Desicritics

Sisyphus And the Israeli-Palestinian Crisis

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

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

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

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 These two well known authors have done a great job in collecting some vital historical documents, which can be used - at least - to establish some facts on the ground when debating or arguing this issue.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Managing Discretionary Spending and Pensions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This has huge advantages.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Technorati Tags: management,financial institutions

The Angry American Generation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!

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

Recycling Ships

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!

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

Just War - Theory and Practice

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Tue, 8 Apr 2008 00:20:35 EDT

The Islamist terror and subsequent Iraq War have let loose a huge debate around what is “Just War”? The Islamists claim that Just War is Jihad and it is perfectly legitimate to fight against oppression by unbelievers. The Iraq Just War claims are based (and debated) upon legal arguments arising from UN and parliamentary resolutions. As it so happens, both the UN and western parliamentary resolutions are broadly based upon Judeo-Christian religious heritage and in particular, the Just War theories going back to the 12th century teachings of St. Aquinas, who – it has been said – was influenced greatly by books written by religious scholars expounding on the legal reasons and justifications of Jihad. There is another strand of human thought around the Just War theory, which goes back centuries and millennia before Just War was a twinkle in the eyes of the Abrahamic faith theologians. Let us explore that a bit.

I was in a discussion last year with some people who were debating about Crusades, Jihad and Just War came up. I was hearing about how the Just War is defined as war against the other, but having a just cause such as fighting against oppression, which authority can launch a just war, so on and so forth. And I was reminded of two things when I heard that these concepts were relatively new. The first was the fact that Just War is not a new concept for me, in fact this is pretty old and secondly, this is not just Hinduism which I refer to, but also Buddhism (yes, that religion of peace…) which has a full blown concept of Just War. So I promised to write about it and this essay relates to the first aspect. The Buddhist concept of Just War will need a full essay of its own.

One might be surprised as to why a country like India, with such a long and sometimes violent history, can house two violently competing thoughts about war at the same time. The first is a very well developed doctrine and corpus of war and military science (perhaps even the first in the world), while the second is more known as the doctrine of non-violence. The latter was obviously popularised by Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the Indian Nation. It says a lot about Hinduism’s concept of “duality” and of “Maya” (illusion) that these two ostensibly mutually incompatible concepts can co-exist merrily, but this essay is not on that aspect, it is on the first.

The genesis of Just War within the overall rubric of Hinduism as a philosophy can be traced back to the oldest religious and philosophical books of mankind, the Vedas. Take for example, the Rig-Veda, the oldest written book. It is but a collection of hymns, to a variety of old Hindu Gods, and therein you will find a very large collection of hymns which pray to various God(s) to intercede in times of war and help in winning battles. So whether one is praying to Indra, the Lord of Heavens or Agni, the Lord of Fire, it is your basic prayer before war. Or consider the fourth Veda, the Athar-veda which is more aimed at particular purposes such as hymns and charms to protect against arrow wounds, confusing the enemy, protection of equipment such as the battle drum, etc.

It goes without saying that at that time of human development (expressed both in oral and written tradition); one would not have expected people to have deep philosophical thoughts about the nature of war and that too Just War. Life was short, the world was scary and the only people who could make sense of this scary dark world were the Gods. Hence hymns and prayers to them would be the primary philosophical output of human kind (you see the same behaviour in the books of the dead in Egypt or the hymns of the ancient Mesoamerican cultures). But philosophy relating to the world and events as we know it emerged in the annals of the Upanishads (btw, Hinduism provides philosophical guidance to all aspects of human behaviour and endeavour, none of this separation of church and state malarkey but it is again a nature of its duality (see note about Arthshastra below) that secularism has found such a firm root in a largely Hindu country such as India…).

But to go back to philosophy, the second aspect of war is explored in the Upanishads which is a body of Hindu scripture discussing philosophy, meditation, hymns, nature of the world and emotions. For example, one might be familiar with the concept of Greater Jihad in Islam, where one fights against the inner evils and sins, tries to attain self actualisation against inner weaknesses and limitations. It is the Lesser Jihad which is the physical manifestation of this battle against evil, oppression and injustice. But hundreds of years ago, fighting against the inner evil was enjoined in a variety of Upanishads, (such as in the Chandogya Upanishad – Eighth Prapathaka; twelveth Khanda, first paragraph, to the Mundaka Upanishad – third mundaka, first khanda, third paragraph to the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad- third Brahmana). The avoidance of evil and the fight against inner desires is clearly a route to Brahman or the ultimate Godhead. In other words, if one removes all desires, one is undistinguishable from the Godhead.

