Image source: indiatogether.org

To be clear, the Lokpal Bill (Ombudsman Bill) proposed by the lawmakers in India as a mechanism to fight corruption is a sham and is designed to encourage, rather than discourage corruption. In the lawmaker’s version of the Lokpal bill, the office of the ombudsperson is appointed by the government (at its own pleasure) and the office will serve only in an advisory capacity with no powers to actually pursue corruption charges in court. Furthermore, the jurisdiction of the office will be limited to politicians and not the civil servant and other officers who are responsible for running the government machinery; of course, the office will not have the authority to investigate the Prime Minister. Also, while the office of the ombudsperson do not have the authority to actually press charges against the politicians they deem corrupt, they do have the authority to penalize the citizens who make the corruption accusation (in the event that the office finds their target of investigation innocent). [source: India Against Corruption]

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this bill is a toothless tiger which will only foster the moral bankruptcy and the rampant corruption that is the Indian government.

Now, we come to the Jan Lokpal bill that is being proposed by the India Against Corruption lobby. The Jan Lokpal bill proposes that the office of the ombudsperson be an independent institution much like the supreme court or the election commission. It is to be appointed by a selection committee consisting of judges, ‘meritorious’ citizens who have won awards like the Nobel prize, Magsasay award, the Election Commission, Auditor General, and others. The bill proposes that central vigilance commission (which investigates corruption by the civil servants and government offices and departments) and the division of the Central Bureau of Investigation be folded into the office of the ombudsperson, so that there is a single office that investigates the charges of corruption in all branches and levels of the government. The bill also proposes that the office be an investigatory body with authority for law enforcement which allows the office to pursue criminal charges against the individuals who the office finds guilty. The bill also sets a time limit of one year to complete the investigation and one year for filing charges against the accused if sufficient evidence is available. The bill also have provisions for whistle blower protection, and a provision to recover the money or value lost by the government from the individual who was found guilty of corruption (which resulted in the aforementioned loss). [source: India Against Corruption]

On the face of it, the Jan Lokpal bill looks like a great idea, but reflecting on it, I am disturbed by the assumptions made in the bill. My objections are a little different from the kind I have seen online. For example, here are objections by [Rohan], [Offstumped], and [Business Standard]. I have both practical and philosophical objections. I present one of each.

On a practical level, the bill says little to address the issue of “who watches the watchman”. How do you ensure that the integrity of the ombudsperson’s office is not compromised, and if it is compromised, then how do you recognize and then fix it? Given the level of corruption in India, this is a real concern. Until this issue is addressed sufficiently, I am not too comfortable throwing my support behind it.

On a philosophical level, I have deeper concerns. The office proposed by the Jan Lokpal bill is a meritocratic institution which monitors a the government, a democratic institution. To put it differently, the bill makes a democratic institution accountable not to the people who voted, but to a meritocratic institution which can potentially exert it’s influence on the outcomes of the governance. The risk here is that such a meritocratic institution could develop the attitude of “people don’t know what they want, but we know what’s good for the people”, and use it’s authority to enforce an agenda that might not be the will of the people.

While I grant you that the current “democracy” in the India is really plutocracy in disguise, simply making it answerable to a meritocracy cannot be a solution to the problem at hand.

IMHO, the solution to this problem of corruption can only come from democracy itself. Not because democracy is somehow sacred, but because the institution that is corrupt is supposed to be democratic in the first place. Initiatives like “I Paid A Bribe” is a great example of such efforts. Another example of involving the citizenry was proposed by India’s chief economic advisor Kaushik Babu in which he proposed decriminalizing bribe giving and keep bribe-taking a crime. This will provide an incentive for the bribe giver to not conceal the fact that the bribe was given and even co-operate to ensure that the bribe taker is caught.
I wish I had something more constructive to offer, but unfortunately I don’t.

UPDATE: Realitycheck provides credible objections to the Jan Lokpal bill..

The book of Job is about Job’s trials at the hands of Satan. Here is a paraphrased version of the story: Job is a pious man. Satan approaches God and says that Job is so pious mostly because God has kept him fairly well off. If God were to take away all of Job’s possessions, then Job would fail is his duties as a pious man. God accepts this challenge and takes all possessions away from Job. Despite this, Job remains pious. As his misfortunes pile up, Job finally caves in and questions God about this ‘injustice’. In response, God emphasizes his sovereignty in creating and maintaining the world. Finally, humbled by God’s chastising, Job turns speechless, giving up and repenting his previous requests of justice. To this, Job is restored to health, gaining double the riches he possessed before and having new children.

