News

Recursive

Scroll reports:

Neelam Katara on Wednesday moved Delhi High Court against the parole plea of Vikas Yadav, convicted of murdering her son Nitish. Stating replies by Tihar officials to her RTI query, Katara told the court that Yadav had “visited” Badaun in Uttar Pradesh several times in the past few months to “appear before court” and each visit had kept him out of Tihar jail for two days. Opposing his parole plea, she reminded the court that her son was killed by Yadav while he was out on parole in a different case.

And Mid Day tells us about an old couple:

Their houses in Thane were demolished for road widening and they were moved to an old building, which is also being demolished for road widening.

A criminal commits a crime while on parole, gets convicted for it, and then gets parole again. The state dispossesses the dispossessed. There is a tragedy in this to which the only appropriate response is to laugh.

And laugh again.

The Right to Cheap Multiplex Tickets

IBN reports that the Karnataka government “is mulling a limit or maximum cap of Rs 120 to be charged on movie tickets in multiplexes.” This is intended to make movies more affordable for regular moviegoers, thus increasing viewership and helping the film industry as well. These are laudable objectives. Who could argue with making movies more affordable for the poor?

In fact, I would argue that the Karnataka government has not gone far enough. Why restrict this benevolence to movies?

I hereby propose that the prices of cars be capped at Rs 80,000. This will help the poor.

Also, the prices of meals at restaurants should be capped at Rs 30. This will help the poor.

While we’re at it, airline tickets should be capped at Rs 300. Why should only the privileged rich be allowed to fly?

Please don’t tell me you object to any of these wonderful ideas. There is no argument against these that don’t also apply to multiplex tickets. Don’t you agree?

(Link via Madhu Menon.)

*  *  *

On a serious note, here’s a piece by me on price controls: The Price is Right.

The False Binaries of Indian Politics

This is turning out to be a crazy year. All my life I have raged against the damage that socialism has done to India, with the leftist economic policies of Jawaharlal Nehru and (especially) Indira Gandhi ravaging our country for decades, condemning hundreds of millions to poverty and all its attendant ills. And yet, a few days ago, I was applauding an hour-long speech by a young Communist, sharing the link widely, quoting from it. Kanhaiya Kumar’s speech after being released from prison was a remarkable act of oratory and defiance, combining great passion with fine comic timing. Its content was irrelevant: for the moment, we were up against a greater evil, and we could revisit the speech at leisure.

Well, that time seems to have come. Makarand Paranjape gave a very fine lecture on nationalism at the JNU, with Kanhaiya present, and asked some difficult questions. His speech was nuanced; and it was also about nuance. It warned against a simplistic reading of either history or politics, and pointed out some areas in which, he said, Indian communists could do with some reflection. This included the Communist Party of India’s role (or non-role) in India’s struggle for independence, as well as the many lives that Stalin took.

Right after he spoke, Kanhaiya rose and began the Q&A session by asking Paranjape five questions. One, did he condemn Gandhi’s killing by Godse? Two, did he condemn the violence at Patiala House? Three, did he condemn a particular violent slogan? Four, did he condemn another slogan that was a veiled threat towards Umar Khalid? And five, what political party did he belong to? After Kanhaiya, another gentleman stood up and asked why, while mentioning Stalin, did Paranjape not mention Hitler.

These questions reveal such poverty of thought. (And the very absence of nuance that Paranjape had bemoaned.) Here’s the mistake these gentlemen made: politics does not revolve around binaries of fascism and communism (or left and right). Kanhaiya seemed to assume, if one goes by his questions, that if Paranjape questioned the role of the Left in India’s Independence struggle, then he must surely be a supporter of the Sanghis, and by extension of Godse. If he was questioning the facts in Kanhaiya’s speech, he must surely be a supporter of Modi and the Patiala House goons. The other gentleman implied that by invoking Stalin and not Hitler, by questioning communism but not mentioning fascism, Paranjape had revealed his preference. (Paranjape’s selective mentions were obviously in the context of getting the left to introspect on its history, and that alone.)

These are false binaries. Most sensible people will be against both the extreme right and left, against both the Sanghis and the commies. Hitler and Stalin were both monsters, and their evil sprang not in separate ways from their different ideologies, but from the common core of both those ideologies: the willingness to use coercion and ignore individual rights to reshape society according to their vision. In this, the communists and fascists are identical. They are not at opposite poles. They are the same.