Then come the Puranas, which is a corpus of texts, mainly in the form of stories; talking about the history of the world, the stories of the Gods, their genealogies and their deeds, the people and events. Based upon the concept of avatars or incarnations of Gods on earth, these incarnations emerge on earth to fight against evil, to carry out Just War against the disturbers of the divine order. Thus, by analogy and examples, the shape, size and type of evil is explained. The fight against evil is also described by means of divine intervention.

But the knowledge of the Vedas and Upanishads was distilled into the Mahabharata, the gigantic and profound Hindu epic and one can legitimately claim that the Mahabharata was itself distilled into the Srimad Bhagwat Gita. This is the story of the time when Sri Krishna (himself an incarnation of Vishnu as explained in the Vishnu Purana and other documents) explains the concept of divine destiny; the use (or rather prohibition) of weapons such as Brahmasashtra and Pasupatastra; how the divine godhead will come to the assistance of the just; how fighting has to be done for the sake of fighting and not for the sake of emotional reasons such as happiness or jealousy etc.

See the crucial difference? This just war concept is to fight evil and not to spread Hinduism. This aspect to be remembered is that the Hindu concept of Just War is clearly distinguishable from the Christian/Islamic concept of Just War, which includes war against the outsider/foreigner/other religion or persons from different faiths. The basis of Hinduism is Dharma, or cosmic order. Whatever or whoever disturbs this cosmic order or acts against the Dharma is considered to be a target, irrespective of their demographics. But the concept was much wider than that, you cannot just go about waging Just War haphazardly. There are strong rules about how and where war can be fought, who is to be protected and who can fight. War had to be fought in an equitable and fair manner and using open means. (See an excellent treatment of this issue by Arthur Eyffinger in his book The International Court of Justice 1946–1996, where he delves deep into the background of our international laws relating to war and other references to the religious books are from Kane’s seminal work Dharmashastra).

Another book, the Arthshastra, has to be mentioned. The Arthshastra written by Kautilya is a body of knowledge relating to political science, government and its administration, international relations, including spying etc. One can call it the first political science text book of the realist school. One has bear that in mind that Arthshastra is totally independent from any moral philosophy as expounded in the epics and Dharmashastras mentioned above. While nobody will claim that Arthshastra is part of Hindu religion, it indeed is part of Hindu politics and culture and one can clearly see the roots of secularism inherent in this body of knowledge. This also explains the difference between law and religion. Hinduism is universalistic and humanistic in nature. One can almost call it the perfect religion for the secular humanists. Unlike other religions, there is a clear cut difference between law and religion. While religion and by correspondence faith is immutable, laws have to change given changed circumstances, which make Hinduism inherently flexible and dynamic in nature as man matures and changes.

War as a means of public policy is also the last strategy to be adopted when reconciliation, gift giving, threats and diplomacy do not work. (One can see these guidelines in the Smiritis such as the Manusmriti, as well as in the Shastras, such as the Arthshastra). Rules have to be followed in terms of declaration of war, how to determine if one is the King of Kings, etc. Rules can be determined in terms of ban on poison arrows; ban on killing the elderly, women, sleepy people, peaceful citizens, the insane, musicians, retreating soldiers; ban on destroying gardens, temples and places of worship; and so on and so forth. Not only that, but war can only be carried out by a particular class of people, the Kshatriyas. All other classes of people are not to be involved in warfare, which is again just and fair. Only those people who are trained fight, not just anybody.

So as one can see, a full corpus of Just War theory and practise, with a history dating back to almost 4,500 years ago which has then been further developed and enriched since then. One of the modern guru’s of Just War theory, Michael Waltzer, said that the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971 is perhaps one of the very few wars of modern times that can be called as a Just War. I am not surprised at that, and the military philosophy of the Indian Army is heavily based around this concept. Are you also surprised that the Indian Army is one of the largest troop contributors to United Nations Peace Keeping Missions? One can quibble about quite a lot of Indian Army actions, but India has a proud history and philosophy of Just War. The world can do worse than to take those concepts on board.

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!

Technorati Tags: Just War, Hinduism, India

Islamophobia - Organisation of Islamic Countries Report

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:21:02 EDT

Islamophobia exists and is steadily getting worse. A phobia is a strong irrational or powerful fear and dislikes of something, in this case, the religion of Islam. This phobia has attained such strong levels, that the Organisation of Islamic Countries has commissioned and recently released an Annual Report on Islamophobia. On reading the report, I was torn between two feelings; the first was serious concern about Islamophobia in the world and second was sheer bewilderment at the OIC as to how they help propagate the very Islamophobia that they want to eliminate.

