have to stop this medieval, feudal practice of showering winners with gold and cash, for it reveals a very poor attitude towards the sport.

All these agencies, which have been falling over each other to announce cash awards to Bindra (these awards range from the absurd to the downright silly), should stop and think about the other Indian athletes at the Olympics. Instead of giving the money to Bindra, they ought to contribute it to a corpus of some sort which athletes can dip into if they want to go somewhere to train or buy expensive equipment.

Bindra's Wikipedia page provides a summary of the awards he has won:

"Bindra was rewarded by various Indian state governments and private organizations for his achievements. These include the state governments of Punjab - Rs 10 million (approx. US $250,000), Harayana - Rs 2.5 million, Maharashtra - Rs 1 million, Karnataka - Rs 1 million, Tamil Nadu - Rs 0.5 million, Madhya Pradesh - Rs 0.5 million and Chattisgarh - Rs 0.5 million."

The Wikipedia page also highlights free life-long railway and airline passes from Indian Railways and Spicejet Airways, respectively.

The states of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh have absolutely no connection with Bindra. Neither does Amitabh Bachchan. Bachchan has, in fact, gone one step further, by drawing attention to his silly World Tour in the process.

Everyone wants a piece of Bindra right now. Nobody really cares about the other Indian athletes at the Olympics, neither is anyone really interested in the sport that Bindra competes in. I'm pretty sure that none of the luminaries in question will be able to write or speak one coherent paragraph about the sport of shooting.

Misguided Souls

In short, nobody really cares about sport. Everybody cares about the winner. In doing so, they contribute nothing to the sport - indeed they undermine it at every turn. They are no different from those misguided souls who burnt effigies of Indian cricketers after the world cup. To them, as to those vandals, sport is merely a site of prestige - it has nothing to do with joy or skill or excellence.

The bureaucracy, associations, etc. etc. are all secondary issues. There is a reason why cricket is a thriving sport in India - because it is played on the streets, by middle-class kids with proper bats and balls, and by poor kids with makeshift stumps and handmade balls. Because interest in cricket goes above and beyond India winning or losing. Because Ranji Trophy cricketers can make a living playing domestic cricket in India today. In such an atmosphere, it was a matter of time before India's bare fast-bowling cupboard filled up.

The BCCI manages cricket quite well, but cricket thrives in India because it thrives in communities. That's where other sports have to gain a footing. Otherwise, all we will have is parasites like Amitabh Bachchan clinging on to Abhinav Bindra's gold medal-wearing back.

The Story of "London Tod Singh" Is More Than You Know

Shantanu Dutta — Tue, 5 Aug 2008 15:06:29 EDT

On many television channels, the day of the confidence vote, the news coverage was accompanied by the jingle — “Singh is King” — the new movie starring Akshay Kumar coming up for release next week. Of course, many anchors were heard speculating as to which Singh was the king of the day – Manmohan Singh or Amar Singh.

But the original Singh who was “king” enough to be king maker passed away without fanfare last week. What impressed me, as I passed by the AK Gopalan Bhavan in New Delhi on Sunday where the body of Harkishen Singh Surjeet was kept for public viewing and last respects — at the CPI(M) office — was the vast number of peasants and workers who had come from far away places to pay tribute. Clearly this was spontaneous, no one had hired them to shed tears and wring their hands in mourning. The gesture from the large numbers of Sikh peasants in red turbans offering Laal Salaamswas very genuine.

Harkishen Singh Surjeet was a key figure in crowning VP Singh, HD Devegowda, IK Gujral and the UPA. By default then, Manmohan Singh Surjeet was perhaps more known as a deal maker par eminence in his latter years. However, he was still a deal maker with a difference – he personally remained spotlessly clean and though he presumably used all the methods in the book to get his job done, no gains ever personally accrued to him. His methods might or might not have been pure but in his thinking and ideology, his motives certainly were.

But going back in time, Harkishen Singh Surjeet’s early life, inspired by Bhagat Singh could be the stuff of myth, legend and cinema. After all Surjeet began his career as a member of Bhagat Singh’s Naujawan Bharat Sabha. On the first anniversary of his hanging as the Indian Express put it "... some of Bhagat Singh’s followers had decided to pull down the Union Jack and hoist the tricolor at the Hoshiarpur court. But when these people didn’t turn up, an enthusiastic teenager who incidentally had turned 16 that very day performed the act. When produced before the British magistrate, he stated his name as London Tod Singh (one who could demolish London)."

