“Free the police”

This is what Swami said on Sunday-

[W]e must extricate the police from the control of politicians, and have a truly independent Police Commission, which will stand up to politicians as firmly as the Election Commission. Law and order is a state subject, so we will need police commissioners in every state, under a national police commissioner.

[...]

NC Saxena, who headed the 1962 National Police Commission , once wrote that the police had ceased to regard crime detection and criminal conviction as their key goals. This was because the agenda of home ministers in every state was very different. The top priority of home ministers was to use the police to harass political opponents. The second priority was to use the police and prosecutors to tone down or dismiss cases against their own parties and coalition members. The third priority was to provide VIP security. The very last priority was crime detection —that yielded no political dividends and so was paid the least attention.

Here again, only institutional change will produce better results. Japan has an independent police commissioner. Why not India too? Law and order is necessarily political and has to remain with home ministers. But crime detection should not be political….

A comment on the piece that I am in complete agreement with-

I do not agree with you at all, Mr. Aiyer. Its more like a schoolboy essay. Every thing looks so rosy on paper but on the ground its different. I do not trust police to be good. Not only they will have the batons but will require no permission to use them. And there will always be witch hunts. If we have magistrates who can sign arrest warrants for the president what about the ordinary man.

All coercive capabilities of the state must always be under civilian political control. The politician can be kicked out. What about the “independent” police commissioner and his subordinates? In an attempt to put corrupt politicians behind bars, we might end up causing innocent people even more trouble. It’s a cliché, but, who will watch the watchmen?

A noble crook

Its not about Krugman, not this time (though the title fits like a glove, pun and all).

Swami had another nice article this Sunday, about the “shareef badmash”-

The year 2009 marks the 200th birth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln, and also the end of Manmohan Singh’s term as prime minister. Both ended office with awesome reputations as honest men in highly corrupt eras. Lincoln was nicknamed Honest Abe. Singh has been called sharif Manmohan.

Yet, critics have accused both Lincoln and Singh of being hypocrites who advertised their personal honesty but agreed to dirty deals to promote their political aims. Singh’s elevation to the top post in 2004 was hailed as a historic breakthrough for integrity. Yet, within days he formed a council of ministers that included seven politicians facing criminal charges. The most notorious was Mohammed Taslimuddin, a Bihari ganglord accused of crimes ranging from murder to rape, a close pal of RJD chief Lalu Yadav.

Earlier, when joining Deve Gowda’s government in 1996, Lalu managed to get Taslimuddin made a minister. But following a public outcry, Deve Gowda dropped Taslimuddin. Deve Gowda was capable of feeling embarrassed at such a scandalous appointment. Not so Dr Singh.

It makes very interesting reading particularly when it comes to Lincoln’s tactics. The history that I learnt as a kid spoke of Lincoln in glowing terms – Lincoln the emancipator. And that was it. The only problem is, that’s just one piece of the whole story – a tiny piece. The civil war forever changed the nature of government in the United States – Lincoln’s victory made the federal government all powerful and the few freedom conscious Americans that still exist today are still suffering the consequences. LewRockwell.com has more on the whole saga, particularly this article-

Every February 12 Americans think they are celebrating Lincoln’s birthday. But what they are really celebrating is the birth of the Leviathan state that Lincoln, more than anyone else, is responsible for bringing about. No wonder federal politicos have made his birth date a national holiday, engraved his face is on Mount Rushmore, built a Venus-like statue of him in Washington, D.C., and put his mugshot on the five dollar bill.

More than 130 years of government propaganda has hidden this fact from the American people by creating a Mythical Lincoln that never existed. Take, for instance, the fact that everyone supposedly knows – that Lincoln was an abolitionist. This would be a surprise to the preeminent Lincoln scholar, Pulitzer prize-winning Lincoln biographer David Donald, who in his 1961 book, Lincoln Reconsidered, wrote that “Lincoln was not an abolitionist.” And he wasn’t. He was glad to accept on behalf of the Republican Party any votes from abolitionists, but real abolitionists despised him. William Lloyd Garrison, the most prominent of all abolitionists, concluded that Lincoln “had not a drop of anti-slavery blood in his veins.”

Garrison knew Lincoln well. He knew that Lincoln stated over and over again for his entire adult life that he did not believe in social or political equality of the races, he opposed inter-racial marriage, supported the Illinois constitution’s prohibition of immigration of blacks into the state, once defended in court a slaveowner seeking to retrieve his runaway slaves but never defended a runaway, and that he was a lifelong advocate of colonization – of sending every last black person in the U.S. to Africa, Haiti, or central America – anywhere but in the U.S.

[...]

[L]incoln destroyed the most important principle of the Declaration – the principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Southerners no longer consented to being governed by Washington, D.C. in 1860, and Lincoln put an end to that idea by having his armies slaughter 300,000 of them, including one out of every four white males between 20 and 40. Standardizing for today’s population, that would be the equivalent of around 3 million American deaths, or roughly 60 times the number of Americans who died in Vietnam.

