Advice to Lufthansa and other Airlines: How NOT to handle passengers when flights are delayed due to fog

Headed from Zurich to Bangalore, my early-morning connecting flight from Zurich to Frankfurt was delayed due to fog (tough, but it happens!).

Several of us were concerned about possibly missing the flight to Bangalore but the stewards and stewardesses were airily reassuring: "Yes of course you'll catch your flight, Sir/Madam, they know we are on our way, all the flights are delayed anyway!". It did not strike me then, but as far as I can recollect, no one rushed off to attempt to make contact with anyone anywhere as a result of these several enquiries.

Anyway, when we landed at Frankfurt, we were (just) in time to catch our flight to Bangalore even if it was to leave as scheduled.

However, Lufthansa had no quick means of transport waiting to get the Bangalore passengers to our flight.

Instead, as we got off the 'plane and boarded the bus with the others bound for different destinations, our bus was kept waiting near the airplane for some mysterious reason. It was only when two irate passengers (not including myself!) rushed out and started shouting at Lufthansa employees that the bus was waved off.

When we arrived at the normal Terminal entrance, there was no Lufthansa employee to get us quickly through the crowds of bored/ tense/ anxious/ milling/ waiting/ masses of people (who were there perhaps due to the fog?), so that we could be rushed to Gate B46 and catch our flight.

The result was that Bangalore passengers arrived at the gate just after it had closed!

Surely, Lufthansa knew that the flight from Zurich had landed, we cried to each other and to the impassive Lufthansa staff. Surely the flight could have waited two or three minutes given that all the other flights were being delayed as well?

Actually, my guess is that Lufthansa had (as is often the case nowadays) oversold the flight and so we were deliberately delayed to ensure that we missed the flight.

Of course, I could be wrong, but I have learnt to be suspicious about such things of late.

Well, that was that, we finally thought, and now we have to find the very next possible flight to Bangalore.

Meanwhile, at Gate B46, another crew had taken over and there was a fresh line of passengers waiting to get across to the next 'plane there (to Toronto, as it turned out). When I caught a staff person's eye and posed my question about what to do about getting the next possible flight to Bangalore, he said, "Bangalore? Oh that wasn't this gate at all, that was the next-door gate!"

Thoroughly confused, I went to the next Gate where there was someone (I dimly noted that he was in a different uniform) and he said, pointing "Bangalore? The flight just departed..." (I glanced to see it pulling out, but the 'plane looked somewhat strange). He asked to see my ticket. "Ah Lufthansa, he said, I can't do anything for you at all, I'm Air India. ("So it was an Air India plane!", I thought) You need to go to the Lufthansa Executive Lounge, which is that way about 50 yards, and up the escalator".

So I get to the entrance to the Executive Lounge, where the person says, "Yes, up you go!" (Well, at least she seems to have been briefed about what is going on, I think) as she waves us up the stairs to the Lounge itself. (By the way, the gateway to the Lounge is not brightly coloured or lit enough: given the clutter all around it, one can easily miss it!).

We struggle up the stairs and arrive at the Lounge, where the person at the desk says, "Yes, but you have to go to the Ticket Desk so that your ticket can be endorsed". She tells us the way to the Ticket Desk ("down the stairs, left, 100 metres....." and off we go to try and find the Ticket Desk.

Her directions are good. We arrive there. But only to find an extremely long queue. We wait and wait. The queue hardly moves.

I start timing how long it takes for the desks to attend to one person. Every transaction (this is at the Business Class counter!) seemed to take a minimum of 20 minutes and one takes over 30. The Economy Class counters seem to be working much more efficiently, though there is of course a very long queue there.

Why are the Business Class counters being so slow I wonder? Then I twig it: the staff at these counters are TRAINEES! That is why there is the person hovering around behind the two desks and spending his time with one or the other from time to time!

But what are the two others doing loafing behind the Economy Class counters, I wonder? I can't think of any explanation at all.

Then I wonder: why are there no extra desks being provided for all these people? After all, the fog started disrupting the schedules the previous evening!

And one desk is completely unoccupied!

Moreover, the folk at the desks don't seem to be working at all briskly - they seem to be working if anything slower than normal pace - chatting with each other and so on. The young man at the counter in front of me uses a credit card to rip a bit of a form off in four movements, rather than in one movement by using a ruler. He prints a ticket out for the "nth" time and scans the ticket stubs of the passenger in front of me yet again. The computer system is obviously not co-operating with him (or he with it!).

Eventually, he starts putting in manually the numbers from the ticket stubs . Still no luck. He does this again and again. And again. And again. And yet again. He certainly is determined - if clueless about what to do in this situation.

Finally, even he gives up and turns to the passenger and asks him to ensure that he shows the baggage stubs at the gate so that his luggage travels with him. The passenger says he understands and will do so. He leaves.

At last, my turn! I notice that it is just over 90 minutes since I joined the queue.

"My" young man tells me that there is only one flight to Bangalore a day. I explain that I am going for a Board meeting and I will only be in Bangalore for 2 days before I fly back, so it is imperative that I go as soon as possible - or not at all. He explains that it is possible to get to Bangalore via Bombay (and yes there are seats on the Bombay flight) but that the flight will arrive in Bombay at 1.00 a.m., with a 5-hour layover before the connecting flight to Bangalore leaves at 6.00 a.m.

I have a little experience of Bombay's airports, so I first request him to check that the connecting flight will leave from the same Terminal. He checks. Yes, he says, the flight from Frankfurt arrives at Terminal 2 and the flight to Bangalore leaves from Terminal 2.

Fine, I say, and will you give me a bed for the night? The young man mumbles something about sending a fax to his colleague in Bombay but he is not sure that it will reach him in time - and that the layover is only for 5 hours so they usually give only some coupons - a hotel bed is only guaranteed if there is a 6-hour layover.

I say "Hey, I'm travelling Business Class! If Lufthansa's incompetence has made me miss my connection surely you can provide a bed for the night! And you want me to land in Bombay and start hunting for a hotel bed at one in the morning? I'm going for a Board Meeting, for goodness' sake, there's no point in my arriving for it completely shattered!". The young man is sympathetic but firm, "Sorry, Sir, I can't guarantee a bed, all I can do is send a message to my colleague".

So I tell him to cancel my journey. No point going if I won't arrive at Bangalore in time for the meeting (flights in India can be notoriously delayed), and there's no point going if I get there incapable of making sense of what is going on because I haven't had any sleep!

I have wasted a day and Lufthansa has lost a passenger (though they are possibly not bothered about that, as I've indicated, because they oversold the flight?).

I take the next flight back to Zurich and am back in Zurich by 3.30 p.m.

Only to find that my luggage has not made it back to Zurich with me!

So I fill in the Lost Baggage form. The young lady draws my attention to the 'phone number I can ring, and the website at which I can track what's happening to my baggage - it sounds all clear and wonderfully technologically efficient.

She also assures me that I will be telephoned as soon as my luggage arrives.

I get home and expect a call later that afternoon or night.

No information.

I wait several hours.

Then I call the number which is on the sheet of paper I've been given. This gets me to one of these automated things that tells me there is no information available at present and they'll call me as soon as there is.

I get up the next morning and potter about with other things that need to be done, at the back of my mind wondering what is happening to my luggage.

Eventually, I can't stand it any longer and try the website.

It asks me for my name and the "File Referenznummer AHL". That does not match anything on the form I have been given. I enter the "Your file reference number" on my sheet, but the system informs me that this is wrong. I then try what is down on my piece of paper as "Your file reference" (as against "your file reference number"!) . However, now the system is very quick and efficient. But it tells me that there is no news - and that I will be rung up as soon as my luggage is found.... !!!

Well, it is now two days and three hours (i.e. 51 hours) later. No news so far. That is what the telephone number tells me when I call in. That is what the website tells me when I log in. And of course no one has called me so far. Not even to say, "Sorry, Sir, we are trying our best to find your luggage but we have no idea where it is".

And of course I can't speak to any human being about the matter.... Sphere: Related Content

The reservation system, and the politics of government controls and corruption

A friend responds to another of my Blogs as follows:

"Did you know that India today spends roughly US $ 4.00 bn (yes, billion) on education abroad of all those kids who are denied education in India because of this wretched reservation for the so called OBCs (Other Backward Castes) that were found by the Brits in the census of 1931. The Brits just wanted to divide Hindu society further because it was giving so much support to the Mahatma.And now the likes of Arjun Singh have grabbed that data like Mandal before him to say that there are others like Harijans. There is no new data, no new figures since 1931 . So, what men like Arjun Singh and others like him are trying to do is to force that data of 1931 in creating reservations for groups for which the Constitution had no space. The Founding Fathers knew what the OBS data of 1931 was all about. The reservations as per the Constitution were meant only for the "harijans" (the untouchables) and these did well and no body grudged them.As for the violent groups, I have no sympathy for these feudal groupings that are rising by the day in India of today--in a chain of action/reaction.The tragedy not just for India , but for the whole planet under a globalised world is that its economy does rest on consumerism--like it or not. Thus you have a situation where some people, some groups, do very well and the economics of a so-called "trickle down effect" does not seem to work in the end. As for the value system--the tried and tested Indian values which have held the country together, allowed democracy to flourish despite vast disparities, are now steadily disappearing in the same manner as have Christian values in the West. Some times I feel that perhaps that is the price that civilisations pay for the new industrial global culture. Look at China for that matter. Gone is the old Chinese civilisation."