The story of Surjeet’s early life reminds us to actually take a look at the many ordinary people who took part in the freedom movement and often with significant daring but little or no recognition. Not, of course, that freedom fighters were looking for reward and recognition but the saga of London Tod Singh and many others are part of our freedom struggle and heritage which we know nothing about.

We are so fixated on leaders and political figures that we would make it appear that freedom was won by the individual acts of a few prominent figures. Obviously that was not so, but in the absence of any stories and anecdotes we do not know any better. How many more London Tod Singhs do we have in our midst? Sixty and more years after independence, certainly not many – if at all any. And then how many of us knew much about Surjeet’s extraordinary youth when he was still alive? Certainly not many.

We spend a lot of money tending to our tombs and mausoleums preserving a piece of our heritage. But clearly there is also a need to capture portions of our history while they are still amongst us. Or else they will be gone and we will be the poorer for it.

Book Review : Diplomatic Baggage: The Adventures of a Trailing Spouse

Kim — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 09:41:54 EDT

As a Trailing Spouse to Egypt, this was a book recommended at an Inter-cultural training session that I attended.

I am glad I waited 2 years to read this book (I might have been terrified of the move) although I'm kicking myself for spending money on it, even though I got it at a discounted price on Amazon.

I got carried away by William Dalrymple's (an author I greatly admire) review of it: "Brigid Keenan, is a new comic genius.... very, very funny"

Later in the book, I figured out that he spent time at their house in Damascus, while researching his book From the Holy Mountain.

Why did I hate the book so much?

Except for the last chapter, the author was constantly whining and groaning about the hardships that life had tossed at her. This after choosing to marry her husband of her own free will, knowing the kind of job he did and loved that it would take him to obtuse corners of the world. It was a fully informed decision that she took. Even spending some days with him, in what she calls a "chicken shed" in Kathmandu before deciding to marry him.

She constantly whines about everything from the help, to the kids, to her husband, to location.... in short, she whines about -Everything.

The life of a Diplomatic Trailing Spouse is much easier than that of other Trailing Spouses. Accommodation, household help, office help, everything is put in place before the diplomatic family even arrives at their new location. Brigid's grouse is that some of the other European embassies provide more services to the spouses than her husband's European Commission ambassadors office does.

She promotes herself as a glamorous, successful young London fashion journalist, but later in the book accepts and acknowledges that her children were the worst dressed in their school.

I do not know Brigid personally, but what I read in her this autobiography of hers, made me think of her as a spoiled, over indulged wife who can never find anything positive and good in life.

Granted she had a few scares like the maggots that got under the skin and had to mature and grow and eat their way out, but those kind of experiences were less than you could count on one hand. For the most part, she was preoccupied with how to find white gloves for a 6 fingered servant in India and wondering why there was no association to put beggars to sleep the way Animal friends do it for animals! At the same time brushing aside her daughters experiences with pedophiles and exposers as casual asides.

Brigid has written about Kashmir's art and crafts and co authored a book on Damascus; which may be worth looking at, but Diplomatic Baggage is not a book you want to buy or gift a friend who is going to be a Trailing Spouse, not unless you want them to cancel all plans and send their spouse to live abroad on their own.

Thoughts Inspired By A Sack

Uma Ranganathan — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:20:43 EDT

A funny thing happened a couple of days back. Our cook A, who pulls out a story a day for me from her never ending bag of tales, and sometimes more than one, told me about a sack being discovered in a side street where she works. The sack, lying on the ground by an old well at the top of the lane, was discovered by a sweeper who looks after one of the buildings where A too, has a part time job. The bundle smelled really bad. I asked A, what do you think it was? She shrugged. Could it have been a corpse, my fanciful mind wondered aloud and she said, who knows, perhaps it was.

I say, how come the police didn’t find it and take it away? She explains, oh, it wasn’t on the main road, it was somewhere at the back of a steep narrow alley and the police wouldn’t think of coming there to look for anything.

I said, why didn’t the cleaning woman inform the police and A says, you crazy? Who would want to have anything to do with the police? You think you’re obliging them but if that thing in the sack were to really turn out to be a corpse or something else suspicious, they’d be after your blood for months. And you know how it is. The poorer you are the more they harass you.

