Right to recall

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Right to recall your elected representative – wow – that' is what Anna Hazare wants next. It basically means that someone elected as my representative can be recalled from Parliament. With Anna Hazare now having a nation wide recognition, civil rights representatives will use him symbolically to set up corrective measures in our democracy making politicians and bureaucrats accountable.

First there was the Right to Information Act, passed in 2005 by the UPA and part of the Congress’s election manifesto which it delivered. It took active participation from people like Aruna Roy and Arvind Kejriwal for this to become reality. Anna Hazare played a role here too, by forcing the Maharashtra government to pass a strong Maharashtra Right to Information Act in 2003. This became the basis on which the law was enacted at the national level.

Then the entire “India Against Corruption” movement and the Jan Lok Pal Bill. Once this bill is passed it will act as a deterrent and add accountability to government officials and the members of parliament. I hope the parliamentary members don’t drag their feet for too long on this otherwise the civil movement will continue to protest.

Next on the agenda is the Right to Recall. Does this mean we can recall our representatives whenever we feel like? NO. It requires certain circumstances before this can happen. For example, there are allegations of corruption against your representative and the constituents feel that until a probe determines reality, it is inappropriate for the MP to continue in office.

Doesn’t that give opportunities for political opponents to stir up trouble for the duly elected parliamentarian? Not really. Political opponents will always try to lobby against elected officials. The way this should be implemented is that an MP/MLA can be stripped of his office by the people through a referendum. If enough number of people want to recall him, then he is recalled otherwise the referendum has failed.

The referendum itself cannot be held until a certain number (or percentage) of the MP/MLA’s constituents sign a petition asking for a referendum. If the election requires popular support, then so too must the recall.

The Bill to recall such representatives will have the determine/define the circumstances of recall and the size of a successful petition to hold the referendum either in actual numbers or percentage. There will be other challenges in implementation of such a law in a country of our size. Determining eligible voters for the referendum for instance or checking the validity of signatures on the petition. You can trust the political machinery in India to exploit such a law and all such loopholes must be plugged and such actions preempted. A certain amount of electoral reform is required for this act to become reality and for it to be enforced effectively.

That brings us to the next item of Anna Hazare’s wish list. Electoral reforms. I think electoral reforms is a big enough topic for a separate blog post.

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Social implications of Social Media

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Social Media is a medium for social interaction. User driven content. Wide accessibility. Interactive dialogue. All you need is an internet connection. A variety of devices are used from an ordinary PC/Mac, iPhone/Android/Blackberry type smartphone, to tablets. A variety of applications are used like internet forums, blogs (like Bloggers, Word Press), podcasting, micro-blogging (as in the Twitter variety) and social networking sites (like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Google Plus).

The power of social media is undeniable; impacting society in positive as well as negative ways. Social media is hard to contain or control. By virtue of this, it is virtually impossible to contain and restrict flow of information. This can be both a good and a bad thing. Importantly breaking news around the world is reported more often than not via social media even before exclusives are scooped by News corporations.

The 2009 Iran Presidential elections was an interesting case resulting in what many call Iran’s Twitter revolution. It was said that the Iran government restricted dissident information from spreading by blocking sites and text messages from within the country. While officials were busy closing down access, hackers were publishing proxy portal details for the internet savvy citizens of Iran. Some complained about the lack of coverage western news media outlets devoted to the election results. Others were disgusted that these western outlets did not question the legitimacy of the election results. All of them chose to vent their feelings micro-blogging on Twitter. One thing was clear, short of suspending internet for an entire country, information could not be withheld or blocked. This was widely commented on as good by the global community.

In the recent London rioting (6th – 10th August 2011) it generated mixed feelings. The same social media was used by a bunch of miscreants to telling effects. Newspapers reported how rioters used Blackberry messenger and incited each other to loot High Street stores. Twitter was used to lash out at everyone, the government, the police, the rich people who had it all etc. At the same time, journalists and photographers were attacked by the rioters while real time updates were being made by ordinary citizens informing a shell shocked nation of the atrocities in their vicinity. The police reportedly used some of this to track down the rioters.

Social media has been used elsewhere across the world to organize protests, to even organize civil disobedience. In June 2011, dozens of women drove cars in Saudi Arabia, a country were women can’t drive by law. An appeal was made on Facebook for women in possession of valid driving licenses from other countries to drive on the 17th of June.

