Obama advises Modi

In one of my earlier posts, I had Modi telephone Trump and advice on what the latter should do on his “Inauguration” as POTUS. I wanted to balance the traffic. Now, it is Barack Obama’s turn to suggest the obvious to Modi. No, what follows is not the phone call from Obama to Modi, but only the gist of the conversation.

The timing is perfect.

Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to his sidekick of the past eight years, Joe Biden. Joe Biden got this medal for doing what? Getting up before Obama did every morning for the past eight years and asking, “Is the President OK?”

Modi can do something similar. No, I am not suggesting that Modi will be out of power soon and therefore should do it now. It is more because the potential awardee is very long in the tooth and ...

All of us know that the biggest regret of Advani’s life is that he never became the prime minister; that regret, anyway, Modi is in no way to assuage. Advani’s greatest rival is Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Advani feels that he has done much, indeed much more than what Vajpayee did, in bringing in the ‘J' in BJP – ‘Janata’ through his yatra. Yet, he got the short end of the stick and did not get to move into 7, Race Course Road.

To digress, this is one thing that really roils me; isn’t it time to change the name of the official residence of the Prime Minister of India to “Saffron House”? The colonial hangover – copying 10, Downing Street – sits very ill with me. We are now tilting so seriously towards the US, the name of the official residence of the PM must reflect this. A black man occupied the White House, so the name does not preclude a prime minister from any other party, say Sasikala from AIADMK whose official color appears to be green.

To get back to the main narrative, Modi should headline the Republic Day Honours, in bold letters, with the name of Lal Krishna Advani, conferring on him the title Bharat Ratna.

As you can easily discern, Biden played second fiddle to Obama and got the highest civilian award in the US. Advani played second fiddle to Vajpayee. So, Bharat Ratna, the highest award India is appropriate for Advani. Biden got the medal years after Obama got his Nobel Peace Prize (we know how hard Obama worked for it). Advani, likewise, will get Bharat Ratna many years after Vajpayee got it. About who worked harder, just recall the Rat(h) Yatra. Advani could play the tune, a la the Pied Piper, but Vajpayee could not or did not want to.

So, I overheard Obama giving this advice to Modi. The latter would do very well to listen to this.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Allopath(et)ic broom

Now that it is a few days after news on and analysis about Swachch Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India) inundated every available media inch and second, it is OK for me to think about it a little more calmly.

The broom stick, lo and behold held by the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India Mr. Modi himself in his hands, is the signal symbol of the plan. It is all about do not litter and do not let others litter, in the words of the prime minister. I do not take exception to this as it is a necessary condition for making India clean. But, is it a sufficient condition?

In layman’s terms, if everyone and his or her cousin stopped littering, will India become clean? OK, I missed defecation in the open. Let me add that too in the message from everyone. As further concession, let me add toxic untreated industrial effluents released into our water bodies to the mix. Then, will India become clean by the appointed date, October 2, 2019?

It will not. How can I be sure? This is where the title of this post enters the picture. Whatever the symbolism of the prime minister wielding the broom, it is merely the case of treating the symptoms, the litter on the roads and around buildings.

The biggest charge against allopathic treatment is it treats the symptoms leaving the underlying causes to roam freely through the body. Hence the broom stick is the equivalent of allopathic treatment.

If we are generating millions of tons of solid waste daily, a significant part of this load must be attributed to our consumption; to make the point doubly clear, wasteful consumption. Just now we, in Tamil Nadu went through the ten day festival of Navarathiri. These ten days, the house is in the control of the lady and she must have gone shopping – and successful it must have been - for trinkets to give as gifts to the visitors, which favor was faithfully returned when the lady visited other houses.

This is double consumption. It is almost the same in the case of Christmas gifts (gents also participate in this ritual, alas). One must take an inventory of all such gifts received and track their usage and shelf life. In many cases, at least among lower middle class, the gifts are plastic household items. No way to dispose them off, except for them to be added to the garbage heap, fortunately far away from one’s house (NIMBY operative). The average shelf life for these trinkets is, from the perspective of the lady of the house mercifully less than a year, to enable the reenactment the next year.