This is a typical story of a righteous sufferer. As you have probably guessed, there is a remarkably similar story in Markandeya Purana: the story of King Harishchandra. Similar to Job, King Harishchandra is an extremely righteous king who never goes back on his word and never lies. For various reasons (the reasons change with every retelling of the story) sage Vishwamitra, once approached Harishchandra and informed him of a promise made by the king to donate his entire kingdom. True to his word, Harishchandra did so. The sage, proclaimed that for an act of donation to be completed, an additional amount as Dakshina (honorarium) had to be paid. Harishchandra, with no money in his hands, had to sell his wife and son. Eventually, he had to sell himself to a guard at a cremation ground.

The king, his wife, and son endured tremendous hardships. Thanks to an unfortunate sequence of events, the son dies, and his wife brings the son’s body to the cremation ground for the last rites. She is so poor that she could not even pay the taxes needed to cremate him. Even though Harishchandra realizes that his son is dead, his wife is begging him to help perform the last rites, and he is overcome is grief, he does not waver from his dharma (duty). He asks for the sacred wedding necklace around his wife’s neck as payment of the tax. She willingly rests her head on a stone slab and asks Harishchandra to chop her head off for the necklace (the only way a woman may take her wedding necklace off while her husband is alive is in death). As he gets ready to chop her head the Gods appear and inform him that his righteousness was being tested. His son, wife, and kingdom is restored to him.

Theological import and motivations for these two myths aside, I am interested in how they came to be so similar. Like with the case of Orpheus and Adi Shankara, there are too many similar elements (riches to rags, death of progeny, survival of the spouse, and so on). So I wager that this is no coincidence.

Let us take a closer look at the earliest known dates for these myths. The earliest textual origins for the Book of Job is placed in 4th century BCE. Whereas, the origins of Markandeya Purana is unknown, the earliest known written form is placed in 3rd century CE. Naturally, it is entirely possible that the puranas were an established oral tradition prior to this date. Besides, this still doesn’t provide us with a connection between the two myths.

Disclaimer: what follows next is entirely my hypothesis without scholarly research. Feel free to debase and/or ignore my speculations.

Looking at the geography between the Middle East and India, we see that the Persian empire occupied most of the space. Interestingly, there is a long history of Judaism in Persia. The 4th century BCE (the period attributed to the written origins of the Book of Job) saw huge political turmoil in Persia thanks to Alexander the Great. His empire reached into the greater India region. Given that some anthropologists hypothesize that Alexander’s troops learned kissing from India and too it back to Greece. It is not at all inconceivable that the story of a righteous sufferer traveled between the Jews in Persia and the Vedic/proto-Hindu people in India.

The question that still remains is which way did it travel? From India to Persia, or the other way around? If anyone has any hypothesis, clues, arguments, I would love to hear them. As of now, my speculation stops here.

UPDATE: The Book of Job seems to have been pre-dated by an ancient Sumerian text “A man and his god“. This gives us a good idea of the direction in which the story may have travelled, but that doesn’t explain the how the exegeses travelled. I have a hard time believing that the Jews came up with it all on their own simply because there aren’t many philosophical treatises written by the ancient Jewish people. The Greek and Indians, on the other hand, were a whole another story. My bet is that the exposition and exegeses associated with the Book of Job either came from Greece with Alexander the Great, or the story first travelled to India, and the philosophers in India gave it the philosophical mortar and this travelled back the Persia via Alexander’s army and made it back to the Jewish people.

Interestingly, there has been cross-pollination of stories between these two. I know of at least one instance where the ‘plagiarism’, if you will, is all too evident. The Indians plagiarized the Greek when telling a story from the life of Adi Shankaracharya. Specifically, the story of Adi Shakaracharya and Kollur Mookambika has been ripped off from the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Let us start with the story of Adi Shankar and Mookambika. The following has been quoted from the wikipedia article on the subject, dated Aug. 31, 2010:

It is believed that Adi Shankaracharya had a vision of Sri Mookambika Devi and installed the deity here. The legend goes that Adi Shankara mediated at Kodachadri hills and Devi incarnated before him asking for his wish. He revealed his wish to install the Devi idol in a place in Kerala to worship where he wanted. Devi agreed but put forward a challenge that she will follow Shankara and he should not look back till he reaches his destination. But to test Shankara, Devi deliberately stopped the voice of her anklets when they reached Kollur whereupon Shankara turned and looked back because of doubt. Devi then asked Shankara to install her vigraha, just as he sees her, at that very location in Kollur.