In Egypt, a Facebook page was created titled “We are all Khaled Said” referring to an Egyptian business beaten to death by police after threatening to expose corruption. The page called for a day of wrath on 25th January 2011 and thousands filled the streets protesting. It was the prelude to 4 months of protests that brought down Hosni Mubarak. In days to come, the government’s response was unprecedented, to try and shutdown the country’s internet. The shutdown involved withdrawal of more than 3500 Border Gateway Protocol routes by Egyptian ISPs. It exceed the actions taken by Iran, China, Syria and Tunisia who have blocked/restricted access to social networks during times of protest. In United Kingdom, there have been discussions about suspending access to social networks during situations similar to their London riots.

These networking tools were used in India too during the Jan Lok Pal bill crusade by Anna Hazare protesting against rampant corruption among India’s bureaucracy as well as its political representation. Twitter accounts lambasted the government for infringing on the rights of an individual when the police preemptively arrested Anna. Facebook pages and websites were setup in support of the anti corruption crusade.

Events on the last 2 years will force the governments from around the world to formulate policies that will thwart social media in extreme situations requiring containment rather than spread of information. They will come up with the excuses of mobocracy and civil unrest to block such access. The less democratic the governments are the less they will be answerable for such actions.

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A life with no internet and cable TV

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I knew of a world without Facebook, YouTube, Google and Twitter. I even knew of a world without Internet and Cable Television. Life was so different back then. I was still in high school. Projects required a visit to the library if you wanted to do extended research. I didn’t have Wikipedia to give me all the answers. I read a lot of books in those days. I used to wake up early in the morning to catch a few minutes of newspaper before I had to surrender those rights to my father. I would then devour all the sections starting from the sports section moving to entertainment and so on. I quickly learnt to appreciate the quality of both language and content in the editorial sections. 

I actually went to playgrounds and played games other than those found on my Atari. The only friend I had never met in my life was a girl from Italy who was my pen friend. We communicated 2 or 3 times a year by physically writing letters to each other and getting to learn more about our respective cultures. I would then cut out stamps from those letters and add them to my stamp book collection. I did not know any other stamp or coin collector in my neighborhood.

We watched old English and Hindi movies on VHS tapes and never thought to question its quality. If the quality was bad we would either use a VCR cleaner or simply use the tuner on the VCR and continue watching.

We had only one phone in the house and it was called landline. If you wanted another phone or did not have one in your house, you had to send an application to the telephone department and wait patiently for a few months for your allotment. There were no cell phones then. No SMS and MMS. No smartphones and awesome apps.

Satellite television had not yet invaded our homes. In India, we have one channel called Doordarshan or “DD 1” that was available to everyone. If you lived in one of the major cities of the country, you also had “DD Metro”. They broadcasted songs for 30 minutes once every Wednesday. No 24 hour music channels. We all watched the same shows and had common ground to discuss.

It seems like an era has gone by but it has been less than 20 years. Life has completely transformed. For the good and for the bad.

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The Chinese Conundrum

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China manufactures and exports
America buys and pays dollars
China loans dollars to America
America buys more Chinese exports and pays dollars
China moans about American spending.

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Winds of changes in Arabia

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Something is brewing in the Middle East and nearby Islamic countries. Country after country are under going transformation and the change is coming from the least expected quarter, the people i.e. civil resistance. Democracy in the Arab/Middle-East world is not a fully functional word. In some countries its royalty that rules the roost, in others black as night dictatorship is backed by an unaccountable military.

Some of these dictators have ruled for decades and decades. Muammar Gaddafi as the Libyan head has ruled for 42 years although it looks increasingly unlikely he will manage to stay in power for his 43rd year. Tunisia gained independence from France in 1956 and it has had only two presidents. The first one, Habib Bourguiba ruled for 30 years followed by Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who was President for 23 years until the January 2011 uprising forced him out. President Hosni Mubarak also ruled Egypt for 30 years before being forced out.

In the case of  Tunisia and Egypt, it was non-violent civil uprising to led to the ouster for their respectively leaders. The resistance was bloody for the protesting people. Many lost their lives. An estimated 800+ people died at the hands of security forces in Egypt in the first half of 2011. In many ways Tunisia laid down the marker for the rest of the Arab world and will be viewed by history as the catalyst for change. The January 2011 success of Tunisia was followed by non-violent civil resistance and disobedience in countries like Egypt and Syria.

The prosecution of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has largely been an American show. They send their armies and toppled the Iraqi regime. Then they caught Saddam and handed him over to the locals. Saddam's hearing was short, swift and brutal (and well deserved) but none of it would have been possible without the Americans. Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali however became the first ruler in memory to face justice arranged and dispensed entirely by the people whom he ruled for more than two decades. He escaped to Saudia Arabia and was sentenced to 35 years 'in absentia'. Public perception has always been that such powerful men remain out of the reach of law. That the law does not apply to them in the same way it does to the common people. With Hosni Mubarak now in custody and charges laid down against him, this is expected to change. Mubarak's trial will be the next landmark for people from the Arab world. It has garnered the maximum eyeballs from across all the Arab worlds. The rest of them Dictators better watch out. The winds of changes are blowing across the Arab world. Syria and Libya are next in line for revolutions.

