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.

Corruption and Economic Development: A Reference


Yesterday I claimed that
India is the world’s largest kleptocracy somewhat along
the lines of the claim usually made about India being the
world’s largest democracy (if you use a really flexible
definition of democracy, of course.) One reader, Sudhar, wanted
to know exactly how is it that corruption retards economic
growth. It is a very important question. I could spend a whole
day writing about that but being bone lazy, I am taking the
easy way out of giving you a reference. Why re-invent the wheel,
eh?


So the article you may wish to read is
from the Whirled World Bank
by Paulo Mauro:
Corruption: Causes, Consequences, and Agenda for Further Research.
To quote just a couple of paragraphs:

From economic theory, one would expect corruption to reduce economic growth by lowering incentives to invest (for both domestic and foreign entrepreneurs). In cases where entrepreneurs are asked for bribes before enterprises can be started, or corrupt officials later request shares in the proceeds of their investments, corruption acts as a tax, though one of a particularly pernicious nature, given the need for secrecy and the uncertainty as to whether bribe takers will live up to their part of the bargain. Corruption could also be expected to reduce growth by lowering the quality of public infrastructure and services, decreasing tax revenue, causing talented people to engage in rent-seeking rather than productive activities, and distorting the composition of government expenditure (discussed below). At the same time, there are some theoretical counterarguments. For example, it has been suggested that government employees who are allowed to exact bribes might work harder and that corruption might help entrepreneurs get around bureaucratic impediments.


One specific channel through which corruption may harm economic performance is by distorting the composition of government expenditure. Corrupt politicians may be expected to spend more public resources on those items on which it is easier to exact large bribes and keep them secret–for example, items produced in markets where the degree of competition is low and items whose value is difficult to monitor. Corrupt politicians might therefore be more inclined to spend on fighter aircraft and large-scale investment projects than on textbooks and teachers’ salaries, even though the latter may promote economic growth to a greater extent than the former.


It is a very accessible article and one does not have to be a
genuine economist to gain considerable insight from it.