Navarathiri and Christmas gift giving are merely tips of the iceberg. There are a million others that anyone can easily bring under this umbrella. If this wasteful pattern of consumption is not tackled at its source, an assault on the tradition (of meaningless and competitive consumption), the broom is helpless. What the broom does is create a faux clean environment around the house and compensating for the same with added garbage elsewhere.

The Swachch Bharat Abhiyan was itself very sanitized. This aspect of reducing our consumption was never even mentioned in all the programmes. Of course, one raises the immediate question - where will the energy of our enterprises find an outlet. This is the direct result of the foundations of our consumptive economic model.

So a broom stick is nothing more than a broom stick if the underlying causes are not identified, or identified but enough courage has not been gathered to articulate them, leave alone taking any action to amelirate. Therefore, in my humble opinion, it is an allopath(et)ic treatment. Not holistic.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Single Window Clearance

Now that Modi is comfortably ensconced in 7, Race Course Road, the corporates are salivating. They are expecting a bonanza of clearances just like they were demanding forever, including the famed “Single Window Clearance”. The corporates speak in one voice and that makes it loud and near impossible to ignore.

What about the common man? This post is in the cause of these souls and I have taken it upon myself to argue in their favor.

Actually, the argument is in my favor, based on the difficulties I have faced very recently in terms of clearances for this and that as I was shifting my household from Delhi to Srirangam in Tamil Nadu. However, saying that I am arguing for myself is no way to gather a crowd and make the noise any louder. Hence I have disguised my selfishness as altruism!

I had to surrender my cooking gas connection and get the transfer papers. I went with the current papers, the regulator and the two cylinders to the gas agency. The people at the agency were very nice, but they told me two things. One, I have to surrender the gas cylinders at their storage facility, which fortunately was merely across the street. Two, the server was not working and therefore I have to come another day for getting the transfer certificate.

Here is one place I felt a single window clearance would have done things better. Why couldn’t the agency take it upon itself to get the cylinders to its own storage facility? Why was the customer put to this hassle? OK, I am not blaming the server not working on the gas agency. Yet, the net effect was I had to make a detour, to the storage facility in the first instance, and secondly I had to go the agency the next day because of system malfunction (shades of wardrobe malfunction?). I believe the agency could save the customers at least the detour.

Next comes my experience at MTNL, to surrender my landline. This was truly worse and almost unbearable. There are two offices of MTNL within about 300 meters of each other, one, the exchange and the other, the commercial office. I went to the exchange first. I was asked to show the latest receipt. I said that I paid at their website and have not taken a print out of the receipt. I wonder why MTNL could not have given a facility to check bill payment details at the desk of this officer. Then, he made a big song and dance about how he has to go into another room to get my payment details verified. I was not feeling sympathetic towards him given that I had taken enough trouble locating this office. He sure can amble down the corridor.

Anyways, after confirming that I am not delinquent, he asked me to surrender the instrument and the modem at another room and get a slip saying that I have done so. I duly did this. The officer scribbled a whole lot of gibberish on my application for surrender.

Next, he told me that whatever monies due me will reach me in due time, say, three months. I was taken aback. Here is an information system provider who would take three months to settle a customer’s dues! This is anachronistic, to say the least, and arrogant, if one wished to be a little more upfront. This is antediluvian. I asked the officer that I am leaving Delhi in another couple of days and how I can get my dues (approx. Rs. 3,000, no chicken feed) back. He asked me to go the other office where the commercial part of the deal will be settled, again in three months. I followed the orders and went to the other office, a full 300 m trek under the hot sun, and gave the address at which the remittance should reach me. After three months. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Why can’t MTNL make their customer’s lives easy and create a single window clearance for cases such as mine and others too, of a similar kind? Why this rigmarole?

On the one hand Modi is going to help out corporates get their clearances at a single window while common people will have to jump through impossible hoops to get what are their legitimate dues.

Something does not compute here.

Raghuram Ekambaram

Modi, the Executive President of India

I was not exactly ready for Modi as the Prime Minister of India (For that matter neither Rahul nor Kejriwal excited me). That is why I did not exercise my right as a citizen, abstained from voting. Shame on me? Not so.