I have spoken about Islamophobia before and have been warning about its prevalence for some time now. And regretfully, the situation is far from improving; instead it is getting worse. One can see that just looking at the rise in terrorist attacks and hate crimes, lurid headlines, anti-Semitic attacks in Europe in retaliation, etc. And the more this happens; the less the space becomes for moderates on both sides.

As I warned before, the world knows about the demonisation of a minority and knows what happens if that monster is let loose. We have seen that behaviour against Jews, Muslims, Christians, Blacks, Browns, Yellows, Hindus, Irish, English, Tutsi, you name it, it has happened. If there is a minority, the chances are that phobias, discrimination, genocide etc. against them have been in play.

So if you look at the report, the worry is clear. Muslims around the world are definitely in the cross-hairs of a variety of people. And you can very well see that in the pronouncements of some of the wilder variety of some politicians across the world; the subtle demonisation of Muslims in the mainstream, tabloid, and online media; and the increase in attacks on Muslims (or even Sikhs who these attackers thought that they looked like Muslims).

So yes, that definitely needs to be sorted out. From what I understand, the OIC asked for an annual report on Islamophobia to be tabled at the annual sessions of the OIC. The authors of this report are not clear nor are the terms of reference of this report.

But first the good points in the document. Yes, there are some good points in there. For example, the authors have collected a good selection of Islamophobia research sources. A reasonably good selection of political Islamophobic statements has also been collected in Section 2.1 and they have also done a good survey on what people have done to combat Islamophobia from a governmental, NGO and individual perspectives in section 1.6.

They also talk about how inter-faith initiatives have been established, which can at best improve inter-faith relations and at worst, not do any harm. The majority of the recommendations in the conclusion of Part I that they made to combat Islamophobia are quite bang on target and make pretty good sense. They should be read by anybody who is interested in this rather dreadful phenomenon. Section 1.5 specially is a very good overview of the situation of Muslims in Europe and USA, although some inconsistencies should have been addressed in a better way, such as praising Pope Benedict XVI in Section 3.5, but fulminating against him on page 3.

Looking at the document, I would conclude that this was done by some under-graduates from a 3rd grade university hidden in a country-side somewhere, who have no idea about modern life and have suddenly stumbled upon the internet with their first lesson being Google search. As a result, this document starts off with the best of intentions and ends up rather fanning Islamophobia instead of helping to reduce it. It suffers from the following major defects:

Total misunderstanding of the basic principle of Freedom of Speech. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to irritate and upset others. Freedom of speech does not include the right to discriminate against others though. For example, I can take the mickey out of suicide bombers wanting virgins and ending up with raisins. Or you can call me an infidel and say your religion is better than mine. These are completely acceptable, I have no issues. But you cannot tell others to kill me nor can I tell others to kill you. That is incitement to violence. The author seems to have deep intellectual issues in understanding this basic matter.
Confusing racism with Islamophobia. Race belongs to a genetic category generally exhibited on the basis of a physical appearance. Islamophobia is a fear of Islam. Two totally different things. While in certain cases (such as black Muslims), they might blow over into being the same, but to confuse both of them as one shows muddled thinking. Muslims are not a race, and they do include a variety of different races and ethnic groups.
Methodological and terminological confusion, which emerges from seriously flawed selection of incidents and coverage of incidents. Almost 50% of the incidents noted in the Appendix are not Islamophobic in nature, but belong to the category of freedom of speech or simple crime category. Islamophobia exists already without trying to add to it.
A totally wrong emphasis on legal protections. They try to go deep into legal aspects of various conventions and institutions. But you see, those are already established, anti-discrimination laws exist, anti-violence laws exist anti-incitement laws exist and they are sufficient. For example, they are talking about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and completely forget that they themselves have repudiated it and have come up with a Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. Here’s an idea! How about the OIC signing up to and transcribing to domestic law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as most of the rest of the world has done?
Be very careful about complaining about being a victim, because it only stands up when you yourself have not victimised someone else. Now if you look at the OIC minorities, one can come up with many examples of victimisation that they themselves have done. And we are talking about Muslims victimising Muslims here, forget about non-Muslims. Ranging from Shia, Sunni, Ahmadi, Baha’i, Ismaili, Darfurians and then all the way to the other side like Jews, Christians, Hindus Buddhists, etc. have been victimised in OIC countries. Now, consider the reaction if such a report on anti-Baha'i or anti-Shia or anti-Semitic discrimination is presented at the OIC? How about considering the fact that many if not most current anti-Semitic attacks in Europe are carried out by European Muslims?
A totally imbalanced view of history. This entire report was so imbalanced in terms of its historical coverage that one does not even know where to start. What about the entry of Islam into the Caucasian world? Or the Chinese area? How about how it managed the entry and existence in South Asia and Africa? Islam has perhaps victimised more in many countries and regions than had been victimised against. Perhaps this is why their geographical scope of the report is so muddled (to avoid any facts which destroy their argument?)
Significant challenges in the identification of the causes of Islamophobia. First of all, there is not one form of Islam; it is not a single view, sect or a monolith. More importantly it is not the role of the state to define it. So if you are an Ahmadi or a Shia or a Sunni or what have you, we simply do not care! If you have religious differences, then by all means, discuss them, but do not kill for those differences. For example, the list of seven points raised by the Runnymede Trust defining Islamophobia can, unfortunately be equally applied to anti-Semitism, Anti-Hinduism, Anti-Shia… in OIC countries, where they will be totally applicable. Consequently, ALL root causes of Islamophobia as identified in section 1.4.1 are completely wrong and misallocated.
A clear misunderstanding of the role of the media and the level of control people can actually exert over them. Most - if not all - of the OIC have no or very little press freedom. On top of that, the Arab League, a subset of the OIC, has decided to take fuller control over their TV Media since February 2008. That is not how the media works in other countries. Do check out independent organisations such as Reporters without Borders.
Israel – Palestine conflict. This is something that I can never understand. Curiously, more than 3/4th of all dead Palestinians have been killed by their fellow Arabs compared to the numbers killed by Israelis, but besides that breathtaking hypocrisy, I still cannot understand why they would include it in here. Or exclude say something like Bangladesh and Sudan? Pretty bizarre and intellectually vacuous.