As H.L. Mencken said of the Gettysburg Address, in which Lincoln absurdly claimed that Northern soldiers were fighting for the cause of self determination (“that government of the people . . . should not perish . . .”): “It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. The Confederates went into the battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision of the rest of the country.”

Another Lincoln myth was that he “saved the Constitution.” But this claim is an outrage considering that Lincoln acted like a dictator for the duration of his administration and showed nothing but bitter contempt for the Constitution. Even Lincoln’s idolaters, like historian Clinton Rossiter, author of the book, Constitutional Dictatorship, referred to him as a “great dictator” who had an “amazing disregard for the Constitution . . . that was considered by nobody as legal.”

The Dictator Lincoln invaded the South without the consent of Congress, as called for in the Constitution; declared martial law; blockaded Southern ports without a declaration of war, as required by the Constitution; illegally suspended the writ of habeas corpus; imprisoned without trial thousands of Northern anti-war protesters, including hundreds of newspaper editors and owners; censored all newspaper and telegraph communication; nationalized the railroads; created three new states without the consent of the citizens of those states in order to artificially inflate the Republican Party’s electoral vote; ordered Federal troops to interfere with Northern elections to assure Republican Party victories; deported Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham for opposing his domestic policies (especially protectionist tariffs and income taxation) on the floor of the House of Representatives; confiscated private property, including firearms, in violation of the Second Amendment; and effectively gutted the Tenth and Ninth Amendments as well.

Read it and a better picture of Lincoln begins to emerge. But then as Swami says, “Few people remember or pay much attention to those sleazy manoeuvres today. History remembers Lincoln as the man who won the Civil War and abolished slavery.” And the same will be the case with Singh.

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John Elliott digs out a very important line from Manmohan Singh’s interview to the Financial Times. I quote the paragraph in question-

FT: What is the future of capitalism, especially in India?

MS: Capitalism with a human face. We are a mixed economy. We will remain a mixed economy. The public and private sector will continue to play a very important role. The private sector in our country has very ample scope and I am confident that India’s entrepreneurs have the capacity, and the will to rise to the occasion.

Elliott writes-

This underlines the fact that the prime minister has never been the arch liberaliser that the international media likes to make him. He was not the architect of the 1991 economic reforms – the basic plans were drawn up between the end of Rajiv Gandhi’s 1984-1989 Congress government and 1991. But he did become an enthusiastic – and caring – implementer.

Narasimha Rao, prime minister of the Congress government elected in 1991 in the midst of a dire financial crisis, picked him as finance minister because, it is said, he reckoned that if the reforms succeeded, he (Rao) would get the credit, but if they failed he could blame ex-bureaucrat-Singh. As it turned out, Mr Rao’s calculation was wrong because the reforms were a success and Mr Singh got the credit – despite the government’s loss of nerve in 1994-95 after unfavourable regional election results.

Read it here, and Singh’s interview here.

Tax ‘em all!

And stop blaming the “bania.” So says Swami. A good article after a long time-

Through history, said my former editor Girilal Jain, whenever things go wrong, Indian rulers blamed the bania. The US is no different. After the global meltdown, US politicians are baying for the blood of financiers. They have just legislated a 90% tax on bonuses of staff at AIG, the insurance giant rescued by the US government. Legislators were angry that financiers responsible for AIG’s collapse could be rewarded with bonuses, and sought to expropriate these.

Many Indians will cheer. Yet, banias alone are rarely responsible for disasters: many others are usually responsible too. The financial crisis occurred in the most regulated sector of the US and world economy. So it was a failure not just of bankers but of the state, regulators, investors, and all other participants. If you can tax AIG staff, why not all the others?

For starters, what about a retrospective 90% tax on the two Fed chiefs, Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke? They knew bubbles were forming in housing and stock markets, but instead of halting this they claimed it was best to let the bubbles burst and then sweep up the mess.

Next, tax all US legislators who for decades sought to make all Americans home owners through excessive implicit and explicit subsidies. One law forced banks to lend to sub-prime poor borrowers. Legislators created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored entities that bought or underwrote four-fifths of all US mortgages, and enjoyed exemption from normal regulations. Politicians repeatedly rejected stiffer regulation despite Greenspan’s warning that these under-regulated giants posed huge risks…

I was wondering about all the craziness that I have witnessed over the past year – in politics, in economics, in everything. And for some strange reason, all I could think of was the Humpty Dumpty rhyme. And then I found this senseless verbiage-

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t – till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again.
“They’ve a temper, some of them – particularly verbs, they’re the proudest – adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs – however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!”

And it fits – senseless politics and senseless sentences make a nice pair. All these politicians and economists – from Barney Frank to Krugman, from Chidambaram to Amartya Sen, deserve the Avicenna treatment-

Anyone who denies the law of non-contradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.

The “paradox” of thrift, fiddling with the economy, irritating people to no end and robbing them blind, “protecting” capitalism by regulating it, and then “reinventing” it. Imbeciles – they, and every body who believes them.

