On Being Ruled by Toads

When I was growing up in Nagpur, I had a friend who used to proclaim “India is ruled by toads” whenever we discussed India’s politicians. Being called a toad was the worst insult we could come up with. He later joined the Indian Police Service, worked in Mumbai as a Deputy Commissioner of Police, and was killed in the line of duty. He was one of the most decent human beings I have ever had the good fortune to know.

What brought all this to mind was an item about misbehaving politicians that reader “Ad” pointed out.

About a dozen Maharashtra ministers, 30 legislators and many top bureaucrats prevented a Nagpur-bound Jet Airways flight from taking off from Mumbai airport on Monday. Reason: the aircraft’s air-conditioner was not working.

Only one of the two airconditioning systems was functioning, it appears. It is a temporary inconvenience definitely not life-threatening. The crew is allowed to operate the flight because it meets the “Minimum Equipment List”. In any event, once the aircraft is in flight, one airconditioner is sufficient. This was explained to them but they “trooped into the cockpit” and one even tried to open an exit while the plane was in taxiing.

An aircraft delayed by a couple of hours and about a hundred passengers inconvenienced is not a really big deal. Or is it? Think about the fact that aircrafts are used throughout the day. The delay of the flight ripples through the system and all subsequent flights involving that aircraft are delayed. Thousands of people are directly affected. Many more multiples are indirectly affected. When a passenger arrives about 2 hours late, perhaps a meeting is missed, or a connection to another flight is missed. The initial disturbance has second and third order effects.

The politicians of India see themselves as the kings and they regard the citizens as their subjects and the country as their fiefdom. These people place themselves above the law. They are a law unto themselves. They are not answerable to anyone, except to their overlords who are the party chiefs. They go around in cars with red flashing lights on the top. When they travel on roads, seeing the red lights, police clear the streets. The citizens wait for these red-light-on-top cars to pass by. “The toads rush by”, as my friend would have said.

India is as I have maintained before a cargo-cult democracy. Centuries of being ruled by foreigners creates a culture of servility and powerlessness that is hard to overcome. In a strict sense, Indians deserve to be ruled by toads because they “elect” to be ruled by toads. Being ruled by toads has the ripple effect that finally culminates in an abjectly poor country that is euphemistically referred to as a “developing economy.”

Comment: Sonal Vaidya writes:

Reading your post “On Being Ruled by Toads” I wonder what do you think should happen to change the situation? Will India be always exploited by the corrupt power mongers? May be a revolution is a solution.

Raj Waghray writes:

What is worse is that these old senile toads(?) are now talking out of turn outside India and that too on issues as critical as our security.

Natwar’s N-speak Baffles New Delhi

India’s Picture-perfect Bureaucracy

These days the domestic airlines have evidently been instructed by powers up on high (so to speak) to warn the passengers that aerial photography of Indian territory is prohibited. Together with the usual instruction on how to fasten a seat belt (is it possible that someone who is able to navigate through the complex process of waking up in the morning and being able to tie his or her shoelaces cannot fathom the intricacies of how to fasten a seat belt?) and what to do in case of an emergency water landing (totally unsurvivable, if one were to be honest about it), they now are required to tell you that photography is prohibited.

Who, I always wonder, makes these rules? And why? Are these rules made so as to make criminals of ordinary people who may have a camera on hand and decide to take a picture of an interesting view from the air? Who can I ask the questions that arise from this sort of mindless stupidity? One may object to that characterization and say that it is for “national security” reasons. Waittaminit, mister. People who wish to bomb the nation to smithereens don’t have to board a commercial flight to get a good digital shot of the lay of the land. There are more sources on the web for that than you can click a mouse on. Take a look at this shot of the Taj Mahal. That is a one-meter resolution satellite image. (Click and hold over the “+” sign in the image to zoom — totally fascinating.) No one with the average camera can come anywhere close. So what is the whole point in preventing an occasional innocuous picture from the air?

There is something very peculiar about this anti-picture fetish that I notice in India. A few years ago I was outside a little run-down structure at Kushinagar near Gorakhpur in UP where the Buddha died about 2500 years. The place was deserted except for three novice monks who were chanting their evening prayers. I took a picture and immediately the lone security guy walks up and shows me the beaten-up sign which said that photography was prohibited. Why? And who makes these stupid rules and laws?