I had drooled over Kanhaiya’s speech when it happened, and I didn’t mind the fact that he was communist. That was, after all, the environment around him, and he probably wasn’t even exposed to other ways of looking at the world. He seemed passionate and eloquent and intelligent, and that was a good starting point. But his questions to Paranjpe seemed to indicate that he wasn’t just unwilling to be self-critical about his beliefs, but is perhaps incapable of doing so. (That is a harsh reading, I know, and I hope I am wrong.)

You might ask here, if I oppose both sides equally, then why have I shown far greater concern (and anger) at the activities of the Sanghis than the commies? Simple answer: they’re the ones in power right now, with a legal monopoly on violence and coercion. Therefore they’re the greater danger. Also, the commies are not a force in India any more, despite this brief moment in the sun (courtesy Modi’s blundering minions). But the Sanghis are growing in power and influence. (I shall elaborate on this in the next edition of Lighthouse, which appears next week in a suitably named newspaper.)

I should add here, as I keep pointing out, that quite apart from the false binary of the two extremes that I have mentioned in this post, thinking in terms of left or right itself is fallacious in the context of Indian politics. All Indian governments have been left-wing on economics and right-wing on social issues, the exact opposite of what a poor beleaguered libertarian like me would like. Mere baal dhoop mein safed nahin hue hai. (In fact, mere baal safed hue hi nahin hai, but leave that aside.)

My earlier pieces on this:

‘Looking Beyond Left and Right’
‘The Fatal Conceit of the Indian Politician’
‘Lessons From 1975’

How Much is Pawan Negi Worth?

Pradeep Magazine is unhappy that Pawan Negi got more than a million dollars at the recent IPL auction. He writes:

Ever since a new cricket format and a new business model – the IPL – in the name of sport has been created in India, this accepted rationale of how sport functions is being challenged each passing year. Among the many questions being debated is the relationship of talent with the wages earned and the impact it will have on the very foundations of cricket in the country.

That is where Pawan Negi and most of his tribe become relevant to this debate. Here is a young talent, not sure of his place in the India team, a surprise selection for the T20 World Cup, who has all of a sudden been catapulted ahead of his much superior seniors and showered with riches — and even he can’t understand why.

Magazine implies that Negi has gotten more money than he is worth—and I don’t have an opinion on that. However, consider the larger philosophical question of who should determine Negi’s value as a player? Should it be the mandarins at the BCCI, or the selectors? Should it be knowledgable journalists who have covered the game for years like Magazine himself? Should it be the owners of IPL franchises, an assorted mix of businessmen and filmstars who may not know much about cricket?

The clue to the answer is to ask yourself who has the best incentives to put in the work to determine Negi’s value. Who is actually putting his money where his mouth is? If Magazine makes a judgment about a player that is wrong, it doesn’t matter, journalists get things wrong all the time. There is not much of a reputational downside. If the Indian selectors get it wrong, ditto, they move on and pick someone else the next time, and only a whole bunch of ludicrous selections can affect their position. If the IPL bosses get it wrong, on the other hand, they lose money. Hard, cold cash. For this reason, the incentives are highest for IPL bosses to put in much work in scouting and analytics, and by all accounts they do exactly that. So insofar as there can be said to be a ‘correct’ price for Negi, the IPL auctions are the closest mechanism available right now of arriving at that. (And of course, econ 101, prices are determined by supply and demand, and you need a market for that.)

Of course, the IPL auctions are not a free market. All players would probably get paid much more if spending caps did not exist. Also, Negi would probably have gotten much less if he was first up in an auction where no team had retained or picked a player yet, and he did get lucky that he came up for auction when there was a scarcity of available players like him, teams had holes to fill, and the demand for what he could supply went up. That’s just luck, and it’s fine. If he doesn’t perform, he won’t get paid this much next time.

An aside: Magazine also says in his piece:

In this bizarre game, where players are bought and sold in an auction, is there any cricketing logic that governs these decisions?

This is a common, and badly phrased, complaint: of cricketers being bought and sold like cattle. But that is not what is happening. Their services, as represented by contracts they have willingly signed, are being bought and sold. It is principally the same thing that happens when you check out different employers to see where you want to work, except that the mechanism is different. Cricketers are not being degraded here, but honoured and valued in a much better way than men in board rooms with nothing at stake could manage.