Islamophobia exists, hate crimes have seriously stated happening in many countries and that is something to be worried about. All parts of civil society have to take part in ensuring that this canker of Islamophobia does not emerge from the dark evil corners of our souls. This includes you and me, the media, NGOs, churches and mosques, the government and international organisations, etc. But this has to happen for the right reasons, not for the spectacularly wrong and intellectually vapid reasons as stated in this report. All this will end up doing (and has already done) is to provide ammunition to the right wing that the OIC, as the premier Islamic organisation, takes decisions based upon policy papers which a zoned out undergraduate would hesitate to submit. And by the way, try to understand the concept of free speech. People who are out there trying to control free speech are basically engaging in Neanderthal behaviour and should not be upset if their speech is ignored, unheard or even mis-understood.

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

Technorati Tags: Organisation of Islamic Countries, Islam, Islamophobia, Israel, Palestine, Bangladesh, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Anti-Semitism

Paradigm-Changing Events and Legal Systems

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:28:54 EDT

Countries faced with terrorism are currently struggling with how to establish legal precedents, so that they can handle terrorists. Because there is no clear-cut answer, you get situations which range from outright human right abuses of legal systems, such as Guantanamo Bay all the way to situations where terrorists are released only to commit terrorism acts again right after they have been let loose.

This is not unusual. Legal systems down the ages have had major systemic shocks, such as this and the power of a liberal democracy lies in the fact that it is able to incorporate these shocks and re-emerge stronger. If you do not believe me, see how the British Indian Legal System reacted when it was faced with the "Thugs."

The Thugs were a group of criminals who ran rampant in India and killed an estimated 50,000 to two million Indians from 1250 to 1850. The number actually does not matter, just like Stalin said, the death of a million is just a statistic. But in this particular case, the situation was very bad indeed. Gangs of thugs ranged far and wide, from current Pakistan down to South India, to the foothills of the Himalayas next to Nepal to due east into Bangladesh, a very wide area indeed.

Over the many centuries their area of operation covered hundreds of native states, and the decaying Mughal Empire as well as the rapidly up and coming East India Company-ruled areas. All this is before 1857, the great War of Independence (or the Great Mutiny, take your pick).

These Thugs were professional murderers, with techniques and training passed around in special villages and in certain hereditary families. They would be protected, trained and funded in many cases by the local ruler/landlord in return for a significant cut of the proceeds.

Gangs had specialised roles, some would be the confidence boosters, others would be the grave diggers, some would specialise in the actual murder etc. They had strong rituals surrounding their equipment (especially the pick used to dig the grave), religious rituals to the goddess, etc.

Their modus operandi, while difficult to generalise, would roughly go like this: They would befriend fellow travellers, who they knew were carrying valuables (they picked up the information from the market places or from guardsmen, etc.) and then traveled for extraordinary distances with the victims, sometimes up to 100s of kilometres. And then, at a carefully selected time and place, they would generally strangle the entire party, strip them completely, mutilate the bodies and cut them open (so that the bodily gases do not expose the body after being dumped in a well), and then hide them down a gorge, a grave, well or ditch. Then the monies and goods would be divided amongst the gang (and the sponsor) and off they go to get the next victim(s) for hundreds of years.