My response:
The figures that you quote, illustrate exactly the national problems created by the stranglehold of our elites: With $4billion one could finance not only one but many illustrious universities in India! What is the total expenditure on all our Central Universities in India???

However, no one is allowed to found a university in our country without the approval of a thoroughly corrupt bureaucracy and political system. In fact, you can't even establish a single college or even a primary school without the say-so of the bureaucracy! One of our family friends, who runs an excellent school in Bangalore (one of the best) chose to *stop* her middle school when it turned out that continued recognition now required bribery! So the children of Bangalore are the losers simply because some idiots in the educational bureaucracy now want a bribe, not realising that their own children and grandchildren suffer (and will suffer) as a result, from increased competition for the few good schools that are available.

Or take hotel rooms. We need about 100,000 hotel rooms in the country, I am told. However, according to the last figures I have (from December 2006) the Ministry of Tourism has "sanctioned" the construction of about 10,000 (!). Why do we need a Ministry of Tourism to tell entrepreneurs how many or what quality or which location to build hotels? If entrepreneurs make foolish decisions, let them suffer. If entrepreneurs make wise decisions, let them profit! What does the government or the ministry know about such things?

So the real problem of our country is not the reservation system, it is government control of still too many areas of our lives. Wherever government control goes, the entire reservation system will disappear. As long as government controls are there, the reservation system will be there and people will fight for the crumbs that the national economy will produce, because of course government control means slow growth of the economy. There is no point in blaming what the British did or did not do in 1931... They had their political purposes (which we can debate), but what cannot be debated is the fact that the British did leave a clean administrative system behind. By the time I was a teenager, it had become sometimes "necessary" to give a bribe – but you only had to give ONE bribe to get anything done. Now the perception is that you "have" to bribe everyone from the Chaprasi to the Head Babu to the Minister and even higher - and even then you may not succeed in accomplishing a totally legitimate goal!. Corruption has spread and spread in our land since Independence – by contrast with the West, where it is being increasingly exposed and eliminated.....Only recently have important new legislative means come into being to fight corruption, such as Right to Information Act.

But if the government can be got out of the way, the country would prosper much more than it does. Market forces would weed out the stupid or immoral or unprofessional while the good would flourish, from whatever caste or region or belief-system they come. Not so in a government-controlled system.

The clash between values and a market system is more apparent than real - 40% of Americans still go to Church (EVERY SUNDAY!), 70% believe in God, and so on....I know from academic research that the figures were hardly different 10 years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago and a hundred years ago....the difference is that the misdeeds of the minority are very much highlighted by the mass media, which gives a distorted picture of the country (in the same way as people even in America have a distortedly greater sense of how unsafe their streets are than they really are).

Naturally, the advantage of the mass media highlighting such things is that in their much more genuine democracy and relatively freer markets (however imperfect) at least their problems get attention as a result of media coverage (unlike what happens in our country).

We have a sham democracy if one wants to be severe about it or, if one wants to be gentle (and probably more accurate) we are still learning what it means to be a democracy and a free market, and are still being massively hampered by government controls. Sphere: Related Content

Casteism in Today's India

A friend writes, in response to my recent Blog on caste:

"I must dispute that Brahmins and the like are holding the country to ransom. It is the other way around now. Look what we Punjabis have to suffer in Delhi from caste ridden states like U.P., Bihar, Orissa, TamilNadu, etc. In Punjab, being either Sikhs or Arya Samaji Hindus we had all forgotten as to what caste was. Now with the high castes like Thakurs etc using caste to garner votes---Arjun Singh and his reservations in the Universities is playing havoc with our young people in Delhi and Punjab. The so called reservations of seats for OBCs has denied Punjabis their rightful place in the Universities even if they do well, because the quotas are filled by all these guys from U.P., Bihar and so on. Look at the flood of students going for pre grad studies to U.K., USA, and Australia from families that can afford this, only because their kids can't get into the decent colleges at home even if they get grades as high at 93 to 95%. It is high time India adopted policy of all Indians being Indians first and equal as happens in Turkey. That is the only way to ensure and protect Secularism and nationalism. Or else India is headed for further tensions and caste divides".

I have replied to my friend as follows: "I agree with you completely. What we need is not caste-consciousness but love of the country first without regard to caste, point of origin, beliefs, religion, ideology and so on. Only those who believe in and practice violence (whether Sangh Parivar or Muslim extremists or Naxalites) should be brought before the bar of justice when and if they indulge in violence.

Unfortunately, the country is caught in the mix between:
(1) the reverse-discrimination against the upper castes in government and education to which you so eloquently draw attention,
(2) old-fashioned caste-consciousness in places such as in the Bimaru states, where our 3 top castes still lord it over the rest of our people and physically prevent even education from reaching them – that's the majority of our country, population-wise, and
(3) the new caste- and language-based politics of India, specially afer Nehruji unfortunately sanctioned language-based states. There was, after all, a lot to be said for simply drawing straight lines through the country as Europeans did in Africa (making due allowances for towns and villages of course) – though that would not really have solved the problem, as it has not solved it in Africa. What we need is a value system, such as that which Gandhiji tried to teach us, in which service was recognised before self. Unfortunately, Gandhiji's teaching, which sat well with mission-school educated youngsters and other de-traditionalised Indians could not stand against the new western-style greed which has been in the ascendant in the West for the last 20 years or so, and has revived traditional greed in India (at least greed was the traditional dharma of the vaishya caste, which is my own - but the disease of greed has now spread to the whole country)." Sphere: Related Content

People's Tribunal on Nandigram

All fair-minded citizens will be astonished that the Government of India and the Government of Bengal have not yet set up an indpendent commission to investigate the circumstances surrounding the shooting down of peasants by the police in Nandigram, following all the tensions regarding the possible formation of a SEZ there.

I therefore welcome (and I am sure that all fair-minded citizens will welcome) the formation of the People's Tribunal consisting of: Justice Bhargava, Ex-Chief Justice Sikkim High Court; Prabash Joshi, Editor, Jansatta; Minakshi Sen Bandopadhyay, Ex-Member, Womens Commission, Tripura; Lalita Ramdas, Social Activist; John Dayal, Journalist and Human Rights Activist; Jyotirmay Samajder, Doctor; and others. Sphere: Related Content

Tiny minority of India's traditional elite continues to hold the country to ransom

It is a sad fact that a tiny minority (probably numbering no more than a few thousand) continues to create a terrible situation for all of the country, resulting in bad publicity for the country - with a resulting impact on foreign tourists coming to the country, investing in the country, and so on.

This minority from India's traditional elite is totally unconcerned about the economic impact of its unsavoury activities on the country.

The traditional elite, consisting of the three top castes (Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas) held the country entirely to ransom earlier in our history. Rich people from other backgrounds naturally became part of the traditional elite particularly from the 7th century onwards.

Fortunately, most of the traditional elite started modernising, secularising and liberalising following the introduction of modern ideas beginning with the work of William Carey in the 1790s.

Though there were outbursts of opposition from certain elements in the traditional elite (including the 1857 "Mutiny" - which is known by various other names as well), fortunately only a tiny minority in the traditional elite (represented by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and its allies in what has come to be called the "Sangh Parivar" or simply the "Parivar") still continues in its traditional preoccupation with trying to keep the nation in its control.

The Parivar has continued and even increased its verbal and physical attacks on the majority of the India's population (Dalits and OBS who were, in the times dominated by VHP types, known as the "outcastes" and "lower castes"), but also against Christians and Muslims.

And of course against Sikhs. On the 30th of June 2006, Shri Kupahalli Sudarshan (boss of the RSS, a part of the Sangh Parivar) again asserted that Sikhism was merely a Hindu cult - to the great anger of all the Sikh organisations and political parties in the country. Sikhs have moved the Justice Venkattachaliah National commission, which is reviewing the Constitution of India, to ensure that the Sikh identity as a separate religion is reaffirmed in the Statutes, and no attempt is made to rob the community of its distinctive identity by branding it as a sect or cult within the larger Hindu fold.
The Indian National Minorities Commission's Vice Chairman, TarlochanSingh, has put it on the record that the RSS's attempt to amalgamate the Hindu and Sikhreligions could pose a`serious threat'' to peace in the Sikh-majority state, Punjab.

Mr Tarlochan Singh told then-Prime Minster Mr Vajpayee that "The hardliners amongst the Sikhs were lying low after peace prevailed in Punjab. Now these groups have got an agenda and are organising meetings and protests in the state....Such pronouncements are interpreted by the Sikhs as being hostile to the Sikh religion and identity. Everyone is aware of what happened in Punjab in the eighties and nobody should try and create bad blood again. Sudarshan should withdraw the statement he made earlier and recognise that Sikhism is a separate religion and Sikhs have a separate identity." It remains to be seen if the RSS will respond to a commission summon to be available for a discussion next week. As far as I know, Sudarshan still has not withdrawn his inflammatory statements.