Eclectic – capitalism, lessons on corruption, talking fish etc

I think I will do more of this, occasionally; sometimes newspapers have articles that don’t deserve (or need) a complete post, but a paragraph or two.

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“Capitalism is reinventing itself” Swami writes in this week’s Swaminomics; he gives numerous examples of capitalism “rising from the dead,” going back to Karl Marx. And he says-

Why have so many intelligent, learned people been constantly wrong about capitalism? First, the word capitalism has been used by some people to mean a system with no role for governments at all, whereas modern capitalism is very much a government-business joint venture. Second, critics have constantly underestimated capitalism’s ability to re-engineer itself and evolve into new forms that get rid of some of the old defects.

[...]

Everybody agrees that financial markets need more regulation. We will doubtless see more controls on financial derivatives and stricter lending norms. Yet, recessions and financial crises occured in earlier decades when lending controls were much stricter, and financial derivatives did not exist.

One – while “modern capitalism” truly is a deal with the devil, the first group of people – those who believe that capitalism is “a system with no role for governments at all” – are right. Two – not everybody agrees that the “financial markets need more regulation.” Government regulation is the problem – it short circuits the market process and emasculates the real watchdog – the market. Three – there is only one kind of capitalism – the “free market” kind. No doubt we will see a “reinvention” again. But someday, the entrepreneurs will realize that the same mob frenzy which led to the Salem witch hunt will one day gut them too. They will see that the process just isn’t worth it. And they will leave in droves. Then the politicians and the mob will have their victory – a Pyrrhic one.

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The Times has a story on how Indonesia is introducing “anti-corruption classes in the school
curriculum” – “Taking lessons in honesty to fight corruption”. It wants India to do the same. It will never occur to the paper that the State is the problem, and that it should get out of education. Bodies like the UGC and AICTE are corrupt; the government indulges in communist propaganda through its textbooks, brainwashing kids in the process; the teachers are dishonest – corrupt; they take salaries but don’t show up; they oversee the election process; they are a big vote bank.

Would you take lessons on honesty from Fagin? If no, the answer to such a proposal is STFU.

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Stupidity masquerading as profundity, I wrote once about the columns on “spirituality” that the Times and ET carry. And “Mind set: Seeing isn’t believing” is a perfect example of the same-

One fish said to the other: “Do you believe in this ocean that they talk about?”

[...]

Our sight is limited by the light frequencies our eyes can relate to; since pit vipers can sense heat from infrared rays (like night vision goggles), they must view the same world very differently. If we had a different mechanism, we would be seeing things differently. From our knowledge of science, we know so many things are just not what they appear — earth is not flat, the ground below us is not stationery and the sun doesn’t rise in the east.

The fact is that we see and hear what we can and not what the reality is. The world out there is an unprocessed and formless data, waiting to be interpreted by us. The human nervous system takes in only the minutest proportion of the total energy vibrating in the environment. Research shows that each conscious moment is actually comprised of many much smaller and unconscious “mini” moments, each appearing and disappearing rapidly.

[...]

As we gain deeper insight, we learn that the smallest units of energy are just in free flow thought it all. We create a three-dimensional world from what is a continuum of free flowing energy, comprising of electrons and neutrons. Like the fish in the Chinese saying, when we cannot see this continuum, we notice the separate parts of the creation the trees, the animals, the objects —as disjointed from us, which in turn make us feel separate from the whole. The question is would a tree falling in a forest make any sound, if there was no one to hear it? It’s our presence and perception that gives way to the formation of reality as observed by us.

[...]

While it’s easy for us to initially get swept away by the thought patterns and not be able to observe, steadily we can begin to recognize the observer as distinct from the thinking mind and the actor. We can then discover that this awareness is like a mirror — it only reflects what the mind is going through, without any projections of its own.

Really? How do you know that your eyes are your eyes and not your nose, or that the earth is not flat? I agree that “we see and hear what we can” – human senses – hearing, sight, touch, smell etc have their limits – but surely we “know” reality? That’s how we “know” that the Earth is not flat; that frequencies exist – in light and sound – that are beyond our range; that trees do make noise, and fall, regardless of whether you are present in the forest or not. Or do you believe your car disappears if you are not driving it, and then magically appears when you need it?

Awareness as something distinct from the mind – an ode to split personality disorder. Its sad that humanity has a insatiable appetite for stupidity.

Bastiat Prize

I wrote four months back that Swaminathan Aiyar is among the nominees for The Frederic Bastiat Prize for Journalism. He didn’t win, but came second. About the Bastiat Prize-

IPN’s Bastiat Prize for Journalism was inspired by the 19th-century French philosopher and journalist Frédéric Bastiat.

The prize was developed to encourage and reward writers whose published works promote the institutions of a free society: limited government, rule of law brokered by an independent judiciary, protection of private property, free markets, free speech, and sound science.

Indians who have won it in the past include Sauvik Chakraverti and Amit Varma, and you can read the articles of all the finalists since the prize’s inception in 2002 – here. The links to Sauvik’s articles are broken thanks to Economic Times’ bad content management system. But they are available here.