Here is Virgil‘s account of Orpheus and Eurydice copied from (again) the wikipedia article on the subject, dated Aug. 31, 2010:

The most famous story in which Orpheus figures is that of his wife Eurydice (also known as Agriope). While walking among her people, the Cicones, in tall grass at her wedding, Eurydice ran into a nest of snakes which bit her fatally on her heel. Distraught, Orpheus played such sad songs and sang so mournfully that all the nymphs and gods wept. On their advice, Orpheus traveled to the underworld and by his music softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone (he was the only person ever to do so), who agreed to allow Eurydice to return with him to earth on one condition: he should walk in front of her and not look back until they both had reached the upper world. He set off with Eurydice following and in his anxiety as soon as he reached the upper world he turned to look at her, forgetting that both needed to be in the upper world, and she vanished for the second time, but now forever.

Now, who copied who? As it turns out Virgil lived in 1st century BCE whereas Adi Shakaracharya lived in 9th century CE. You do the math.

I love mythologies and the many dots you can connect with it.

And here is the attached flyer [transcript follows]:

Transcript of the solicitation text:

Dear Sir, Madam
We understanding that your esteemed concern has a considerable requirement of travel service during your office/VIPS visit of Delhi and other places. We are pleased to introduce our selves to you as renowned tourist travel Agent. We have a fleet of brand new tourist/A/C cars and already handing Travel business of various reputed commercial houses and hotels from all over India. We are anxious to enlist your esteemed concern along honored [sic]¹ clients. We are sending our rates as under, which are sute [sic]² you would find as reasonable & acceptable.

So, did you figure out what exactly is being offered and how? :)

The sane will wonder the justification in such a pay rise given that a crippling double digit inflation is strangling the nation’s economy. But the smart figure out a justification for it. Here’s how it goes…. well, on second thoughts, maybe someone who is an expert in these matters should explain them to you. And of course I am referring to Sir Humphry and Sir Arnold. :)

Here is a clip from one of my all time favourite TV series Yes Prime Minister, that describes the entire process in hilarious detail: [link (part 2), link (part 3)]

Part 2:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JObTDctaZOc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB5R40Ds_yg

Thanks to KM’s blogpost, I was alerted to the news that Hari Prasad, an engineer who worked to expose the vulnerabilities of the EVM has now been arrested. Despite Hari Prasad and his colleagues’ evidence of the vulnerabilities in the EVM, the Election Commission of India maintains that the EVMs are tamper proof. This despite evidence of rampant irregularities in the 2009 elections, and a growing concern about the security of EVMs worldwide.

J. Alex Halderman, Hari K. Prasad, and Rop Gonggrijp

I am inclined to suspect that the Election Commission and the political parties are all in collusion to ensure that elections are rigged and done so quietly. Why else would an engineer be arrested for actually speaking the truth?

In fact, the EVMs are so poorly designed that the data isn’t even encrypted in the memory! Come on, even I know to design an EVM better than that! This means anyone can tap into the machine and read/write/alter the votes. Worse, you can actually attach a look-alike piece of hardware to the EVMs to alter the votes remotely through a mobile phone [For details here's the full technical paper]. This looks more like a feature than a bug to me. It looks like this was a deliberate decision to make it easier to sell the election results to the highest bidder.

Welcome to India, a country whose democracy has been bought and paid for. Anyone trying to rock that boat will not be tolerated.

I think I know now. It occured to me when I was listening to the episode “Island Time” on This American Life (on a side note, TAL is one the best produced radio shows in the world, and if you are not subscribed to its podcast, then you are missing out on something great!). In act two of that episode Apricot Irving goes to a Haitian-run hospital and meets with an American doctor Steven who used to head the missionary hospital but left in order to help foster a “new” post-earthquake Haiti at the Haitian-run clinic.

Here she noticed that all the Haitian patients ask for the American doctor and don’t trust the Haitian doctors who are equally qualified. This is no different with other Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) as well. When a foreigner heads an NGO, then things begin to fall in place because people listen to the foreigner. But put a Haitian in charge and suddenly things become very diffcult to accomplish. Despite this, Steve, the American doctor, refuses to head the hospital. He insists that a Haitian should lead it and Steve should just be a doctor there.