Another member of the Minorities Commission, Mr J. Dayal, writes: "The Sangh Parivar has never really hidden its agenda against the Sikh Community. The Congress may have been the main guilty party in the chaos and trauma of Punjab, and its terrible repercussions during the 1984 anti Sikh riots, but the Sangh hand has also been clearly visible in the troubles, up to and including the massacre of the Sikhs in Delhi, Kanpur and several other cities.
"People have not forgotten the anti Sikh rhetoric of grassroots Sangh workers and their leaders in Punjab and Delhi at the height of the xtremist movement in the border state. If the spotlight after the massacres focused only on the Congress, it had much to do with the desire to indict the goons of the then ruling party's Delhi unit. Later it was too late to enlarge the scope of the enquiries and the public debate to also indict the Sangh Parivar. Many guilty have goneaway scot free because of this lapse. So what is the lesson in this `sporadic unconnected incidents' - as the prime minister may perhaps style them? What is the common threadthat connects the physical and psychological wounds of the Christian in Udaipur, Phulbani and Gorakhpur, the anxiety of the Muslims as they await the Dharma Sansad's decision in the Kumbh at Allahabad on the date for the launch of the construction of the Ram Temple on therubble of the Babri masjid, and the Sikh fear that it is being robbed at political gun point of its very identity?
"Kupahalli Sudarshan keeps no one in any doubt about what his Sangh wants in the country: There can be no place for minorities unless it is as domesticated pets, living at the whims and fancy of the Sangh's definitions of nationhood and patriotism, of its narrow concept of culture and its perversion of an Indian ethos. The Sangh does not hate just one minority. It hates them all." Touchè.

If the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and its allies "only" hated the majority (Dalits and OBCs) and the religious minorities, that would be bad enough.

Unfortunately, the Sangh Parivar hates everyone in the country opposed to its agenda, whether they be secular, Hindu or whatever.

The Sangh loves only itself - and if the country is not going to accept the values and rule of the Sangh, then the Sangh seems determined to hate and to do everything in its power to damage the country as a whole. Sphere: Related Content

Lessons from the Enron disaster

Sherron Watkins, widely regarded as the key whistle-blower in the Enron disaster, published a book on the subject a few years ago, POWER FAILURE: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE COLLAPSE OF ENRON (Doubleday, New York).

Those who can't get hold of the book for any reason will find very worthwhile to go to the following long interview with her in Ethix magazine, the Bulletin of the Center for Integrity in Business:
http://www.ethix.org/article.php3?id=368 Sphere: Related Content

On "99 year old article on India - The Atlantic Monthly"

I see that a certain artilce from 99 years ago is now doing the rounds, with the cover note: "You will be moved/shocked when you read this (entire) article from the Atlantic Monthly, October 1908! Please take the time to read it; Indian history books glossed over these kinds of details"

I have no idea what those who are circulating this article mean by "Indian textbooks glossed over these kinds of details": all this was fully known to Indians of my generation, born soon after Independence

There were numerous similar articles not only in the US press, but in the Indian press as well as in the Irish press (not to mention the press of other countries)

Whether or not such information is now known would, in my estimation, not be a matter of textbooks, but of whether attention is paid to such things

In any case, sixty years after Independence, it is silly to continue to blame the British, when it is clear that other colonies or dependencies such as Malaysia and Singapore have done brilliantly well – even China has done brilliantly well – compared to us (and that is true not only over the last 60 years, but also in the last 20 years, and 10 years, and 5 years, and last year, and even the last quarter....)

We are very good at continuing to blame the British when we should be blaming ourselves!

The fact is that the causes of India's failures today lie wholly and entirely – as Gandhiji said in his own time – with Indians and with Indian culture: every time Indian kingdoms lost to "foreigners" they lost ONLY because they were betrayed by their own people – whether it was against the forces of Alexander the Great or against the Persian and other Muslim invaders of the 11th century, or against the European invaders from the 17th century on

That is why Gandhiji sought (however imperfectly) to change Indians and Indian culture – and that is why he was killed by Nathuram Godse who stated publicly when he was finally released, having served his term in jail, that he had no remorse for killing Gandhiji and would gladly kill Gandhiji again because "Gandhi destroyed Hinduism"

Gandhiji certainly dealt a mortal blow to the kind of "Hinduisms" that existed at that time, even though those are not quite "destroyed" yet (they survive in the backwaters, though they are losing ground to mainstream "Hinduisms" or to the Hindutvists)

Mostly, what we have now is "post-Gandhi Hinduisms" in the mainstream (i.e. "Hinduisms" that are secularist and concerned with improving things in this world)

We also have a "post-Gandhi reaction" in Hindutva, which continues to be anti-secularist, though it is "this worldly" as mainstream "post-Gandhi Hinduisms"

Mainstream "post-Gandhi Hinduisms" will certainly survive (they flourish as a consequence of modernisation)

Hindutva, on the other hand, is a reaction against modernisation. It may well succeed in gaining power in India (just as anti-modernist mullahs succeeded in gaining power in Iran). But, as in Iran, if the Hindutvists do gain power, they will condemn India to greater backwardness for as long as they are in power

If those who are circulating this article are interested in improving things in India, they should commit themselves to supporting the modernisers and progressivists, instead of continuing to hark back to what happened 99 years ago - though it is important to understand history, that is a different matter from considering ourselves (and so making ourselves) victims of history. Sphere: Related Content

To fight corruption in India

One of the ways of looking at Indian history is as a struggle between the forces of corruption and the forces of cleanliness. The cleanliness of original religion in India was overtaken by the corruption of the priesthood, against which various people tried to rebel, but the Buddha and Mahavira eventually led a successful revolt. However, Buddhism and Jainism themselves developed not only priesthoods (completely against the spirit of the original teachings of the Buddha and of Mahavira) but even corrupt priesthoods, against which people rebelled, turning to the good news of Jesus the Lord in the first century AD. However, our elites responded to the combined challenge posed by the followers of the Buddha, Mahavir and Jesus, by turning against them all, abandoning the original and even the late religion described in the Vedas, and inventing idolatry, caste and all the other institutions included in the so-called "way of life" that went by the name of Hindu practices till, initially Islam, and later but much more significantly Protestant influence began to reform them from the eighteenth century. That is what has resulted in what is called by the Western label of "Hinduism" today - a label, by the way, that was accepted by us Indians only in the nineteenth century.

The resultant fate of India is that we have had religious systems that are themselves corrupt - much as, in the West, the church became corrupt , till it began to be cleaned up by the Protesters, resulting in the split between those who refused to be reformed (Roman Catholics), those who accepted a partial reformation (the mainstream reformation, such as the Lutherans and Presbyterians), and those who wanted to go for a thorough-going cleaning up (such as the Waldensians, Hussites, Amish, Quakers, Mennonites, Baptists, Charismatists or Pentecostals, and so on).

When religion is itself clean, it can be a force to help clean up society, however marginal religion may be in that society. But when religion itself is corrupt, a society has precious few resources with which to combat corruption. In India, we are reliant mainly on modernism and market forces to help clean up the corruption in the country.

The forces of modernism have followed Protestantism in trying to create new institutions, such as Public Interest Litigation and the Right to Information Act to help citizens challenge corruption. These are being used, with varying degrees of effectiveness.

Now the Anti-Corruption Bureau has added one more means of fighting corruption. Citizens are requested to inform the ACB if they know of any Government Officer (however senior or high-ranking) who has spent a large amount on foreign holidays, expensive education, jewellery, vehicles, or properties. It does not matter if the expense was incurred in their own name or in that of their family members. The information can be sent anonymously. This is the simplest and easiest way to curb corruption. The information needed is very brief as explained in http://www.acbmaharashtra.org/complaints_assests.asp



We can be religious or Sphere: Related Content

Nanomaterials are unhealthy for humans, healthy for bacteria!

It is interesting to see that some of the latest research shows the interesting and contradictory fact that nano-materials are wonderful for bacteria but unhealthy for humans: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/03/26/tech-nanotubes.html

Why should nanomaterials be healthy for one life form but unhealthy for us? At present, this is unknown.

Evolutionists will be pleased to hear that bacteria will eventually evolve sufficiently to find out, and will then spread nanomaterials around so as to eliminate humans and take over the planet :) Sphere: Related Content

Jeff Sachs, poverty, philanthropy and culture change

For any of my readers who don't recollect this, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs is special adviser to the United Nations secretary-general.

He made an interesting series of statements to Financial Times (see the article titled "Philanthropy ‘can eclipse G8’ on poverty" by Leyla Boulton and James Lamont, published on April 8 2007, which you can reach by clicking on http://www.ft.com/cms/s/f498bf48-e5f2-11db-9fcf-000b5df10621.html).

Among other things, Sachs believes that wealthy philanthropists have the potential to do more than the Group of Eight leading nations (G8) to lift Africa out of poverty!

It is of course true that Dr Sachs was attempting to keep his chin up in view of flagging governmental initiatives in relation to the Millennium Development Goals: the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reported last week that aid from rich countries to Africa remained static last year even though G8 leaders promised in 2005 to spend $50bn more each year to 2010 on aid, with half the rise going to sub-Saharan Africa.

So Dr Sachs hopes that the financial clout of the likes of Microsoft’s Bill Gates and international investor Warren Buffett, who have pledged billions of dollars to global health and education, could help matters.

Well, how does one respond to Mr Sachs proposal that even people who are less wealthy should contribute to a new private sector foundation that could help speed the elimination of diseases and tackle specific challenges? “There are 950 billionaires whose wealth is estimated at $3.5 trillion [$3,500bn]. An annual 5 per cent ‘foundation’ payout would be $175bn per year – that would do it. Then we don’t need the G8 but 950 people on the Forbes list,” said Mr Sachs. “Maybe private philanthropists will champion solutions to individual problems rather than the G8,” he said.

This is a wonderful hope, but we know from experience and from history that the rich, with a few exceptions such as Buffett and Gates, generally contribute far less than ordinary people as a proportion of their income (at least in the West, regarding which we have as usual plenty of facts and figures available). Most of these billionnaires are in the West, though an increasing number live in countries that are doing well at present, such as China and India.