* Longest serving rulers in the modern world have not come from Arab countries. Cuba comes first, with 49 years of rule by Fidel Castro. North Korean President Kim-II sung has been in power for 45 years. I am discounting royalty.
* If Tunisia is be regarded as the catalyst for change in the Arab world then Mohamed Bouazizi  has a curious role to play. He was an ordinary poor street vendor supporting a family of 8 members. In December 2010 he self-immolated protesting against the humiliation and injustice meted out against him by the local police and bureaucracy. His protest and government apathy and high handedness to public outrage ultimately led to Abidine Ben Ali ouster by January 2011. Sadly he did not survive to see the day.

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Constitutional rights of Anna Hazare and Government strategies.

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Everyone and his dog knew that come 16th of August 2011, the anti-corruption movement would gather fresh momentum. The Anna Hazare movement and the Government of India were headed for a showdown. At 7:30 AM on the 16th, he was arrested because he would have broken prohibitory orders of the local police and staged a fast unto death.

The media coverage was a full blast as expected. Political analysts were bemoaning the infringement of rights citizens of this country have as per the constitution. Opposition parties in an extremely rare show of unity screamed foul and even contemplated boycotting the Parliament for 3 days. Elsewhere across the country people came out in support even if they didn't "Jail Bharo" as Anna wanted. The Government's position as articulated by its numerous representatives on New channels was that it had nothing to do with the whole situation.

The government expects its people to believe that
1. The Delhi police independently and without any political backseat driving set stringent rules that Anna Hazare could not/would not except.
2. That Delhi police on its own visited Anna Hazare and arrested him as - preemptive measure - because he was going to go to JP Park.
3. That the Delhi police and the judiciary sent him to a 7 day remand on his declining to provide a bond for his release.
4. That the magistrate then had a change of heart and as is his prerogative, decided to send release orders to Tihar jail.

We can talk hoarse about how the government has no right to stop its citizen from protesting and discuss constitutional rights. We can also talk about how a citizen has no right to dictate what a duly and legally elected parliament should or should not enact. I think there is fair amount of arguments for both. If the Government thinks that it is being blackmailed then there is enough evidence to support such a thought process. Equally one can question the effectiveness of what civil right activitist are adamant is a watered down version of a Lok Pal Bill that will not be effective (or as effective) in tackling corruption.

What surprises me is that the Congress and the UPA have known about Anna Hazare's intentions on 16th August for many months now. While they tried to engage with him, some of its members called into question his integrity (for allegedly spending 2 lakhs for a birthday celebration), called him a stooge of the opposition, talked about conspiracy theories. At the same time another section talked about elected parliament (i.e. people's mandate) versus civil rights activists who are not the people's representatives. Its reactions and back tracking on the 16th show a lack of proper plan to handle an emotive and explosive situation. Media seems to suggest that Mr. Sibal and the Home Minister had planned the strategy. Now both of them are well known and eminent lawyers, articulate and well educated. If it is them that came up with this solution that I am very disappointed with the thinking of the UPA.

Perhaps with the Delhi police setting up conditions (only 3 days and less than 5000 people) for the fast and Anna Hazare refusing to accept them, gives the Delhi police a leg to stand on in a court of law. The police and therefore the Government can say it is following procedure in accordance to law. So what if a bunch of people invoke the memories of Emergency. At the same time the government is in a position to quell/disburse the movement without too much political damage. I do not know if that is what the political strategists of the government thought and I cannot but feel that they miscalculated on two fronts.
A. They underestimated the mood of the common people. By calling corruption an issue that bother's urban/educated populace is a very dangerous presumption. 
B. Even if they are right in their actions (which multiple lawyers claim they are not), politics is as much about perception as it is about right or wrong. Their actions have only made Anna Hazare's movement stronger.

Anna Hazare in all likelihood will walk out of Tihar Jail on his own terms, i.e. fast as long as he wants to with no restrictions on number of people. If the Government does not bow down to his terms that he will continue to fast from Tihar Jail. Either which way his goals are met.

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The blotch on Dr. Manmohan Singh's legacy

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I have long held the opinion that Dr. Manmohan Singh will be viewed by history as the most influential man in post Independent India. To me the three prime ministers from the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty do not even come close to matching the achievements, the impact and the influence Dr. Singh has had in shaping modern India. For me two of his biggest achievements are the liberalization of the Indian economy and the Nuclear deal. Like the liberalization, the effects of the nuclear deals will be known in the coming decades as India begins to fully meet the energy needs of its population and economy.

