One of My B School Essays: Democracies Delivering Results

The best part of writing essays while applying to business schools, is that soon enough you realize that the best stuff comes out, only when you stop thinking how what the adcom's personal views might be, and start writing what you genuinely believe in. And once you know this to be true, every essay becomes a soul searching exercise.

Now that the application season is over and I have been royally dinged and happily accepted by various business schools, here's some interim version of one of my essays:

One current issue that Asia is facing and a couple of strategies that may adequately address the issue.

Democracies Delivering Results.. Rather, The Lack of it.

Major parts of Asia are unstable a potential threat to world peace. Iran and North Korea are allegedly pursuing nuclear programs, Pakistan is in a turmoil, the 'Af-Pak' region is still a potential feeding ground to terrorist organizations. In my view, the real issue encompassing all these problems is that of strengthening democracy within Asia. I strongly believe that people at large, when given a choice, will always choose peace and stability. The only way to give that real choice to people is to have a working democracy.

The middle-east is still strife-torn, but efforts to create meaningful democracies are stronger than ever. On the other hand, in democratic Asian states corruption has eroded public faith in political institutions. According to The Economist, only South-Korea and Japan qualify as full democracies. While there are 10 flawed democracies, including the world’s largest democracy - India, there are 7 authoritarian regimes including the world’s most populous country - China. Planned economies might be able to walk the well traversed path to prosperity through industrialization but meeting 21st century's unforeseen challenges requires that free individual voices be heard. The challenge for Asia is to make democracy work for the largest sections of humanity so as to bring them to the forefront of development.

This challenge can be met with two strategies. First, countries that already embrace democracy must curb corruption and improve people’s participation in democratic institutions. In a vast and diverse region like Asia, that would mean more decentralization of the decision making process. Federating legislative power will bring self-determination directly to more people and revive people’s faith in democracy. The second strategy would be for the numerous authoritarian Asian nations. I strongly believe that increasing cultural, travel and trade links with these nations would improve mutual awareness, fostering an organic shift to democracy. Both these strategies, in due course can potentially strengthen democracy, foster inclusive growth, and make Asia a diverse, peaceful and prosperous region.

A Fine Collection of Independent India

Yup, after exactly a 9 month long hiatus, I carry on with the topic of my last post - independence, Err.. Independent Indian music to be precise. 

At lunch with family today, I saw some award ceremony calling itself some sort of Indian music awards. It did well to celebrate some of the best numbers ever, by the legendary Khayam. What broke my heart though, was Parikrama taking the stage and playing 2-3 Saif movie songs. But it wasn't just one performance, the show (including an award genre called Indi-pop) confirmed the uncomfortable dependence of Indian music on the Indian film industry. Now bollywood being steeped in music is not bad, but its utterly pathetic and unfortunate that Bollywood music is almost the only contemporary Indian music known to Indians today.

What I have posted here today is indeed some of the best music - and its Independent Original Music - India has churned in the last decade. Some of the bands have broken up, other brilliant ones like Skyharbor have emerged. But this is some top-notch stuff. You could differ on the rankings given by gogmaxr though :) I would put 'Thermal' on top.

\m/ Long live Indian-Indie!

PS: The 9 month hiatus has seen me get out of my job, out of other crappy entanglements, and into B School. I am back with a vengeance and I have promised myself to post every week.. at the very least! Cheers!

Who Wants Independence Anyway?

Lets face it, we never wanted to be independent, we have always wanted a 'Mai Baap government'. What went on for many years leading up to 'Independence' in 1947 was not a struggle for Independence. For the masses it was a racist struggle, although the elite of the time would opine otherwise.
"WE ARE BROWN PEOPLE. WE DON'T WANT TO BE RULED BY WHITE PEOPLE." -That's how I would translate in hindsight the slogan "Angrezon Bharat Chodo". Calling this racist struggle, a struggle for independence would be to make the dubious assumption that we 'Brown People' have a higher morality when compared with the 'White People' and hence, given an opportunity to exercise power and influence will not use it to meet selfish ends, but instead give this power back to people. This assumption wouldn't have seemed so dubious in 1947 as it does now because of another oversimplified line of reasoning, "British looted us because we were not their own, why would we loot our own?" And that is to say, we are also racist and we could use our racism to our advantage.
Fortunately, neither Indians nor the British were quite as racists as we assumed. Fortunately, humans everywhere, mostly don't care about race and simply work in self interest. When offered power and influence, we used it just as the British did to enrich our private life. Nothing unnatural about it. What is unnatural however, is calling what followed 1947 as independence.
Under Nehru and subsequently under Indira what we got, correction what we voted for was a bigger government extending it's influence into more and more spheres of individual lives. Mind you this is not intrusion. This is exactly what we wanted. We wanted and still expect a government that does everything in our lives, clean the roads and severs, educate our kids, give us jobs, in short 'Bring prosperity'. Dude, if we guys can't do it ourselves and you want all this to be done by the government, then we guys don't deserve independence, and fittingly we aren't independent. We are dependent, on our 'Mai Baap' government.
If independence is to be achieved need to vote for a government that is really tiny in terms of it's powers and responsibilities, but extremely powerful in executing those limited responsibilities. We need to vote for a government that appoints a minister who's business is to get the government out of business. People need to take it upon themselves to bring about, through their private endeavour, the changes that they want to see in the society.
Let us work and vote for more private responsibilities, decreasing the power of those at the centre to merely providing security and macroeconomic guidelines, increasing responsibilities for governments at a local level who are hardly held accountable, and let us deliver instead of expecting the government to deliver, only then can independence be achieved. What we celebrate on 15th of August can be termed as 'Freedom Day', 'Union Jack Down Day' or maybe your girlfriend's birthday.