So, if Sachs is serious about a 5% contribution from billionaires, the easiest will be for the UN to charge a 5% "Billionnaire's tax". That will not only get the money in pretty quickly and efficiently, but also make Sachs and Ban top favourites with billionnaires! I am being ironic, of course.

No, contrary to what Dr Sachs claims, the fact is that even if all the billionnaires gave away 100% of their money, that still would not solve the problem. The total wealth of this group, $3.5 trillion, is less than what is flashed around the world in one day by the world's financial trading systems, so each day the world's financial system increases the divide between the rich and the poor because of the was it functions.

A change in the global system is therefore the first essential to reducing global poverty. Such changes include reforms in the stock exchange system, the creation of a dual-share system for corporations, moving to complementary currencies, and so on.

In Africa itself, the problem is not one of lack of money or resources. The problem with Africa is African culture which is built on tribalism, and which in practice has few moral constraints in relation to matters of sex, violence or money.

The result is widespread corruption and abuse of power. So, no matter how much money flows into the continent, most of it ends up in the private pockets of the elite and the powerful.

Rather than more aid, whether from philanthropists or from government, what is needed is efforts to change African culture, at least at the points of attitudes to and arrangements in relation to sex, violence and money.

Money and violence, yes, I hear you say; but why sex?

Because one of Africa's biggest economic issues is the impact of AIDS - which has spread in Africa principally though not exclusively because of the sexual mores of Africa.

If Africans would only reform themselves in relation to tribalism, violence and corruption, then this resource-rich continent could show other parts of the world the way to live, rather than being one of the poorest parts of the world, from times immemorial to the present.

That is the sad truth of the matter. Sphere: Related Content

Errors, human and technical

According to a top executive speaking at an event in the last few days, 90% of the problems encountered in relation to IT systems are due to human error - not system error or external attacks.

In other words, humans may be able to produce near-perfect machines and technological systems, but it all still comes down to the quality of the human interaction with these miraculous machines.

Reminds me of the days when, during the 1965 war between India and Pakistan, Indians on WWII planes outperformed Pakistanis on the latest aircraft supplied by the USA - mainly F-86 Sabre jets if I recollect aright.

Thankfully, belligerence between India and Pakistan has now gone, and that war was apparently due to "strategic miscalculations" by both sides.

"Strategic miscalculation" is of course itself a human error. Unfortunately, "strategic miscalculation" is not confined to military matters. Sphere: Related Content

Should the "burden" of Sarbanes-Oxley be eased for non-U.S. companies?

The blog I posted just a few minutes ago, responding to the report by Jeremy Grant in today's FT, according to which the US Chamber of Commerce (USCC) will today call for an end to quarterly earnings guidance from companies, makes one other proposal that is worth at least brief reflection.

This second proposal is that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) be allowed to ease the burden of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) on foreign companies.

I have not read the actual call yet, since it has not yet been released by the USCC.

However, it seems to me a little strange if the USCC has really called for the "burden" of SOX to be eased for non-U.S. companies, but not for U.S. companies.

How does this contribute to a level playing field?

And how come the USCC wants a tougher regulatory regime for its own "home" members than it does for "foreign" companies?!

Something fishy here....

It may be worth recollecting that the rough hammer of SOX was introduced in the hot emotion of immediate response to Enron and other disasters. While it makes sense to re-think SOX in the cold light of day, that rethinking needs to be done in such a way as to produce:

(1) a regulatory that is light but effective (all the suggestions that I have seen at present are focused on being light, but rather less focused on being effective)

2) a level playing field for U.S. and non-U.S. companies.

When the USCC comes up with a sensible suggestion that meets these two criteria, I will be happy to support that. Sphere: Related Content

Ending Quarterly Earnings Guidance?

According to a report today in the FT by Jeremy Grant ("US reform sought to aid capital markets"), the US Chamber of Commerce will call today for an end to quarterly earnings guidance from companies.

This is eminently sensible on classical grounds as well as more modern ones.

The classical grounds are there is no logic to "quarterly" guidance since a "quarter of a year" relates to no natural period of time. "Annual guidance" makes sense because it does relate to a significant natural division of time.

So why not "monthly guidance? Or "daily guidance"? Well, anything less than annual guidance encourages short-termism in a marketplace that is already short-term enough.

The modern grounds are that most traders already have enough information, even on a moment-by-moment basis to adjust their investment behaviour (rightly or wrongly), so quarterly guidance merely adds effort and expense for hard-worked Chief Executives and Investment Relations teams, and produces little or no benefit for companies in terms of Return on the Investment made. In other words, if all companies were prohibited from producing anything other than annual guidance, then money, time and effor could be put into more productive activities instead.

What has taken the US Chamber of Commerce so long to wake up to these elementary matters?
. Sphere: Related Content

When were "untouchables" first allowed to enter Hindu temples?

A little bit of research reveals that it was on 17 July 1928, under the inspiration of Mahatma Gandhi and at the initiative of an Indian businessman, Jamnalal Bajaj, that Acharya Vinoba Bhave led a group of "untouchables" (also called "Harijans" by Mahatma Gandhi, and "Dalits" by themselves) - some 21 years after the temple was instituted.

However, I cannot find out how many of the temples in India now allow actually allow Dalits ("untouchables") entry. Any help appreciated. Sphere: Related Content

On Separatism in Europe

My friend Professor Miguel Mesquita da Cunha sent me the following reflection and I have asked permission to publish it here, particularly as his thoughts have significance for India:

"Sir,

Europe is at heart a community of values. A scrupulous respect of the norms of behaviour whose observance ensures the preservation of liberty and human dignity is a sine qua non for any country within, or aspiring to join, the EU.

Threats or the use of force against people or their property in order to elicit silence or acquiescence is the gist of dictatorship, in fundamental contradiction with all that Europe stands for – not the EU only, but indeed Europe as a civilisation.

Yet, such is the ordinary behaviour of thugs posing as patriots in the Basque country & (with slightly lesser intensity) in Corsica. In these regions, the mere fact of opining against hard core nationalism entails a real risk of being assassinated.

There may be historic circumstances when the use of violence to repel tyranny is legitimate. But when, like in Spain or France, the state guarantees the fundamental freedoms of thought, expression, communication, meeting & indeed of vote, when governments can be elected or dismissed through the ballot box, & laws enacted or repelled by elected assemblies, then there can be no justification for the use of violence. None whatsoever.

It is hardly for outsiders to determine whether the Basques, or the Corsicans, nor any others, should maintain current political arrangements or should seek another path.

But every European country & citizen has the right - indeed the duty - to condemn & combat the egregious violations of human rights routinely perpetrated by ETA or its Corsican counterparts against any of their fellow citizens who do not submit to their ideological diktat.

Such a duty of interference – whose opposite would be a ‘sin of indifference’ – was the root of the EU’s attitude in the Balkans. Are the Basques any less European, or any less worthy of respect, than the Bosnians? Or the Corsicans than the Croats? How come then that most of Europe’s political leadership display such callous neglect of crimes committed not on our doorsteps, but rather very much in our midst? EU institutions as well as national political leaders ought to speak up unambiguously in support of Spain & France as they fight to uphold the rule of law.

Fascism is highly contagious. Europe may have to pay a high price tomorrow for letting it spread today.
Miguel Mesquita da Cunha" Sphere: Related Content

some confusion about awards

I am confused by the following two news reports:

1. The government of U.P. has decided to felicitate Kishore Sharan Shastri, with an award titled “Sadbhavana Puraskaar”

2. The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to confer the Guru Govind Singh National Unity Award for 2006-2007 to Yugal Kishore Sharan Shastri.

Two very similar names (perhaps the same individual?) but two very different awards!

So:

(a) can anyone shed light on whether one or both of the reports are true?

(b) are any of the works of the(se) writer(s) available in English or in Hindi on the Internet? Sphere: Related Content

Will Barrack Obama reform America?

I've been reading quite a bit about Obama in the last few months.

The best piece I've read on whether Obama will succeed in genuinely reforming America is by James W. Skillen, the President of the Center for Public Justice in DC.

Skillen is an elegant and insightful writer - and he has the rare gift (for an American) of being self-critical. Here is a sample of his writing:

"Americans can more easily say what they don't want than what they want. And when they express their desires, it is usually in the contradictory language of asking government to elevate the nation and solve big problems but without raising taxes or burdening them with too much red tape."

For Skillen's full piece, titled "Obama for President?" and posted on January 19, 2007, go to:

http://www.cpjustice.org/capitalcom Sphere: Related Content

Response to my "Speaking of Faith" broadcast

Among the hundreds of responses I've had to this broadcast, is the following substantial one from someone who only identifies her/himself as "Free Polazzo":

Hi,

I appreciated your presentation on "Speaking of Faith". It is important to raise the questions you did, even if we don't know what the answers are. After all, that's what makes it a fun topic.

You mentioned on the show and Christie recapped the fact that "fixed prices" were introduced by Jewish and Christian businesspeople. As a Jew I learned that we needed to treat other Jews fairly. As a Quaker I learned that we needed to treat other people fairly, no matter what (if any) faith/culture they belonged to.

I have learned that it was The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) who began the fixed price in the West as a way to practice our Testimony on Equality and our Testimony on Truth. They/we believe in one standard of truth in all cases, so that when you ask for a price you get the same price no matter who you are. Even a child could be sent to the store without fear that they would be ripped off. (I guess the practice does save time, too, like you said).