There is so much to Dr. Manmohan Singh's achievements that cannot be listed here without rehashing his  Wikipedia entry. In a country where politics is dominated by all sorts of undesirable elements, here is a guy who is the most educated prime minister in our short history. He is more educated than all the other contemporary world leaders around. He is not a career politician, he has decades of real administrative experience spending much of his life in the Indian bureaucracy. Among the many posts he has held, he has been the Finance Secretary, Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission and Governor of RBI before becoming the country's Finance Minister and eventually Prime Minister. Above everything else he is known and perceived to be a man of impeccable integrity.

These and for many other reasons it is painful to see my favorite Prime Minister preside over a government embroiled in many controversies and allegations of scams, with ex-ministers spending time in jail. This is after all a second term for Dr. Singh, the Congress and other UPA constituents. It was the Left parties that held back the first government from disinvestments, from pursing better relations with the U.S and objecting to the nuclear deals. The people gave a resounding answer to the Left objections by wiping them out; by taking them out of the equation for UPA's second term. Finally I thought, Manmohan Singhji would be allowed to move ahead with much need reforms without political pressure.

Since then UPA-II has been busy firefighting all the time. instead of steaming ahead They had to face the CWG scam and the 2G scam costing the country astronomical sums of money if you go by the CAG reports. Add to this is their perceived reluctance to implement a strong Lok Pal bill that can potentially be a strong deterrent against scams of such scale.

 I once read/listened to explanations from the Congress party and Dr. Singh about coalition compulsions. What I understood from all the beating around the bush was that the government will be a minority without its allies and therefore when an ally is found to be engaging in hanky-panky stuff, then coalition politics mandates you look the other way. It made sense to me actually. General Elections cost lakhs of crores of rupees and months of election drama with no guarantee of throwing up a stable government. So we have to deal with what we get in a multi-party election system and a population of a billion and more. For the sake of argument let us agree that the UPA had little choice in the matter when it came to Raja and co.

What I do not understand is what coalition compulsions forced the government to continue with Suresh Kalmadi as chairman of CWG Organising Committee (OC)? The stink associated with CWG rose much before the CWG got underway. It was missing deadlines, it had substandard construction in some places and material had been purchased at exorbitant rates. The government though continued with him. What was the compulsion? The only plausible answer is that by the time the government came to know what was happening, it had little choice but to bail Mr. Kalmadi and see that the CWG went through. The pride and the honour of the country was at stake.

Above all where the UPA-II government failed the people of this country is by sticking to the perception that they are not serious about tackling corruption. They have failed to convince me and millions others that they can stem the rot. That they do not have the political will to weed out the Kalmadi's from the system nor the will to stop their allies from doing what they want. My greatest regret is that presiding over this entire mess is my favorite but unfortunately very silent Prime Minister masterfully practicing the art of coalition politics. 

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Whistleblowers in trouble

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It was the unfortunate fate of Satyendra Dubey that first highlighted the need for India to come up with a Whistleblower Act. We still don't have one and that means that people willing to come forward and tell the truth will be as a consequence tormented, persecuted and in the case of Dubey even killed.

Wikipedia defines whistle-blowing as


A whistleblower (whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a person who tells the public or someone in authority about alleged dishonest or illegal activities (misconduct) occurring in a government department, a public or private organization, or a company. The alleged misconduct may be classified in many ways; for example, a violation of a law, rule, regulation and/or a direct threat to public interest, such as fraud, health/safety violations, and corruption. Whistleblowers may make their allegations internally (for example, to other people within the accused organization) or externally (to regulators, law enforcement agencies, to the media or to groups concerned with the issues).

Here are some simple facts
Fact One - It was the Gujarat government that appointed a commission to look into Godhra and the riots that followed. This is undisputed.
Fact Two - DIG Rahul Sharma was ordered to probe the Naroda Patia massacre case. It was his call records evidence that linked certain politicians and right wing leaders to the incident.
Face Three - According to newspaper reports, he is set to be chargesheeted for violation of the Official Secrets Act(OSA). Why? Because he passed on CDS of the call records to the panel without explicit permission of the state government.

Why would the state government want to prevent information landing in the hands of a panel that was constituted by them in the first place? The state government now says that the call records are allegedly inaccurate and even doctored casting aspirations on the integrity of the police officer. This is the same man who as District superintendent of Bhavnagar prevent any major mishap while the rest of the state was burning. Is this is the price an honest man has to pay?