How on earth did they manage to get away with it all? Well, there were many reasons.

First was the fact that they had local protection, so nobody could get to them as the only "authority" in that locality was that local zamindar (landowner) and if he himself had given protection, then there was no way you could get to the thugs.

Second, given the fact that many bodies were hidden, nobody knew where the victims were. Given the very bad roads, lack of communication, insular population, fragmented country, that is not a surprise. Further to that, given the frequent incidents of fatal illnesses, it was not surprising that people would assume that their loved ones had died on the road and had been buried by someone else or were eaten by wild animals. So no victim, no crime!

Third, the legal system in force in India was an interesting one. It was not designed for punishment and deterrence, but more around compensation. So even in the remote instance that you were caught and sentenced, you would not be locked up (very few prisons existed) for long (you could get away by paying blood money or bribes). And, according to one set of Islamic laws (Hanafi), you wouldn’t get the death penalty as you did not kill using a sword or implement, you used a rumal (handkerchief or scarf). I will not go too deep into the details of this, but suffice to say, that is one of the major reasons why the Thugs would strangle their victims rather than kill them with other weapons. After all a scarf is totally innocent!

But from the 17th century onwards, the British started making deep inroads into India and began creating their own states as well as having rights over many native states. They also built their own standing armies staffed with native soldiers, generally based in cantonment towns far away from their native villages and towns. These soldiers would travel long distances to go back (carrying arrears of pay, jewellery, gifts, etc.) and were therefore frequent targets for the Thugs.

Between these two major reasons, the British got quite excited about the Thugs and went after them with a vengeance and with great vigour. They used political power, approvers, military and police force, new and improved ways of communications, and so on and so forth. But they had a problem - they could not simply hang their suspects, they had to go through due legal process (never forget the power of bureaucracy).

The problem with using local law (variants of Muslim and Hindu law) was huge for a Britisher. First of all, there was no consistency at all. From ruler to ruler, jurist to jurist, country to country, town to town, time to time, the same crime could get wildly different punishments. Nobody wrote down the records in a systematic sense, although there were some court records in the bigger cities and towns. But even with records, there was no way to refer back to them. The appeals system was non-existent. Judges were frequently very badly trained. Lawyers and specialist legal personnel were rare or missing, a police system as we know it also did not exist.

Actually, in most of the times and in most of the country, police did not exist. There were state functionaries, but usually, policing would be ad-hoc and based upon appeals to the local rulers (another reason why you couldn’t catch the Thugs, which ruler do you appeal to – the ruler where the crime was committed or where the thug was from or where the victim(s) were from?

And how would evidence be collected? And presented? And who has time and money to follow this?). To further complicate matters, each person could have effectively gone after a different corpus of knowledge and laws in terms of legal coverage. So if a group of say three thugs were captured, each one could have appealed to three different legal systems (Hindu, Muslim and Sikh). And the punishment could well be totally different, depending upon who the ruler was. And incidentally, there was nothing as Hindu or Sikh Law, not as we understand it. It appealed to a series of philosophical statements, guidelines of behaviour and well, what the judge thought at that very moment. So, more often than not, the thug would be let off under native law. The liberal scientific heart of a British Corporate officer could not deal with such inconsistencies, and uncertainties.

But here an even bigger problem! The United Kingdom, at that time did not have a codified set of laws either. So the British courts could not simply take up the “home country” laws and apply them to British India. Also, because the East India Company preferred to keep a very light hand on the various states and natives, they had to use local laws, but needed to codify them, so that a British officer in Peshawar or in Madras could use the same law, be consistent, be uniform but also be sufficiently diverse to cater for local circumstances. So, what we find is an astonishing push to codify laws. Perhaps it is the first seeds of a modern Anglo-Saxon legal systems which were implanted here. The codification of British Indian law brought a bewildering variety of laws ranging from British Parliamentary Charters and Acts, East India Company Regulations and gazette notifications, English common law, Hindu law, Muslim law, to local instances of law and precedents.

Courts following these codified systems were established way back in 1726 and over the next many decades, a legal system was established to take care of law in India. One of the primary drivers for the criminal law segment was due to the British attempts to prosecute these Thugs.

This was not just criminal law, but also related to family law in many cases, such as disposal of assets and inheritance from victims, etc. A police system was established and in addition to that also laws and processes for forensic evidence, taking evidence from approvers, multiple corroboration requirements, etc. etc. You could really draw the origins of current Police Intelligence Departments across the world (as opposed to military intelligence) from this department.