Quaker Entrepreneurial Activity

Early Quakers were mainly from the yeoman and artisan classes: there were very few from the landed gentry or labouring class. Many were traders and craftspeople. They were well educated and literate. Because of official persecution, they were prohibited from working in the government, attending the universities, and entering trades in a corporate city. A number had their tools, such as looms and agricultural equipment, deliberately broken. Many became traders. They usually sold goods for a fixed price, rather than bargaining, as was the custom, and developed a reputation for honesty. "Their produce was sound, their prices fair, their services honest, their word good and their agreements honourable" (Walvin p210).

See: http://www.casi.org.nz/quakersinbusiness.html

So, consumers found out that they could send their children to stores owned by Quakers and that they would be treated fairly. This helped Quakers to thrive and encouraged others to adopt their practice.

Thank you for working to bring to consciousness the issue of people working without considering the ethical issues of their actions. As an accountant, I can attest to the fact that much of the "profit" we measure does not ever consider the long term health of the society or even of those working for the company that is earning the profits.

There are Quakers who have organized to consider the questions you ask. For example:

http://www.quakerbusiness.org/resources.htm

Remember that what made the "West" successful was not what happened in the last 50 years, but what happened 300 years and more ago. We are just reaping what we sowed. Something that we will be doing in the future but without the same great results we know have.

A more recent analysis of why some countries did well for their populations and others have not, was done by a Quaker Historian/Economist, Jack Powelson. It is a wonderful treatise on the basic issue of our times. How to be "successful" and also "ethical", although that was not his stated goal in writing the book:

See his book on line at: http://tqe.quaker.org/wealth-and-poverty/

Enoyed your blog. Looking forward to more.

Regards,

Free Polazzo
Douglasville, GA, USA Sphere: Related Content

Response to my "Speaking of Faith" broadcast

Among the hundreds of responses I've had to this broadcast, is the following substantial one from someone who only identifies her/himself as "Free Polazzo":

Hi,

I appreciated your presentation on "Speaking of Faith". It is important to raise the questions you did, even if we don't know what the answers are. After all, that's what makes it a fun topic.

You mentioned on the show and Christie recapped the fact that "fixed prices" were introduced by Jewish and Christian businesspeople. As a Jew I learned that we needed to treat other Jews fairly. As a Quaker I learned that we needed to treat other people fairly, no matter what (if any) faith/culture they belonged to.

I have learned that it was The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) who began the fixed price in the West as a way to practice our Testimony on Equality and our Testimony on Truth. They/we believe in one standard of truth in all cases, so that when you ask for a price you get the same price no matter who you are. Even a child could be sent to the store without fear that they would be ripped off. (I guess the practice does save time, too, like you said).


Quaker Entrepreneurial Activity

Early Quakers were mainly from the yeoman and artisan classes: there were very few from the landed gentry or labouring class. Many were traders and craftspeople. They were well educated and literate. Because of official persecution, they were prohibited from working in the government, attending the universities, and entering trades in a corporate city. A number had their tools, such as looms and agricultural equipment, deliberately broken. Many became traders. They usually sold goods for a fixed price, rather than bargaining, as was the custom, and developed a reputation for honesty. "Their produce was sound, their prices fair, their services honest, their word good and their agreements honourable" (Walvin p210).

See: http://www.casi.org.nz/quakersinbusiness.html

So, consumers found out that they could send their children to stores owned by Quakers and that they would be treated fairly. This helped Quakers to thrive and encouraged others to adopt their practice.

Thank you for working to bring to consciousness the issue of people working without considering the ethical issues of their actions. As an accountant, I can attest to the fact that much of the "profit" we measure does not ever consider the long term health of the society or even of those working for the company that is earning the profits.

There are Quakers who have organized to consider the questions you ask. For example:

http://www.quakerbusiness.org/resources.htm

Remember that what made the "West" successful was not what happened in the last 50 years, but what happened 300 years and more ago. We are just reaping what we sowed. Something that we will be doing in the future but without the same great results we know have.

A more recent analysis of why some countries did well for their populations and others have not, was done by a Quaker Historian/Economist, Jack Powelson. It is a wonderful treatise on the basic issue of our times. How to be "successful" and also "ethical", although that was not his stated goal in writing the book:

See his book on line at: http://tqe.quaker.org/wealth-and-poverty/

Enoyed your blog. Looking forward to more.

Regards,

Free Polazzo
Douglasville, GA, USA Sphere: Related Content

The Unreality of Economics

Most academic writing by economists strikes me as further and further away from the realities of life.

I wonder if one reason why our discipline's understanding of real-world economics is so poor is that we are still stuck at looking at "national economics". Even our so-called "macroeconomics" stops at the national dimension.

Our ruling paradigms are "country competitiveness" and other such non-realities

In the real world, however, there are awkward facts such as the following:

- "national" currencies may be largely held by countries other than those which originated them

- "national debt" may not be to the nation, principally

- companies are registered for legal reasons in Country "A" but have as employees, and are owned by (and therefore distribute their profits to), people from many countries - in many cases, the *majority* of owners and employees may not be from the country in which the company is registered

- similarly, people within Country "A" are usually employees of companies "belonging" to many other countries

- investors from Country "A" rarely have all their investments in that country; indeed, the richer they are, the more likely they are to have their investments in several countries

- Central Banks are constantly making "their own" judgements regarding interest rates and money supply, but these judgements tend to be in the "light" of the judgements that other such entities are making

- the perceptions and actions of currency traders in "other" countries can raise or depress the exchange value of "the" currency more than the judgemetns and actions of the Central Bank in question, or indeed more than the judgements and actions of all the most important Central Banks in the world.

I will find it helpful to have my attention drawn to what body of our literature takes as its *starting* point the fact that global economics and global business is all there is, now - though these are of course complicated by inconvenient legal realities such as "countries". Sphere: Related Content

How stupid is the market becoming? - 2

Earlier this year, I blogged on the above subject in relation to the company, BrainStore, arguing that BrainStore's marketing was ridiculous.

The CEO, Markus Mettler, upset with my Blog (specially as I am a small shareholder), wrote to me (partly) as follows:

"Prabhu: did you realize, that the flower mailing not only contained a vacumized tulip but also contained a DVD with a 30 (!) minute TV report (3 SAT, Nano special) on BrainStore with a case study? I'll gladly send you a copy if you should not have seen it yet.

"Prabhu: did you feel the power of the message "It's possible" in the silk print we sent at Christmas in 2004? It's a message against all the "It won't work, it's to expensive, we have tried it before, never will this fly" etc (that stops innovation and creativity). The "It's possible" message has been in Newspapers (all over)

"Prabhu: did you see the symbolism in the broom? Make room for new ideas. Get rid of the dust blocking your innovation. With a twinkle in our eyes...

("So) we are not at all out for effects. We're not impressed be "Sauglattismus" - a beautiful Swiss German word. We are very focused on common sense, (since) common sense (is) in fact (what) drives us. The search for the essence, the simple, the surprising and yes, the polarizing".

(please note that the bits in brackets are my attempts to make the English smooth or comprehensive when I shorten the CEO's letter to me)

Dear Markus: I must be much less imaginative than I thought! Mea culpa... Sphere: Related Content

The Economist magazine on Milton Friedman

You may have noticed The Economist's Obit on Milton Friedman, which was "Milton Freed Man".

The following would have been my letter to the Editor, if I had got around to it in time:

SIRS - Your unthinkingly fulsome praise of Milton Friedman is inappropriate, even for an obituary.

Friedman did not "free man". Rather, he freed the rich to become even richer - at the cost of the US as a nation, at the cost of increasing the gap between the rich and the poor, and at the cost of worsening the environment:

* The aggressive ascendancy of Friedmanism and its allies has resulted in the growing gap between the rich and the poor that has been highlighted more than once by The Economist itself.

* The influence of Friedmanism and its allies has resulted in the trade and other imbalances that now imperil the United States as a country (though no one there seems willing to face that fact).

* Much more dangerously, Friedmanism and its allies are worsening the climate chaos that bedevils the future of the whole of humanity.

Will Keynesianism be able to rescue us from those triple dangers? Perhaps from the first danger, though I have my doubts about that possibility.

In any case, the second and third dangers cannot be overcome except by new global agreements and legislation – which Friedman so chafed against, even at the national level.


Prabhu Guptara
Weinfelden, Switzerland Sphere: Related Content

"Tackling Poverty: The Roles of Business, Government, and NGOs"

For my article, "Tackling Poverty: The Roles of Business, Government, and NGOs", please go to:
http://www.ethix.org/article.php3?id=346 Sphere: Related Content

Prizes and such matters

"Crispin" from www.mysmallboat.info writes to me as follows:

"I have been thinking about "prizes" recently and their ability to stimulate advances or maybe even to work for good. I was wondering what would be the most beneficial outcomes that could be advanced by creation of a small number of prizes? Any thoughts? It would make an interesting post."

I couldn't find an e-mail ID for you or any Feedback form on your website,Crispin, otherwise I would have sent this to you. But then others would not have the pleasure(?) of seeing my response to you...!

Anyway, prizes: certainly, they provide recognition, and that is good. One probably needs to distinguish between the satisfaction and encouragement that prizes provide to a recipient, and the public encouragement of the relevant activity.

The former happens in any case (I think and hope!). The latter is a more complicated matter, because it is linked with the question of publicity.

Having served on a jury or two, I am very aware of all the hard work that goes into selecting a prize winner - sometimes, collectively, the jury will have put in as much effort as the prize-winner! Not to mention the work put in by the organisers or the work put in by the individual(s) who earned the money that funds the prize.