Rising Divorce Rates are a Feature, Not a Bug

The Times of India has an intriguing headline up today: ‘Marriages last the longest in north India, Maharashtra; least in NE.’

At first glance, you might think that is good news for North India. It is not. In my view, it shows how socially backward the North still is.

A few years ago, I’d written a column called We Should Celebrate Rising Divorce Rates In it, I’d expressed the opinion that divorce rates were “the single best statistical indicator we have of the empowerment of women.” If I may quote myself:

Rising divorce rates tell us one thing for sure: that more and more women are finding the means, and the independence, to walk out of bad marriages and live life on their own terms. If we judge ourselves as a society on the state of our women – and surely that must be a parameter – then this is good news.

So the ToI report seems to indicate that women are more empowered in the North-East than and North India. I’d love to see if data backs this up. What statistical indicators can stand as a proxy for women’s welfare? Do they show a geographical correlation with divorce rates? These are good questions to ask, though I don’t think ToI will do a follow-up report on this anytime soon.

Honk, Mr Gadkari

NDTV reports:

A road near Delhi notorious for hours’ long traffic jams has finally found the right victim. After stewing in a two-hour jam last night, Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari has ordered a solution within 24 hours.

“We are studying the traffic of Delhi and the report will come to me in 15 days. We will identify the black spots of Delhi and also inform the Delhi government. We will jointly solve this traffic jam problem,” Mr Gadkari told reporters today.

I have two observations to make here. One, you will note that Gadkari has ‘ordered a solution within 24 hours,’ and to make it happen, has commissioned a report that will be ready ‘in 15 days.’ This is delicious. If Kafka made this up, you’d wag your finger at him and say, ‘Now now Franz, you’ve gone too far this time.’

The other observation must have struck you as well. So Gadkari, who is the road transport minister, realises there is a traffic problem only when he is personally stuck in traffic? Is that what it takes for a minister to truly realise the problems a country faces. Will Arun Jaitley start worrying about rising prices only when he himself is unable to afford onions? Will Birender Singh, the minister for drinking water and sanitation, wake up to the urgency of the problem in India when he himself gets jaundice? Otherwise it’s academic, stuff that written in files, push ‘em around, keep pushing, push harder?

You could argue that this question is moot in the case of our education minister, who is herself uneducated. I suppose that’s a good start.

Taken at the Flood

This is class:

Sex workers from Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district dipped into their savings and survived on just one meal a day to collect Rs 1 lakh as a donation towards relief work in rain-ravaged Chennai. […]

Of the around 3,000 sex workers in the district in western Maharashtra, almost 2,000 contributed to the relief fund, Snehalaya founder Girish Kulkarni said.

“These women were restless when they came to know of the deluge in Chennai. They decided that they should do something to help residents there… We are in touch with Delhi-based NGO Goonj for ensuring further relief to the people of Chennai,” he added.

And this is crass:

There is something terribly unfair about this world. That is fine, the dice drops where it does, this is how it is. But if you, reading, this, are a believer, tell me this: where the fuck is your god?

How to Keep Wild Boars at Bay

The Times of India reports:

In a funny and bizarre turn of events, farmers in Uttarakhand are using Honey Singh’s music to scare away wild boars.

And guess what? It’s actually working! As per a report, farmers have now started playing Honey Singh’s songs on loudspeakers and not just boars even other wild animals have stopped coming to the field. […]

Not only this, farmers have said that they often play bhajans and other Punjabi songs in high volumes and it has the same effect on wild animals as Honey Singh’s music.

That last line gives it away. It’s not Honey Singh’s music in particular that the wild boars are objecting to, but loud music in general. Boars, being more cultured than humans in at least this one aspect, like their peace and quiet.

A further data point to buttress my case: I have never come across a wild boar during a rock concert, or during Ganpati in Mumbai.

Now, if only it was as easy to drive away wild bores.

All Your Base

Munna Kumar Sharma, the national secretary of the Hindu Mahasabha, has said about Aamir Khan:

If not move to Pakistan, he should indulge in ‘ghar wapsi’ to free himself from the crimes of ‘love jihad’ that he has committed.

I love that sentence, for the way in which it combines three Hindutva tropes into one sentiment. There is genius there—or should I say, Hindu Mahagenius?