Nobody said that the British Legal implementation was 100% perfect and that there were no miscarriages of justice. Sometimes reading about the court hearings (for example in Mike Dash’s excellent book, Thug ) makes for a hair-raising read, but then when you compare what must have gone on before and what happened after, then you can see how the British legal system was such a huge improvement.

This is the power of democracies, which come up with legal systems and laws. Though they might not be a 100% fit for purpose, but over time, they evolve and keep on improving. Similarly, for those who get excited about the miscarriages of justice today, think back to the Thugs and their victims of two centuries ago. That new legal system also committed some miscarriages of justice, but now has become the standard against which we judge others.

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

Technorati Tags: Legal System, India, United Kingdom, Terrorism

How To Control Drunken Behavior?

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 02:03:18 EDT

This might sound like a dirty topic but there is a serious element to this discussion. How do you stop people peeing in public? By all means, the people seem to have done all that they could to stop this from happening. I quote:

Two public toilets were placed in downtown Linköping close to the town’s entertainment district following discussions about how to alleviate the problem of public urination on walls and building entryways in the downtown area.

The temporary toilets are well illuminated and clearly identified with large signs. The problem instead is apparently that some people, primarily young men who have been drinking alcohol, prefer to pee on walls.

When asked what to do about these men, suggested answers were:

The solutions offered including public shaming, castration, fines, electrified walls or the classification of people peeing in public as terrorists. A minority felt public urination shouldn’t be punished at all, while one respondent felt the politicians should be punished, for not creating more public toilets.

It is a question of incentives. What these punishments are supposed to do is to make sure that you as a rational human being, do not pee against a wall under threat of punishment.

But the point is, the chaps are drunk and in which case and by default, they are unable to take rational decisions. I mean, to get drunk itself is a bit of an irrational decision, no? (I know you will quibble with me, but remember the quote, "how come whenever anybody wants to drown his sorrows, he never uses water?").

So the question for us to ponder is, what do you do when citizens are inebriated or drugged up to such an extent that they are unable to distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad behavior, encouragement and punishment?

The standard answer is, throw them in jail, public shaming, castration, fines or wire up the genitals via the liquid stream to an electrified wall (god, the man who came up with that idea has an evil mind!) will simply not work. It might work with that man itself, after getting a genitalia shock, he might not relieve himself again, but that will not stop the next drunk young man from doing so.

Taken to the worst case scenario, alcohol abuse and inability to function is a national problem in many countries. Russia is suffering very badly from this phenomena although it has reduced a bit from the very bad days of the last decade. In the United Kingdom, the problem of youth drunkenness is hitting crisis situations. See here for some statistics in Europe for binge drinking.

So what are the policy responses? Here is a very good overview of what you can do to combat this problem. I quote the key bits:

Firstly, not all alcohol policy measures are equally effective. Secondly, policy measures that influence and change the physical, social and cultural environment around alcohol are more effective in preventing and reducing alcohol related harm, than measures targeted at the individual drinker. Thirdly, policies exclusively targeted at young people, while ignoring the wider adult population, are doomed to failure. Fourthly, while education programmes can influence beliefs and attitudes about alcohol....educational strategies show little or no effect in reducing alcohol consumption or related harm.

.....the ‘best value’ for an effective alcohol policy response should combine measures targeted at the general population (taxes, controlling access to alcohol, RBT, Lower BAC), at high-risk groups (minimum age, enforcement of on-premise alcohol laws, community mobilisation) and at high-risk drinkers (brief intervention).

So to go back to our problem with our young men and the stinky walls, jack up the price of alcohol (via taxation) to eye watering levels (pun intended), increase the permissible age of drinking, mobilize local community / neighbourhood people (get your local neighbourhood old lady armed with an umbrella to poke your pee'er in the back).

But will it completely stop drunken men relieving themselves? Doubtful. Not sure. Mind you, I can only be a tiny bit relieved that I am following in the footsteps of that ancient Egyptian dad who is moaning at his son (as translated from the Sallier papyrus) and I quote:

I am told that you neglect your studies, have a desire for enjoyments, and go from tavern to tavern. Whoever smells beer is repulsive to all; the smell of beer holds people at a distance, it hardens your soul..you think it proper to run down a wall and to break through the board gate; the people run away from you...Do not give the beer mugs a place in your heart; forget the beer-pots...Don't undertake to drink a whole pitcher of beer. If you then talk, so from your mouth comes nonsense...your drinking companions stand up and say only: away with the drunkards.

Funnily enough, that's exactly what my dad used to say to me. But what do you think? Can we ever stop drunken behavior? If we can, then I will raise a glass or two (or more) of Balvenie to you :)

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

Technorati Tags: Behavioural Economics,Sweden,Crime

Mark to Market - Vital for Democracy & Western Civilisation?