However, all that effort (i.e. doing the work that is being recognised in the first place, as well as the work done by others) amounts to little more than individual satisfaction if there is no resulting publicity. And that is an enormous issue today.

If you endow the largest prize in any field, you are more or less guaranteed to get some publicity.

Small prizes can and do win publicity, but you have to be that much more inventive and creative if you want to get the attention of the media. You may want to look carefully at what the Booker Man Prize for Literature, or what the Nobel Prize Committee does, if you want some pointers regarding how best to win publicity. Yes, that does take a lot of money, but not only money....

So go ahead and endow a number of small prizes, Crispin. They will spread the cheer and satisfaction around to the winners in any case. If you want additionally to encourage the related activity as a whole, on the other hand, go either for a single large prize or make sure that you put enough time money aside for the specific purpose of organising the effort of getting media attention - which is not as simple a matter as merely buying advertising.

BTW, in my view, the USA should get the prize for creating the largest number of prizes (they seem to have prizes for everything). The UK, Northern Europe and Canada come more or less equal second. The non-Reformed parts of the world remain pretty poor in the number of prizes they offer. Sphere: Related Content

Old Age or "Mature Age" or "Ripe Age" or...

At a conference last week, a fellow-participant struggled when he wanted to say the almost instinctive phrase "yound and old".

What he struggled about was the word "old".

He did not want to offend the "oldies" present, so hesitatingly tried "mature", then "ripe"...

I was the second oldest person in the room, so I quickly reassured him that, in every traditional culture, old age was respected not scorned, and that I, at least, had not succumbed to the modern illusion that one can be young forever.

The lie-merchants include many marketing experts, scientists and technologists, who are in the business of selling us the make-believe that we can be young forever.

There is a time to be we are born, and a time to be young, a time to be a professional, and a time to be a coach, a time to die and a time to grow old.

This life is only a moment. The life that comes after this, is for eternity.

I have no qualms about old age or about death, since Jesus the Lord offers each person the life by which one can grow old gracefully, and by which death becomes the door to enter happiness eternally.

Happy is the individual who knows how to grow old gracefully, and happy is the individual who has come to understand how to die in the knowledge that death is going to open the door to a life of eternal happiness rather than eternal regret. Sphere: Related Content

On "Calaspia", or Kids and Career Choices

When my twin boys' first novel, "Conspiracy of Calaspia", was published one day before their 18th birthday last week, it was a bit like history.

The twins have been working away on their novel (the first of a series of seven novels they've planned, actually) from the age of eleven.

The younger twin, Jyoti, particularly impressed me with his desire to write because he would rather write than sleep, or eat, or play football. He always worked with the older twin, Suresh, because they did everything together - though Suresh has always had other interests too.

When Jyoti decided that he wanted to quit school to become a full-time writer, I was in a quandary because he was only 14.

On one hand, I have always loved literature (and writing). "Always"? Well, not quite. To be precise, from the age of about 14. Later in life, for a time, I even tried to switch careers and become a full-time writer.

On the other hand, I therefore know how tough it is to make a living as a writer. As a father, ought I not to discourage a young boy from making a mistake which he might regret later as the realities of life hit him? Ought I not to even disallow him to be a writer? At the very least, should I not be cautious and suggest that he at least finishes a first university degree - if necessary in literature - before committing himself to any career?

In the end, the family tradition won out. First, at least from my grandfather's time, the tradition has been to encourage individual interests: when my father wanted to depart from our traditional caste-related focus on business, my grandfather paid for him to go to Oxford to study in order to become a professor (he became one of the first Indian graduates in English from Oxford, in 1933). When my father died, with the result that we had almost nothing and my mother had to work day and night in order to bring us up, even then my mother always encouraged me to follow my own interests, however "uneconomic" and "non-career related" they seemed. The great bane of life today is that kids are bored. People don't know what to do with their lives. So if a child has an interest in anything, however "stupid", we should feed that interest, not squash it. Second, our family have been businessfolk for at least the last two thousand years. We ought to know how to calculate risks and when to take risks. In my view, the world has changed fundamentally in the decades since my own teenage years. Today, in any reasonably developed part of the world, you can make a sort of living working at almost any profession, however lowly. However, you can also "make it big" in any profession, if you are the best in the world, or among the best in the world, in that profession. The historic Hindu and Roman Catholic and Tribal-world distinction between "noble" and "ignoble" professions has been broken by the Protestant Revolution. We are all Protestants now when it comes to our daily lives, whether or not we believe in the essential beliefs of Protestantism or are even aware of them: Luther's attitude (or the Bible's attitude) has come to prevail, and every profession is now regarded as more or less equally worthwhile. Though it may still be difficult to be the world champion at road sweeping, you can make as many millions from being a world-class car driver, singer or cook as you can from being the world's top economist, doctor or engineer (these last three being the favoured professions in my teenage years, and most Indian parents still "push" their offspring towards such professions). In other words, the risks are much lower that children will make a disaster of their career if they follow their passions, than if they follow the herd and somehow struggle with their boredom more or less passably.

A straw in the wind was that Jyoti published an article in the Wall Street Journal at the age of fourteen, becoming the youngest known writer to have done so, and I must say that influenced my judgment.

Then, in one of our discussions, Jyoti came with the clincher. He pointed out that if I was willing to support him through, say, ten years of being bored and having to struggle at things in which he was not interested before he could start trying to make a living by his writing, did it not make more sense for me to support him through ten years of an apprenticeship at something to which he is totally committed?

All that sounds terrible "rational" and "ordinary". I was constantly praying that God would guide him and guide my wife and myself as we discussed these matters, so that we would know from God in our hearts the right decision. After all, we are not accidents in a universe that came into being by chance. We are the results of God's deliberate creation and each of us has a specific purpose for which we are born. At least, that is what Jesus taught.

Finally, I agreed that if Jyoti proved that his dedication to writing could create the motivation to study on his own to finish his "O" Levels successfully, then he could really stop going to school and become a full-time writer.

Jyoti did buckle down to studying on his own (not without struggles), eventually doing creditably at his "O" Levels. So he took to full-time writing.

Two years later, the result is "Conspiracy of Calaspia", the first of the Insanity Series. It is thoroughly enjoyable reading. I think they handle the genre of fantasy surprisingly well. Their writing style and their sensitivity to words is better than that of many other published writers who are very much older as well as "established". And the twins have a philosophical point of view which should make the series increasingly interesting for those who have the interest to follow it. Sphere: Related Content

"Click fraud” poses a threat to the boom in internet advertising

That's the sub-title of a particularly superficial article in The Economist this week (usually, the articles there are very good, and The Economist is one of the few unbiased publications left in the world); the article's main title is "Truth in advertising" and it is available at: http://www.economist.com./opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8319505&CFID=101347023&CFTOKEN=b1a06a-5e5a492a-61f9-4c69-b63d-2ddd0a45f223

So why do I scoff at this particular piece?

Becaues the real threat to Internet advertising is not "click fraud" at all.

It is rather that no one I know responds to Internet advertising, except to click it off.

The case for Internet advertising therefore seems to me to be based on an illusion.

That bubble will burst as soon as decision-makers realise the basic facts of the case.

Regretfully, decision-makers (like some of those who write for The Economist) don't seem to know the Internet or Internet users at all well.

Has there been any research will quantifies response rates on the Internet at any level OTHER than "clicks"? Does "clicking the ad off" count as a "click"? Sphere: Related Content

Impressions of life in Madrid, Spain

I am about to commit the sin called "American tourismus" - that is, the sin of visiting a city for an hour and giving one's impressions as if they were authoritative:

Having wandered about the city a little over double the amount of time mentioned above, the following are my observations for what they are worth:

1. Surprisingly few Spaniards speak English - even among taxi drivers! That is particularly astonishing when one considers that Madrid is now apparently the 4th-most visited city in Europe - and at least a sizeable number of visitors must be English-speaking in preference to Spanish-speaking (or any other language that might be mutually comprehensible)

2. In many ways, Madrid reminded me of India - e.g. in the relaxed attitude to time and to orgnisation. For example, appointments usually started 10-15 minutes later than scheduled. Further, the air-travel related schedule from my travel agent said that I had to check-in at Terminal 2 and, true enough, the check-in was at Terminal 2, but the flight was not leaving from Terminal 2, it was going to leave from Terminal 1 - which was a substantial distance away. The terminals (as most buildings) are spacious and have lots of marble but, as in India, no one seems to think it worth doing anything about a few missing squares in the ceiling plasterboard or about the long wire lying around.

3. Quality of life seems no lower in Madrid, now, than in Switzerland - at least at the top to middling levels (there are a few drunken beggars about). Being vegetarian, I did not have a lot of choice in terms of food, but there are the usual Turkish small shops which retail Falafel, and that cost Euros 3.30 there (which I reckon to be about a third less than what that would cost in Switzerland). The city has wide boulevards and at least a few large gardens, as well as plenty of museums....And a single Metro ride to anywhere in the city costs only 1 Euro. Sphere: Related Content

Tackling Poverty: The Roles of Business, Government and NGOs

For my article with the above title, published in ETHIX magazine (the bulletin of the Center for Integrity in Business, Seattle, USA), please go to: http://www.ethix.org/article.php3?id=346 Sphere: Related Content

Training, Coaching, Mentoring

A colleague asks me the difference between these terms, so here goes:

Training refers to any repetitive activity with the objective of making what is considered to be "best" so ingrained as to be subconscious. So does an athlete "train". Equally, one can "train" a horse or a dog. One can have a "Personal Trainer" for physical fitness, or someone can be a "Dog Trainer" or a "Horse Trainer". The purpose is in any case to enhance performance in what might be considered a one-dimensional way. The dog is trained to do certain specific tasks. The horse is trained to obey specific commands. My "Personal Trainer" ensures that I exercise in the best possible way in order to increase my physical fitness. The word "training" has therefore a repetitive and graduated feel to it.