A says, I did think of telling my employer about it, I thought he could inform the police but then I said to myself, if the police were to ask him how he found out, he might mention my name and then I’d get roped into something I really have no time for! So I finally decided to keep mum.

A couple of hours later a friend from Germany calls up to chat. She happens to be working on a movie script which involves child abuse and the question arises, as to how to react to a story which is not strictly speaking your own but which nonetheless affects you in some way. Good question. How would you react to a case of a little boy whom you had nothing to do with really, but whom you knew was being brutally ill treated by his parents? How do you react to stories of violence and cruelty happening far removed from where you are but in which you feel anyway emotionally involved? People getting killed in Iraq, children starving in Africa. A suspicious looking sack lying in a back alley somewhere which you've only heard about but not seen yourself?

To my mind, two possibilities arise. In the first case you feel directly called upon to “do something”. There are those who feel compelled to go “out there” and take an active part in the proceedings, people who help to keep an issue alive, thanks to whom we know what is happening in the world and because of whom it also becomes more difficult for the rest of us to look away, completely. Journalists, photographers, social workers.

There is another way to deal with the external situation, which is more difficult to grasp because it is more low key and at first sight it seems to have no direct connection with people who are starving or brutalized in the world. And that is for each of us to take a ruthless look at how we might be contributing to the general sense of violence and insecurity “out there.” This way involves examining every corner of our minds and looking at our own relationships, at how we react to those we don’t understand, people with whom we disagree or those who are much worse off than ourselves. It is to look at how fairly and with how much respect we treat the people we work and live with.

I have a sneaky suspicion that the first option might be easier. It is easier to make a noise about something outside, no matter how difficult or dangerous the task might seem and I think this is why more people in the world opt for social work and start organizations to support the downtrodden than people who feel called upon to examine their own souls. Because your time and energy in this case is occupied in so-called noble acts and you don’t really have to come into contact with the dirt in your own life and relationships.

Wasn’t it Krishnamurti who said though, that real change will come about only when we stop generating violence and injustice at the personal level? When we as individuals become generators of peace, instead of perpetrators of violence and deceit. And will this not happen when we understand how we, with our own petty and conflict ridden minds contribute to the general atmosphere of decay? Will change not come about when we as individuals, overcome the violent streak in our own psyche? It is so much easier to allow oneself to be swayed into action by external happenings because even that brings visible returns at some level. At least you get a pat on the back from someone or a medal for your efforts which a spot of quiet soul searching is unlikely to bring you.

So is this piece an excuse for not getting involved in what happens in the outside world? No. I think that when you truly listen to yourself, the right answers do surface and they are not always comfortable to follow. The answer for one person might indeed be to step into another person’s story because that is what is needed at a particular point. For another individual the truth might be simply to use an external incident to become aware of unresolved feelings of anger or violence in his personal life and to try and understand those feelings better.

The difficult thing always, is to follow the truth because no matter what you do you will be offending someone or other. And this is what makes it hard for us to accept and to act according to what we really see, hear and feel because there is always someone in our lives whom we are afraid of offending or hurting.

When I put the phone down after chatting with my friend in Germany it was clear to me that in her own discreet way she was persuading me to do something which I in no way felt called upon to do. To inform the police about a suspicious looking sack in a back alley beyond the fringes of my own immediate neighborhood, which I had not even personally seen. Not to do what I felt she would have liked me to, made me feel I might lose her approval and for a moment I felt the muscles in my stomach tightening with discomfort. But then her opinion was not mine. Given the circumstances and the red tape in India, I felt in no way obliged to spend my time and energy following up a task which did not seem to involve me.

However what I did was to chase up that first chat with A, the following morning, which threw up a possible solution to the question of the stinking sack in the back alley. I’ll tell my employer about it, A said, and he can go take a look himself. If he actually sees it he doesn’t have to mention my name because then he can tell the police he discovered the bundle on his own while walking up the lane. So when she turned up for work this morning I put the question to her once more. The sack? Oh, she said, the boss wasn’t home today so I couldn’t speak to him. The sack is still there, only today it wasn’t smelling at all. I went close to it and I couldn’t get even a whiff of anything.

Of course we couldn’t help wondering what the hell really was in the sack but for the time being I’m going to let the matter rest.