When asked about this, Steve said that the common model of a foriegner-led NGO would work for his hosptial very well, but that leads to the ‘plantation attitude’ where all Haitians start looking up to foreigners to solve all their problems. This forces Steve to take on the mantel of a ‘benevolent dictator’ to save lives. The problem with this model, he contents, is that then Haitians will never become independent and self-sufficient because they wont trust themselves to depend on themselves. They will always look for a benevelent dictator. However, by putting Haitians in charge, things suddenly don’t go smoothly at all. Things that could be fixed very quickly with a benovalent dictator model doesn’t get done, and in case of the hospital, it means that many people who could have been saved by timely treatments, surgeries, or medicine simply die. The very idea that you can do something very quickly and easily to save someone, and yet you let them die because this way Haiti will be more independent in the long run goes against the moral fibre of many NGOs and volunteers. So, the benevolent dictator model perpetuates itself.

But, if Haitians are to become truly independent, then that is the price to pay for nation/community building. It’s a slow and painful process which may take a generation to come to fruition, and people are going to be deperate, poor, and some who could be saved are going to die. But at the end of it, it is hoped that the Haiti that comes out is a self-sufficient, independent, and properous Haiti that does not need NGOs to survive. In NGO parlance, this called Capacity Building.

Let’s come back to the case of India. Colonial India was governed as a dictatorship, although not a benevolent one. It was impressed upon the populace that foreigners, and people who are educated and trained abroad, get things done and others simply cannot do the same things. It was the classic ‘plantation attitude’. After independence, India had a great opportunity to change that attitude by indulging in capacity building. But again, here the price to pay was a long prolonged period to struggle, poverty, desperation, and avoidable deaths. For the Indian leaders, much like the NGOs in Haiti, this was too steep a price and went against all their rules of morality. So instead, they chose to adopt the benevolent dictator model of the more educated and better trained people running all the affairs within the government and not letting the common people learn to take care of themselves without the government.

So now, Indians continue complain that the government doesn’t provide electricity, doesn’t dig irrigation canals, and so on. The dependence over a benevolent dictator is now etched in India’s cultural memory, and it won’t be erased until people are forced to make lives better for themselves without the hope or expectation of the government (the benevolent dictator) lending any support. Real progress can happen only after that.

source: http://www.l4dmaps.com/details.php?file=3052

Josy Joseph argues in the Times of India (ToI) article “Farewell to foreign arms?” that India would benefit from a Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) as a “force for good”. Joseph’s argument is that our reliance on foreign powers for adequate military fire power is hurting us in two ways: (a) its draining our economy, and (b) it could be our Achilles heel. The proposal is to establish a MIC to enforce self-sufficiency in weapon production.

While the end (self-sufficiency in weapon production) is justifiable, the means (a MIC) is not.  Where do I even begin my arguments! There are so many. Let me try and coalesce them down to a few key ones.

First, there is Eisenhower who warned the US against the MIC in his famous farwell address where he said, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

We all know how well that warning was heeded to! The US has since become a country that has perpetuated conflict in various parts of the world since world war II, sometimes even to the detriment of its own citizens and soldiers, to ensure that the output of the MIC is sufficiently consumed and adequate profits are generated.

In the ToI article, Joseph argues that the MIC can be used as a force for good, but doesn’t really elaborate on how to ensure that we do not end up with a USA style MIC.

Of course, there are one who argue that the MIC build by the US is something we should strive for.  Let me assure you that its a bad idea!

For starts, the MIC is not working well for the people of USA to begin with; it is ruining their economy. US can afford its MIC because it does not have enemies in its backyard, and any weapons it sells is very unlikely to find its way back to the US mainland. But India shares its border with two enemies (Pakistan and China), and considering the volatility in Pakistan, it will be very difficult to ensure that any arms that India exports will not find its way into Pakistan or China only to be used to against India.

How about India not export its arms? Well, then to keep the MIC active, and hence profitable, India will be forced to engage in a perpetual armed conflict (be it an all out war or low intensity combats) to avoid the dismantling of its MIC by natural economic forces of demand and supply. So any way you look at it, an MIC will only hasten a war with India.

Of course, all my arguments are underpinned on the assumption that the MIC is a private entity whose primary goal is profit. What if India establishes a public-sector based MIC. Unfortunately, Joseph’s own assessment of India’s public sector undertaking DRDO makes a disastrous prediction for the prospects of such an enterprise. Furthermore, India’s abysmal ranking as the 76th most corrupt nation is not lending any confidence to a public-sector based MIC actually producing sufficient weapons in quanity and quality to defend the country in the first place!