Coaching is provided by a coach (as in "a football coach") in order to enhance a wider range of skills. The term "coaching" has, therefore, a professional or technical feel to it. You can "coach" me in order to try and improve my abilities for example in public speaking or in time-management.

The word "coach" started being used in 1556 for a "large kind of carriage" and comes into English via the Middle French word "coche", as well as from the German word "kotsche", both originally deriving from the fifteenth century Hungarian word "kocsi", meaning a "carriage made in Kocs," the Hungarian village where it was first made. In the 1830s, "coach" came to be used in Oxford University slang for a tutor who "carries" a student through an examination. The use of the word was extended from academics to sports and athletics from 1861. The word "coaching" has therefore a remedial but also an objective-related feel to it, where the objective needs the rather more flexible deployment of a range of skills or abilities.

The "mentoring" has quite different roots. Mentor is the name of the person to whom Odysseus (or Ulysses) entrusted the care of his son, Telemachus, when he set out on what we now call an "odyssey" and which took him, among other places, to the Trojan Wars. Mentor was Odysseus' wise and trusted counsellor as well as tutor to Telemachus. Mentor's name - with a lower-case "m" - has passed into English as a term for a wise and trusted counselor and teacher.

In modern English the term is used in two ways:
First, the word "mentor" refers to a person providing regular or continuous counsel or teaching ("My mentor is Joe Smith").

Second, the word "mentor" is used of an older, influential person who takes a younger, promising person "under the wing," for the purpose of advancing the younger person's career. The older person is then a mentor to the younger one. And the younger person is traditionally referred to as the "protégé" of the older person. This sort of relationship usually comes about for family-, power-, psychology- or relationship-oriented reasons.

In business circles, a new and somewhat inelegant term "mentee" has started being used, where it refers to the person "being mentored" - though the usage is confined to official programmes for such purposes organised within companies.

HOWEVER, the words "coaching" and "mentoring" are increasingly used interchangeably... so much so that some people claim to find no difference between the terms...though I maintain that there is a distinction between the words, "coaching" applying to a rather more narrow academic, technical or professional "objective-related" process; "mentoring" to a wider, life- and wisdom-related process that is more concerned with developing or unfolding the personality.... Sphere: Related Content

Why the fight against poverty is failing: a contrarian view

A very commonsense article by the above title has been published by Abraham George, the admirable founder of The George Foundation:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4114&specialid=1&CFID=1824805&CFTOKEN=37907590

The article is to be commended because it articulates some truths that very much need stating: neither NGOs nor government-to-government assistance breaks the cycle of poverty (that is, neither aid nor charity does so); enterprise isthe only things that can help an individual, a family, a group, a locality, a region or a nation to break out of poverty.

However, Dr. George seems either unaware or unwilling to recognise the fact that that is precisely why ruling elites make it so difficult for their people to start businesses or to flourish in them. Indeed, ruling elites even make it difficult for self-help organisations, mutual-aid societies, micro-finance and NGO-channelled aid to get through to their people.

The reason why countries remain poor is because they are ruled by kleptocracies and worse. There is no other earthly reason today for any individual or community to remain poor. The technology of wealth-creation is well enough understood.

The question that remains is: what aspects of their culture predispose a people to allow thieves and murderers to rule over them?

I guess there is one other: What are the culture-change agencies or modalities or spirit that can enable that peoples to awake from their poverty-creating slumber? Sphere: Related Content

Should English-language writers be considered for literary prizes in non-English language countries?

Visiting the Frankfurt Book Fair a few weeks ago, I was startled to hear the Indian writer Paul Zacharia mention that only three per cent of books are translated into other languages (at least that was how I understood his statement).

Then, at another event at the Fair, I heard the President of PEN in Norway respond to a suggestion that the Norwegian Prize for Literature should be awarded NOT only for a work written in Norwegian, but for work in ANY language written in the country.

After these weeks, I still find myself very divided in my response to the suggestion.

On one hand, if (for example) the work of English-language migrant writers is considered for such prizes, then immigrants in Norway have at least some possibility of winning the national prize - which appeals to my sense of social justice.

On the other hand, would such a possibility not merely strengthen the hold of English as the world's lingua franca?

What is good for English-language immigrant writers is bad for the other languages that are, in principle, threatened by the rise of English. This may seem to be a rather large claim to make, till one considers what has happened since the Second World War to French as the language of international diplomacy. Or to what has happened to German as a language for research publications since the 1980s. Or to what is happening in Switzerland, where the usual second language in schools is rapidly becoming English rather than one of the other Swiss "official" languages - which will have consequences for Swiss unity given a generation or two....

Anyway, my conclusion is that countries may rightly want to recognise the work of migrants writing in their own language, but it is best not to try to do so by putting, in the same competition, migrants writing in other languages alongside natives writing in national languages.

Rather, it is best to recognise literary excellence on the part of migrants writing in other languages by means of a special prize established for that purpose. If migrants write in the national language of their country of adoption, then of course they should rightly expect to be considered for the national prize.

Recognising and rewarding merit in the work of migrants needs to be encouraged, but not at the cost of writers who are from the country and write in a national language.

The case of English-language writers in countries which have English as an official language, such as India, is different - and India has found the best solution to this conundrum by having separate prizes for literatures in each of the languages that are recognised by the country (including English).

Certainly in the West, which is still remarkably free, any individual or group can establish a prize for work in any language. Indeed, anyone can establish a prize for anything. So why not more prizes for work in whatever language by migrants? Sphere: Related Content

Should English-language writers be considered for literary prizes in non-English language countries?

Visiting the Frankfurt Book Fair a few weeks ago, I was startled to hear the Indian writer Paul Zacharia mention that only three per cent of books are translated into other languages (at least that was how I understood his statement).

Then, at another event at the Fair, I heard the President of PEN in Norway respond to a suggestion that the Norwegian Prize for Literature should be awarded NOT only for a work written in Norwegian, but for work in ANY language written in the country.

After these weeks, I still find myself very divided in my response to the suggestion.

On one hand, if (for example) the work of English-language migrant writers is considered for such prizes, then immigrants in Norway have at least some possibility of winning the national prize - which appeals to my sense of social justice.

On the other hand, would such a possibility not merely strengthen the hold of English as the world's lingua franca?

What is good for English-language immigrant writers is bad for the other languages that are, in principle, threatened by the rise of English. This may seem to be a rather large claim to make, till one considers what has happened since the Second World War to French as the language of international diplomacy. Or to what has happened to German as a language for research publications since the 1980s. Or to what is happening in Switzerland, where the usual second language in schools is rapidly becoming English rather than one of the other Swiss "official" languages - which will have consequences for Swiss unity given a generation or two....

Anyway, my conclusion is that countries may rightly want to recognise the work of migrants writing in their own language, but it is best not to try to do so by putting, in the same competition, migrants writing in other languages alongside natives writing in national languages.

Rather, it is best to recognise literary excellence on the part of migrants writing in other languages by means of a special prize established for that purpose. If migrants write in the national language of their country of adoption, then of course they should rightly expect to be considered for the national prize.

Recognising and rewarding merit in the work of migrants needs to be encouraged, but not at the cost of writers who are from the country and write in a national language.

The case of English-language writers in countries which have English as an official language, such as India, is different - and India has found the best solution to this conundrum by having separate prizes for literatures in each of the languages that are recognised by the country (including English).

Certainly in the West, which is still remarkably free, any individual or group can establish a prize for work in any language. Indeed, anyone can establish a prize for anything. So why not more prizes for work in whatever language by migrants? Sphere: Related Content

Robot thinks "think we taste like bacon": will robots acquire a taste for us?

By this time, you will be aware of the cute robot, designed by NEC System technologies and Mie University, which has been described as "a metal gastronome" and "an electromechanical sommelier". It is supposedly capable of identifying wines, cheeses, meats and hors d'oeuvres. Upon being given a sample, it will produce in a childlike voice an identification of what it has just been given. The idea is that restaurants and individuals, for example, can be told if a wine is authentic without even opening the bottle. However, when a reporter placed his hand in the robot's omnivorous clanking jaw, he was identified as bacon. A cameraman then tried his hand and was identified as prosciutto.

Reactions to this story have varied from dire predictions of robots acquiring a taste for human flesh and therefore to a "robot holocaust", and through "I told you, robots will never be intelligent enough to take over the world", to stories about all the ills that might result from robot mistakes or malfunctions.

But before we become too terror-striken, let's just pause a moment. Are we sure that this was a mistake or malfunction? Note that the robot did not identify both the humans as the same, but one of them as "bacon", and the other as "prosciutto".

We know that humans often start smelling of what they eat (which is why, for example, some people don't like to consume garlic). Is it possible that the characteristics of human flesh also change, depending on the sort of food that one most eats? Further, is it possible that the reporter was particularly fond of bacon, while the cameraman particularly fond of prosciutto? Or that they had just consumed a quantity respectively of those meats before the experiment?