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 11:36:09 EDT

I am seeing articles about how marking positions to market is contributing to the recession and how it should be stopped or amended almost daily in the financial press. But this is dangerous thinking, because if you cannot mark to market, then how did you manage to value it in the first place and if you did, who was the idiot who bought it without having the ability to value it on a mark to market basis? Because that is what it means. The value of transparency and mark to market goes way beyond some badly priced instruments. Mark to market provides one of the foundations of Western civilization. How so?

The premise for current liberal democratic societies and Western civilization rests on the belief that your behaviour will be judged by your peers. Take the example of democracy where it is for the people, by the people and for the people. In other words, we get together on a particular day and then based on open and transparent ways and means, we elect one person or a group to represent us and rule for the next few years. Then again, we get together after that and again there is peer analysis and judgement, following which, we either keep them or get a new leader.

These leaders (Presidents, Prime Ministers, Members of Parliament, Members of Congress…) then get together and think up with laws, which are again judged by our elected representatives who form another peer group. If most of the peer group judges the law as good or great, then it indeed becomes law. And if in the future the peer group of parliamentarians and leaders think the law has to be changed, then they change it according to the same process. If somebody falls foul of the law, you simply cannot just lock him up. One has to bring him in front of some judicial body and tell him why he needs to be locked up and refer to the right law.

But not content with that, we go and apply the judgement of our peers on our court cases. We have a judge who is more of a referee rather than a judge for the laws. When somebody is accused of breaking one of the above mentioned laws, he is brought to a court where he is judged by a group of his peers based on the evidence that is placed in front of them. And if the jury (peer group) thinks the evidence is not enough, then the defendant is let go or his sentence is reduced. This is not a theocracy where laws and rulers are up there in the heavens and only the clerics can judge. It is a man made world and only man judges man.

Similarly, mark to market is nothing but judging your investments against the consolidated judgement of your peers. If you have purchased an equity share, then after two years, you judge if the value is good or bad. You try to mark to market it, or look around and ask for the value of that equity share. If the judgement of the market is that the value is bad, well, then it is. And when you are thinking about your pension funds or your own investments, it is a good idea to regularly check the value of your investments.

So why is this habit of transparently checking the investment value suddenly getting hit on? Well, previously, you would not check the current market value, but you would book your investments based on the value of the investment on the day it was purchased. As you can make out, it is silly. Imagine your father purchased a piece of land in London in 1950 for £2000 and then gifted it to you fifty years later. The current market price of the land is £200,000. If I asked you about the value of the land, would you say it is £2000 or £200,000?

So this is what the accountants of the world united for and forced companies to do (pun intended). They forced them to evaluate their assets and investments based on the current market price, or in other words, forced them to do mark to market. And while the markets were going up, they were fine, it was when they started tanking (like now), that they started whining that mark to market is bad. Well, no, you have to take the good with the bad. And judgement of peers is not bad.

But I am curious why there is not much more noise about this. If I tried to remove or reduce a democratic judgement by jury then the most almighty hell will break loose (think about the reactions against Guantanamo Bay, the time to detain without charge in the British Terrorism Acts, the changes to election law, the question about Europe in so many European countries, the Florida voting problems in the previous US presidential elections and so on and so forth). But look at the issue about mark to market, besides the financial press (newspapers and magazines), nobody gets excited about this issue.

If you remove mark to market, then huge swathes of the economy will be in trouble, simply because we work based on trust and openness. Think of the land value example given above. Extend this out to any sector of the economy and if we do not know the current value of our assets (whether public, private, corporate or individual ones), then we will find out that our economy is in trouble because pensions, taxation, benefits, the public sector, the local council or municipality, the import and export of goods, the value of our currency all are directly or indirectly tied to the value of our assets.

The government cannot tax anything without a way of checking if it is correct. Say they want to introduce taxes to improve or build more railways. Later, they decide to privatise the railways. So how on earth will they value it, if they do not have an idea of the current value of all those assets involved? Your money went to buy assets, which are now being sold back to you. Our pensions could be reduced with no way of checking if that is right or wrong. And so on and so forth.

The fact that marking to market on certain products is causing the markets to sink is no justification whatsoever that it is bad. It is indeed good to clarify these reasons and bring them out in the open, otherwise we are looking at inflated values based on nothing more than some fevered statistical modelling and some bonus driven desires.

You would hate it if trial by jury is removed. You would hate living in a dictatorship. You would go to war to impose democracy on a country and you would lend tons of money to a country to develop its legal system, but nary a peep when your own economic and financial system is being undermined by attempts to remove transparent valuation of assets?