So yeah, I have to strongly disagree to the notion of a MIC in India (or anywhere for that matter). Nothing good has come off of MIC so far, and nothing ever will. It is a systemically flawed concept of national security. MIC like any other institution only serves its own self-preservation, and that inevitably involves a perpetual state of war.

source: http://chimpplanet.blogspot.com

The kind of lucidity and clarity in the news reports seemed unusual. Typically the reasons for such “high alert” is one of the following three:

1. Reactionary, that is, in response to confirmed terrorist activity. Examples:
   • July 14, 1997: Himachal Pradesh was put on alert after field officials admitted that terrorists have been entering Himachal for re-grouping and planning attacks [source].
   • June 28, 2003: Army formations were on full alert following a suicide attack on a Dogra battalion camp [source].
   • July 22, 2003: Army formations in Jammu & Kashmir were put of full alert following two major suicide attacks on army camps and intelligence reports that there may be more [source].
   • October 1, 2003: Troops along the Indo-Pak border were put on high alert after Pak army’s Border Action Teams provided cover fire to push terrorists into Jammu and Kashmir [source].
   • November 12, 2007: Army was placed on alert in Jammu & Kashmir after terrorist “sleeper cells” had become active [source].
2. Obvious: on occasions like the Republic day or Independence day, or during known periods of terrorist infiltration. Examples:
   • January 26, 2003: Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, and the Northeast were put under high alert to safeguard against terrorist threats to disrupt the Republic Day celebrations [source].
   • March, 18 2004: Indian forces were put on hight alert because the melting snow along the LoC at the end of winter increases terrorist infiltration [source].
   • August 14, 2007: Security forces around New Delhi were on high alert for Independence day to safeguard against terror attacks [source].
   • August 15, 2008: India rolled out a security clampdown ahead of the Independence Day [source].
3. Secretive or vague information. Examples:
   • July 13, 2006: Army cantonments were put on high alert following intelligence reports that terrorists could carry our suicide attacks [source].
   • January 11, 2007: Airports across India were put on high alter follows intelligence reports on possible attempt by terrorists to hijack an aircraft or storm airport terminals [source].
   • January 16, 2008: Central security agencies were put on guard following intelligence reports of a possible suicide attack by a Pakistan-based militant group on “VIPs” in Jammu & Kashmir [source].

In contrast the news articles on possible hijacking and paragliding suicide attacks provided us with a lot more and specific information. It seemed to come with more authority, almost trying to convince us that the government is doing its job and is very serious about security. Looks like among the lessons learnt from 26/11 (and mind you that there ARE changes in policy and execution effected by those lessons) is that it is not sufficient to just do your job, you need to make sure that your stakeholders (the people of India) know that you are doing your job. In other words PR/marketing. So are we going to see more ‘transparency’ from the government on intelligence information and credibility of terrorists threats?

Interestingly, in April 2003, security was beefed up around the Vaishno Devi Temple in Jammu & Kashmir following (specific) intelligence warning about a possible suicide attack [source news article]. The news article reported: “Although inputs regarding general threat perceptions are received regularly, the threat is specific this time,” the sources said. So, a less flattering interpretation is that Indian intelligence has been doing what it can, but its work was of really poor quality, and hence the secretive or vague information on terror threats, and hence a catastrophic intelligence failure that lead to 26/11. Post-26/11, there has been a revamping of the Intelligence and now we are finally getting quality intelligence.

A more cynical possibility is that the 2003 Vaishno Devi alter, and the recent two specific intelligence alert were all just accidents! Indian Intelligence simply got lucky, and so don’t expect anything much to change at all!

Wonder where the truth really lies…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=b84cDbZrFIk

By his own admission, it took over nearly 40 seconds to do his research on this matter! Must be a new personal record for him!

Now if you looking for an article from a bunch of losers who have spend more than 40 seconds to get their facts and analysis right (like anyone cares about that!), I recommend the article that was published in the Wall Street Journal on Nov. 25th, 2009 [link].

They even have boring bar graphs to present the data related to heart surgeries in Narayana Hrudayalaya (in Bangalore, India) vs. the US (national averages):

image source: The Wall Street Journal http://www.wsj.com/

Enough said. If it wasn’t for Glenn Beck, I would have never known the truth!