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Yobs and hoodies of London

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London will always be my second home, the place I am nostalgic about, the city where I lived for 6 years. I first went to London in my early twenties, the first time I was away from home and family for any significant period of time. I returned a year later and took up a permanent job in the city. I fell in love with the place. I walked as much as I could around central London, recognizing landmarks that found mentions in the books of my childhood. I laughed loud when I walked on London Bridge; the London bridge of my childhood nursery rhyme was a plain old bridge. Close by is The Monument, a tall stone column of 200 ft. erected in the memory of the fire that consumed much of London in the 1600s.

4 years after leaving London and those wonderful memories; I was stunned to see burning pictures of it on my TV. It does not surprise me in the least to see pictures of young men and women, in their hooded attires, sweatshirts and track pants. I have seen enough of them during my time in London. I have seen their aggressive nature, their crude banter, their loud music, their drinking ways, their drug dealings at street corners, their fights; fists and knifes. I have even walked past a crime scene cordoned off by the police, soiled in blood that involved gang shootouts.

Call it bias if you will but I always crossed the road if I saw a bunch of hooded young kids. It always felt better to be safe than sorry. You never know what thrills them the most. Happy slapping after all was an English fad. I have been offered items on sale either fenced or cheap imitations as well as smuggled European cigarettes by them. In India people are more likely to ask you for a match if they see you smoking. My experience with these guys is that they ask for the cigarettes. I have always politely declined and on some of those occasions received choice expletives in return. I have seen them taunt policemen from a distance, hollering PIGS and making a dash for it.

Peckham was one of the first places I visited in London and quite possibly one of the worst. I had been in the country for a week and knew not a single soul. Someone suggested the Loot to find cheap accommodation and one of my inquiries led me there. The streets were littered and the walls were full of graffiti. Perhaps I was there at the wrong time, but I did not see a single person that I could judge respectable based on clothing or outward behavior. That remains to this day my only visit to Peckham.
I visited Bethnal Green a number of times, once to visit the famous Petticoat lane Sunday market, on other occasions on my way to Brick Lane to visit the local Bangadeshi mosque on Fridays. I have been to White Hart Lane visiting friends and thinking how enthralled I should be if I was a visiting football fan.

I have visited homes of people living in council estates and heard first hand accounts of how much young unruly gangs disturb peace in the neighborhood. I understood finally why majority of the people at my workplace lived outside London and preferred to commute.

I do not know what makes them so angry. I do not know why they don't like to work and make a better life for themselves. I do know that nothing justifies burning down buildings, looting, intimidating the general public and causing injury to others. Lastly, why is it not surprising that most popular looting is for alcohol, gadgets and shoes. 

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Collateral Damage – US economy and the AAA rating

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The markets have reacted predictability. They have swung downward ever since the “Tea Party” Republicans and the Democrats played brinksmanship politics with their collective national debt. The S & P downgrading signaled more acute response from everyone. People seem to be running to the safety of gold and silver. Markets as they are usually prone to do; reacted nervously. None of the reaction was unexpected.

However the collateral damage of the American economy I am referring to is China. For so many years they have controlled their own currency so that they remain competitive in their exports. Economies and governments around the world complained but China paid no head. While the rest of the currency rates were determined by market factors, China’s governing bodies controlled theirs. One of the steps China took to keep the value of Yuan appreciating was to buy billions upon billions of dollars. Who better to buy from then a debtor with long standing credit worthiness?

As China’s economy continued to grow year after year, they kept buying Treasury Bills to a point where near about 50% of their reserves are now in the form of US Treasury Bills. They are the biggest creditors for the government of United States by a long distance. Second place Japan stands at $900 billion while China themselves are owed $1.7 trillion. This places them in such an uncomfortable position. It means that if the dollar erodes then it affects them proportionately. It means that being such a large creditor there is no one else who can take up the Treasury Bills from them. They can’t dump some of it on the market without causing more panic, spiraling the dollar downwards and eroding hundreds of billions of China’s reserves. They can’t dump it all without catastrophic results for themselves and the U.S. For better or for worse their fate is intricately tied with the fate of the U.S; at least in the short term. So much so that in order to protect the dollar from misadventures, they will in all probability continue to buy more debt from the Americans. This in turn will continue to allow the American lifestyle of borrowings and low interest rates in an attempt to inject life in a slumbering economy.

This leads to a delicious irony. China and the United States are two of the most powerful countries in the world. U.S has long been the sole super power ever since the demise of USSR. In normal circumstances, you would expect China to be quietly satisfied with the American problems. Now however the world’s largest capitalist and the world’s largest communist are bedfellows.

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