Democracy has been defined as government of, by, and for the people. By that definition at least, India is definitely not a democracy because what we have in India is government by faceless bureaucrats and corrupt politicians. Nameless unidentified unaccountable unreachable people in some vast bureaucratic machinery decide what the average citizen can and cannot do. The lack of accountability is pervasive. It stretches from the lowliest municipal commissioner to the secretary of the numerous central government ministries. Citizens are powerless and cannot question the decisions of these omni-potent idiots that guide the ship of state.

There is a partial remedy, of course. Each rule or law should have a name attached to it so that one knows who the responsible idiot is for the existence of yet one more silly idea. Perhaps it would shame these people into putting some thought into the matter before making another asinine rule. But perhaps I am too optimistic in this. These people must have hides thicker than rhinos’ skins and it would not make the slightest bit of difference.

Deva! Deva!

Ripping-off Foreign Tourists

During a recent visit to Hyderabad on work, I took some time off on a Sunday to visit the Golconda Fort which dates from the 13th century and is located on the western outskirts of the city. Like most tourist places that I have visited in India, the place is in ruins. It appears to be standard operating procedure that maintenance of these so-called ‘heritage sites’ is pathetic. But then one may argue that India is a poor country and cannot afford to keep these places clean. Perhaps so. But would it really kill the visitors to take their trash with them instead of littering the grounds with their plastic wrappers?
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Casting Spells to Fix the Broken Car

Folk wisdom captures very succinctly the idea that life is about tradeoffs in the saying that one cannot eat one’s cake and have it as well. If you eat the cake, it is gone and you no longer have it. Economists call it opportunity cost . The opportunity cost of eating the cake is not having it; conversely, the opportunity cost of having the cake is that of not eating it.

Remarkable results follow from exploring the idea of opportunity costs. The whole theory of comparative advantage — the fundamental reason why trade is a win-win game — pivots around the idea. One could do worse than to sit and consider opportunity costs whenever one contemplates doing something.
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Mud-wrestling with Pigs

“ICT for Development” seems to be all the rage these days. One cannot turn anywhere without being bombarded with the conventional wisdom that ICT will solve all developmental problems, so much so that people have begun to employ the idiotic shorthand “ICT4D” without so much as a beg-your-pardon.
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The Tathagata’s Sermon on Economics

Thus have I heard, that once when the The Blessed One, the Tathagata, was resting in Rajagriha during the season of rains, he carefully pondered the economic truths. Among those assembled were Shariputra, the son of a noble family, and Avalokiteshwara, the Bodhisattva Mahasattva, the Buddha of Infinite Compassion, and lots of monks too numerous to name here.

Shariputra asked The Blessed One, “What is the chief lesson that one can learn from a careful study of economics?”
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The Care and Feeding of the Permanent Arms Industry

Don’t let me stop your great self-destruction.
Die if you want to, you misguided martyr.
I wash my hands of your demolition.
Die if you want to, you innocent puppet!
————– Pilate to Jesus at the trial in Jesus Christ Superstar.

Fact: A permanent arms industry requires perpetual wars for its sustenance.

Fact: The most advanced industrialized economies have the most high-tech industries.

Fact: The arms industry is one of the most intensively high-tech industries.

Final fact: The US has the most sophisticated high-tech armaments industry.
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The Trick is not to Mind the Pain

I came across this quote in Myke’s weblog.
T.E Lawrence wrote in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom:

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

I recall a scene from the movie “Lawrence of Arabia” where Lawrence puts out a burning matchstick with his bare fingers. Someone tries to immitate him and burns his fingers and asks Lawrence what is the trick. Lawrence replies, “The trick is not to mind the pain.”

The Price of a Revolution


The recently concluded elections in the US gives credence to
what H. L. Menken (1880-1956) predicted when he wrote:


“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents,
more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and
glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s
desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright
moron.”


There is much truth in the saying that a country deserves the
government it gets. It is a chilling realization that India is
not exempt from that general rule and we somehow deserve the
inept government we have had since the country became independent
in 1947. The collorary to the generalization must be that a
change in the quality of government can only come about as a
consequence to an improvement in the quality of the soul of
the people of India.


Fundamental change — whether in an individual or in a people —
is extremely hard. It is sometimes triggered by some external
event, mostly of a negative nature. Only when an individual is
confronted with the dire consequences of his past mistakes does
sufficient momentum for change accumulates and he makes a break
with his past. Wars and other catastrophes, natural or otherwise,
transform societies, and are called revolutions.


If you want to have a revolution, be prepared to pay the price
of a catastrophe.