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

Technorati Tags: Financial Institutions, Financial Markets, Legal System, Democracy

Using Refugees for Strategic Purposes

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 9 Mar 2008 11:55:00 EDT

I have already written about refugees before but this time I want to look at what do the Bangladeshi, Kashmiri, Tamil, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh Refugees in India, Kosovo Albanian Refugees, Palestinian Refugees in various Arab countries, Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran, Hutu refugees in Zaire, Cambodian refugees in Thailand, Cuban refugees in USA and all the other refugees all over the world have in common? Well, they have all been used by “other people” for their own needs and agendas. And these “other people” use these refugees as part of an explicit strategy, not for purely humanitarian objectives. I was quite surprised when I worked through the argument.

Using refugees for strategic purposes seems to have a very long history, especially in the post World War II period. And generally, if managed properly, it works. See the examples which we have? While the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war is considered by many as perhaps the best example of the “Just War” theory, the fact remains that India did use the Bangladeshi refugees as a reason to poke Pakistan in the eye. As a matter of fact, that entire episode of Partition with millions and millions of refugees is still being played out by strategic use of the refugees in Kashmir, Pakistan and India.

The Mohajirs in Pakistan are used as a strategic bloc by their own leaders, as well as so many other political and religious leaders in Pakistan. The ethnically cleansed Kashmiri Pundits are used in the greater strategic Hindutva discourse and are ignored strategically by the Indian government for the overall secular discourse. The Sri Lankan Tamil refugees were used strategically by the Indian central and State governments, as well as political parties to push their varied agendas just like the Singhalese and Sri Lankan Muslim refugees were themselves used by Singhalese politicians to push for a nationalist objective.

Pakistan, USA and Saudi Arabia used the Afghan refugees to push for their various nationalistic, ideological, autocratic and religious strategic objectives. It is quite well known how the refugees were armed and pushed into Afghanistan to fight against the Communist Godless Russians. So Pakistan wanted to do it to get its strategic depth and play to USA; and USA wanted to contain USSR, while Saudi Arabia didn’t want the godless communists anywhere near them. Thailand used the Cambodian refugees as a buffer to the poxy gits in Cambodia, while the Hutu refugees (who were in turn responsible for the Tutsi genocide) were armed by Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko to fight an insurgency in Eastern Zaire! And all these cases generally worked for the strategy.

The entire Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Kosovo mess was and is heaving with refugees. The refugees have been pulled and pushed from and to all sides, and have been used disgracefully and hypocritically by almost all parties starting from the head honcho himself, Slobodan Milosevic. That was one spectacular example of ethnic cleansing and strategic use of refugees that went bad. The other two most hypocritical uses of refugees are the use of the Cuban refugees and second is the use of the Palestinian refugees. The Cuban refugees have been fleeing the totalitarian and authoritarian communist regime for the past few decades to the USA. And for purely ideological reasons, the USA has been using them to hit back at Fidel Castro and his regime.

Not that it worked. Fidel is fine and has retired with his Havana cigars. He is a happy man, and all those American presidents and other grand poo bah’s who used the refugees have also gone. So I am not very sure now about what was the result of using those refugees and sending them to their deaths. Similarly, the Palestinian refugees. I have spoken about them and the actual whine to pain ratio is perhaps the highest with them compared to all refugees. But that is not the point. The point is that almost every other government has used them for their strategic needs. Your own citizens being restive about jobs or cost of bread? Use the refugees as a reason to rattle your sabre's at the Jews / Israel? Do not give them citizenship, treat them as bargaining counters, keep them in camps, use their people as propaganda, use their situation in the United Nations, etc. etc. And it is just not the government, but also the common people ranging from Journalist Associations in the UK to the USSR wanting to tweak the noses of the Americans to Saudi Arabian Islamic Charities to Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Economic refugees and migrants also get it in the neck, whether you are talking about the BNP talking about the Asian refugees or the Conservative Party talking about the Eastern European migrants. How about that Raj Thakarey fellow, who was recently fulminating about internal economic migration inside India?, Or the huge debates around the East German migrants into Western Germany and using them for political purposes?

But this essay is more about the political refugees who cross borders. Unfortunately, our international security and political institutions do not have anything functional to fight these nasty hypocritical folks who use the refugees for their own ends. At some point in time, it is but natural that the legal and political framework will extend to cover the use or rather the abuse of these poor displaced refugees. And it is at that time that decisions taken today will come back to haunt them. If you do not believe me, just see Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein, who tried to use population transfers as a weapon of war and politics… So whenever you hear anybody fulminating about refugees, do not take them at face value, there is almost always an ulterior motive.

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