But, I am not here to defend my not voting. In my way of thinking, not having voted, I lost my right to criticize people’s choice. For the moment let it slide that each citizen who voted elected Modi as Prime Minister only indirectly, even the people of Varanasi. Let us simply agree that people elected Modi as the Prime Minister of India. Power be unto him to move the nation to great heights.

But, I am seeing Modi slowly but steadily transforming himself into Modi, the Executive President of India (EPoI), far from being the head of the Cabinet. He asked the secretaries to the Government of India to come to him (PMO) if they faced any problems in their respective ministries as regards the various policies and programmes. He abolished the GOM and the EGOM created to mediate between different ministries. Even if you agree that GOMs and EGOMs have become dysfunctional, I was left wondering whether Modi, the able administrator, could not have set them right. Why the rush to abolish them?

Last but not least he convened a meeting of the secretaries of finance and commerce to sort out issues with the SEZs. As far as I could read the newspaper reports, they were silent on his Cabinet colleagues attending the meeting.

To me, the last sounded like he is bypassing his Cabinet colleagues heading the two ministries.

This is when things snapped to my attention. Modi may have started seeing himself as the Cabinet! Modi is becoming the EPoI, an extra constitutional post.

In my mind, this is not good for the country, as tuned as it is to the Westminster model.

Raghuram Ekambaram 

OK, it was a big wave

My bad!

In an earlier post [1] not too long ago, I had postulated that election results will show that Modi is like light, showing signs of particle behavior and also that of a wave, but to explain all phenomenon it is better to think of him as a particle. This accorded well with how Richard Feynman characterized light.

But all phenomena of light can be explained treating light as a particle. Yet, Modi’s success is not amenable to such easy universal explanation. Though I am wrong and admit to having been wrong in my earlier attempt, I will venture to explain again.

Modi appears to be like a wave in that he is the overarching wave that consists of a multitude of wavelets! This brings Modi back into the wave-particle duality mode. He is not a singularity anymore as I asserted in my earlier post. In this election he was more like a wave comprising many waves, the wavelets.

And, unfortunately for him some of the wavelets either did not mobilize and organize themselves properly or they simply leaked out from under Modi. I invoke Christopher Huygen’s concept of wavelets. Look at Tamil Nadu, Odisha and West Bengal. These wavelets spread away from the wave quite nonchalantly, it appears.

But then, to be a wave-particle duality, Modi has to show that he has a particle side too. Where is that coming from?

You forget that he is not quite authoritarian, perhaps, but definitely authoritative. His Council of Ministers will at best offer counsel, but the ministering part will be under the thumb of the man himself, from what we understand about how hands-on he is. This is his particle side.

Till next time, when Modi sheds either of his persona – more likely the wave part – I sign off saying Modi was a wave in the elections and will be a particle as the PM. Good luck to him and us, too.

Raghuram Ekambaram

References

1.            http://nonexpert.blogspot.in/2014/05/wave-particle-duality-modi-wave.html

Wave-Particle Duality, Modi-Wave Singularity

In physics light was a mystery. Was it a wave or a particle? Some phenomena appeared to indicate light as a wave while in others the wave character failed to materialize. Then came Richard Feynman and he buried the debate with his sum-over-histories approach, pronouncing that light is a particle, for the sole purpose of predicting how it would behave. He was least worried about what light is, existentially speaking. The duality is now a singularity!

I think we have come to that Feynmanian stage as regards Modi and the current election.

A major section of the mainstream media had created a Modi-wave and it trotted up impressive statistics to show that it is a Modi wave. But, they were significant voices of protest to this characterization. At least a few outlets, perhaps unable to digest what appears inevitable, are clinging to straws and saying there is no Modi wave. They reluctantly admit yes, Modi is leading the Prime Minister popularity contest, yet his wave, if any, will fail to engulf the country; such a wave may at best manifest itself as local ripples.

Even so, there is a larger consensus that, with or without the wave, Modi will be leading the next government, even going beyond NDA if need be. That is, Modi the individual, the particle, will assert itself over the wave, even if it happened that the Modi-wave is chimerical. Modi is now a singularity!

The parallel with Modi and light is now established. But, I am not the God to pronounce “Let there be Light”!

Raghuram Ekambaram