Super Idea Simple Life

Something really inspiring after a long long time.

This is Some Rap! Clearly The Best of Youtube This Year

(Switch off the Jamaica Rum at the bottom of the page before you play this)

The Economy is Organic! Yeah, big business, big government as they appear to fight each other. It's a façade. They're two sides of the same coin, much like two politicians fighting each other. In the end, both of them share a great deal of common interest.
That's not to say that the Ambanis and Birlas have horns on their head, no! But as business gets bigger it's natural for them to use government leverage to modify the economic ecosystem to favour them unnatural and unsustainable.
Demand and Supply are forces of nature, not some man made rule. You Can't configure them to keep yourself cozy. The world seems to ignore that truly prosperous capitalism emerges from the grass roots. Everyone's trying to shoot dope - read stimulus - to remain high as long as possible. India's going much the same way with government encouraging it's banks to fund bad investments and write-of those debts. The only consolation being India is quite a khichri and no good or bad policy can be fully implemented. It's for us to realise the value of small local businesses as well as be wary of our innate Indian-ness which makes us highly capable of practising big-biz-kinda-inefficiencies even in small business. I believe the most important weapon that'll help us to strike this balance is - information. As I work in and observe projects working toward plugging the gaps in the government, I can tell for sure.. it's not information with the government, but that which is out in the open with the masses that's going to save us from miserable bubble economies and fake prosperity.
Never mind some invasion in privacy, but TRANSPARENCY, in public and private lives will go a long way in making the world more liveable.
Checkout the security putting on the rubber and gearing up for some GMD with Hayek. That's actually representative of how big government will naturally try and harass those trying to decouple from chronyism and what I call bubble culture.
All in all one of the best and most relevant pieces of art this year that inspires all to NOT follow the heard, quit BHED-CHAL and think for themselves as to what makes sense, and above all what makes them really happy.
We need happy, sober entrepreneurs more than ever today!

PS: Watch some of the other related videos. Take them with a pinch of salt though but they do have something meaningful to say.
PPS: Cheers! Red Fort falls! Lets hope Didi does a better job. And lets also hope Left takes this opportunity to reinvent themselves.
PPPS: F A Kayek is not Salma Hayek's father.

Night Musing

Before i crashed she just ran out of n onto the white board.

No Metro for Women. Lets Get One (No Country For Women - Just a Day contd..)

So here I am with what I said I'll write, about month ago. I said I want an alternative to the unfortunate womens' compartments. Yes, I hate them. They are a symbol of our intolerance and the hypocrisy in our society. Basically we are telling women, that they are an exotic species who had better kept to their cage or simply stuck together for their own safety. As a society we are obscene in our head. 'How obscene?' is the question that we need to answer if we are to become a less obscene society, if we are to justify the apparent pride we seem to have in being Indian, Dilliwala or whoever.
In answering this question, I actually want to uncover a truth. I want to see how badly, as a society, do we want our women to be harassed. Yes, never mind our individual moral quotient, the status-quo is proof that as a society we can't respect our women. So lets see how much or how little respect do we have for them. This can be done by putting a price on harassment. Forgive my cynicism but I call this, 'uncovering the real social demand for harassment of women'. And then take this price so high, lets tax this business so much, that the business of harassing women becomes non-viable. I know it sounds too cheap.. but uncovering the truth and saying things as they are ain't one bit cheap. So far as the business and taxation goes, let me explain - it's not too out-worldly.
I propose that there be separate first class (okey don't call it first class - whatever) where the ticket costs super high - may be thrice or four times. The compartments are open to one and all who's willing to pay the price. But, women, kids below 10 and senior citizens enter this compartment at regular rates. While this does away with the obscene display of the male/female contrast, this solution might have too 'evils'. One, this policy seems to say that whoever pays the money gets to harass women. Two instead of dividing society on gender lines it divides society on the lines of rich or poor. While the first counter argument is practically unsustainable for the simple reason the differential pricing will make sure that there are more women in the first class and as such make any unruly behaviour impossible. If the price is not too high lots of unruly people will still enter the first class and pay the tiny premium to have their way. On the other hand this premium, when increased enough to stop such unfortunate incidents completely, will equal the social demand for harassment of women. My answer to the second counter argument is that, it's hypocrisy to think that economic divisions don't exist in a society. Never mind the merits of such a division because it's definitely not as sick and unfortunate as the contrast between men and women in public places and in the minds of people.
When I discussed this with my friends they said that this ultimate result would be similar to the situation right now.. just that a few senior citizens will be admitted into womens' compartments. But I contend that the divisions on gender lines have to be eliminated or at least limited as far as possible, if we ever want to improve the mental quality of the society which right now is as rotten as it perhaps can get, if we ever want - not just women but any person who respects women - have a life in this country.

PS: Again.. Wrote all this listening to Dylan.