If so, I wonder what the robot would have pronounced if I had placed my hand there. My guess is that, since I am a vegetarian, it might have identified me as a vegetable!

Any prizes for guessing which one? Sphere: Related Content

On Corporate Sustainabilty Reports and the Guidelines from the Global Reporting Initiative

Some weeks ago, I received a copy of a "Corporate Sustainability Report" (CSR) from an Indian company, Reliance Industries Ltd. I was fascinated to read that this was one of the few CSRs that is based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines, which were initially published in 2002.

According to the covering letter from Reliance, as of July this year, only 162 organisations in 33 countries, had published reports recognized as "in-accordance" with the GRI guidelines. Nine Indian companies have produced CSRs and only two of them (ITC and Reliance) have published CSR recognised as being "in-accordance" with GRI guidelines. What's more, Reliance's report is the first report from Indian Oil & Gas sector to obtain "in-accordance" status.

Are the GRI's guidelines too easy, so that even Indian tobacco, and oil & gas companies can gain "in-accordance" status? Or are the guidelines too difficult? How does one explain the fact that in 3 years, only so few companies have found it possible to try and report according to the GRI guidelines? Sphere: Related Content

The US National Academy of Sciences endorses lack of scientific ethics and lack of business ethics

I am astonished to notice that the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has invited Dr. Robert Lanza, a vice president of the California-based Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), to make a presentation at a special meeting at the NAS, exploring the latest developments in embryonic stem cell science and policy.

So Lanza is leading scientist at a biotech firm that misled the world about a supposedly ethical method of obtaining embryonic stem cells. The story is available at several websites, including http://www.lifenews.com/bio1851.html
and at:
http://erlc.com/erlc/article/has-robert-lanza-solved-the-embryonic-stem-cell-research-dilemma
as well as at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5272648.stm

As far as I am aware, neither Lanza nor ACT have apologised for their earlier unethical behaviour. Nor have they announced any determination to avoid that kind of unethical behaviour in the future. In fact, both Lanza and ACT seem determined to continue with their attempt to mislead the world.

NAS's invitation therefore amounts to endorsement of such non-ethical behaviour.

Further, the NAS has a National Research Council which recently published its triennial review of the National Nano Initiative. The review was required by the lgeislation to cover Artificial Intelligence and the enhancement of human intelligence. Bizarrely, the review states that AI and the enhancement of human intelligence are the stuff of science fiction (a weirdly ignorant statement, to say the least). The review also avoids comment on broader ethical issues (merely stating that they are important and need to be addressed). In other words, the NAS's NRC review has produced zero comment on the ethical front, in spite of that being specified by the 2003 legislation.

The National Nano Initiative has, not surprisingly, largely ignored all the ethical issues.

Therefore, as far as I can see, scientists, businesspeople, legislators and politicians are all involved in producing non-ethical nanoscience and nanotech, which will end up unleashing nano-related crimes against humanity ... unless current attitudes and behaviour can be changed sometime soon. Sphere: Related Content

Excellent Paper on Needed Educational Reforms in India

I find that my friend Krishan Khanna (Chairman & Founder of i Watch, the Wake Up Call for India) has produced an excellent paper on the subject of the reforms that are needed, in the educational sector in India, if we are to have any hope of solving our looming talent shortage in India.

He has kindly given me permission to publish it here.

Making INDIA a Knowledge Economy

It is necessary to first understand the entire "matrix" in education. Even after 59 years of Independence, the following situation remains as far as the Human Capital Development of our country is concerned:

1. Drop-out rate in schools from KG to 10+2 is (including those who never attended school) 90% to 94%.

2. China has about 1.80 million schools, while we have in India about 1.10 million schools!

3. The "Governance" in Government run schools is very low. In many cases teachers are absent (15% to 60% absenteeism) from schools in rural and urban schools of India and are paid full wages and perks in spite of this! Studies have shown that even the poorest of the poor rather send their children to un-aided schools where fees have to be paid and not to government run free schools. The quality of schooling of such unaided schools is higher than Government schools although the salary of Government teachers is two to three times higher than the teachers of the un-aided schools.See articles and solutions on governance at www.wakeupcall.org

4. The existing Indian definition of Literacy (if you can write your name you are literate) needs to be amended to International Standards. This criteria is used in the census for determining the literacy rate.

5. As per the Ministry of HRD the present illiteracy is ONLY 37% or 430 million people, while as per UNICEF and UNDP it is nearly 60% or 650 million people. China has a Literacy rate of about 93%.

6. The first step of making India a knowledge economy is literacy and needs to be given A1 priority.

7. The total amount spent on education is about Rs. 91,000 crores per year. 15% by the Central Govt. and 85% by the State Governments The Education Cess will collect another Rs. 7000 crores per year. This is about 3.3% of GDP. The MHRD has calculated that another Rs. 40,000 crores per year would be required only for additional requirements for Primary Education!

8. We estimate that another Rs. 100,000 crores are required per year just to have reasonable quality of Primary and Secondary education, up to Class 10th., which is where the Central and State Governments should concentrate for the next 10 to 20 years, or till we have at least 95% Literacy and at least 80% of the population who are completing the High School stage or Class 10th.

9. As per our estimates the total expenditure for education is nearly 8% of GDP, about 3.3% from Government and about 4.7% from private participation. This includes funding of unaided schools and colleges + bribes and capitation fees + payment for students studying abroad + tuition classes +coaching classes +private I.T. & Software training institutes. Most of this private funding is confined to urban areas where only 30% stay.

10. About 7% to 8% of the youth who finish the 10+2 stage (pre-university) enter the17, 963 colleges of India. 70% of all graduates are B.A. or Arts graduates. Is this relevant today? Most of these so called graduates are not-employable.

11. Of all new employment taking place nearly 60% are self employed. About New Employment - 1% is with government, 2% with the private 'organized sector' and 97% with the 'unorganized sector'.

12. Presently there is little connect between education and employment generation & quality of life

13. The employers associations, chambers of commerce and other business organizations are fragmented. There is no "National Common Minimum Program" for "education and training of manpower" in India. In most developed and developing countries the Chambers of Commerce (who represent the employers and business) Lead from the front.

14. About 26 million people are added every year to the existing education system, which is like adding another Australia + Hong Kong + Singapore & UAE per year!

15. Presently both the Central Government as well as the State Governments are running in Financial Deficits, of about 9% to 11% of GDP, so the question of additional financing for education will strain not only the existing budgets but also put pressure on other sectors, where funds are being presently allocated.

16. “Licence Raj” runs all Higher & Technical Education in India. Let us Bench-Mark with USA, Germany and Japan, the three largest economies of the World account for nearly 50% of the world's GDP. Do their governments exert similar controls as we have in India? Can we learn from them? There is fierce competition between the institutions in these countries for excellence!

17. China has about 900 Universities, while we in India have 362 Universities. USA has 3600 and Japan has 4000!

18. In India, the fees of the courses, pay-scales to the teachers, appointment of the head of the Institution and the syllabus, are decided by the 58 or more Central and State-Government Boards of Education. Will this create innovation, excellence and world class students?

19. The Coaching Business is getting bigger than the Education Business, entrance examinations for the IIT’s, IIM’s and a few prestigious management schools attract about 600,000 applications (who spend nearly Rs.2.00 lac each for pre-coaching, amounting to Rs.12,000 crores per year, for 6000 seats. These institutions spend hardly Rs.800 to Rs.1,100 crores per year, as their teaching budgets!
20. While 75% to 85% the youth of the developed and developing world learn a skill or competence or trade between the ages of 14 to 35, by Vocational Education & training, in India it is hardly covers 2% to 3% of the population!
21. India has about 5000 ITI’s (Ministry of Labour) and about 5000 Vocational schools (Ministry of HRD), while China has about 500,000 senior secondary vocational schools!

22. India has 300 million able bodied unemployed between the ages of 18 to 50, but they have no skill sets and therefore not employable! Employers in India are facing a huge shortage of skilled manpower. Wages and salaries in India, of skilled manpower are going up too fast. India will not be able to take advantage of the demographic profile of its population, if the youth do not receive relevant and quality Education & Training.

23. We have not seen any co-ordination between the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of HRD as far as VET planning on a National level, is concerned.

24. We in India have NOT still appreciated the fact that, world wide, Education is 5 times or 500% bigger than I.T. or software!

25. India can become an Educational Hub for the world and earn US$ 100 billion per year, after 10 to 20 years! We need to start now, but remove "Licence Raj" first, as was done for business in 1991! India has 7,700 foreign students while Australia has 383,000 foreign students!

26. Because of the “Licence Raj” in Higher and Technical Education, it is estimated that nearly 70,000 to 90,000 students leave India every year for studying abroad. At any given time these 320,000 students cost the country a foreign exchange out flow of nearly US$9.6 billion per year or nearly Rs. 45,000 crores per year, enough to build 40 IIM’s or 20 IIT’s per year. Nearly 1,20,00 students leave India every year for foreign studies.

27. The present problem of reservation will not solve the needs and aspirations of the youth. India needs a larger number of educational Institutions, seats and higher quality in the area of Higher & Technical education. Rationing, quotas and reservation can never address the actual situation. The Central and State governments are strapped for funds even for Primary and Secondary education. The solution lies in complete decontrol of all forms of Higher & Technical education; the same way as business was delicensed in1991!

28. Since 1947 we have tried reservation and controls in the allocation of steel, cement, colour TV's, airline tickets, cars, scooters, etc and have failed. Only increase of supply and decontrol has finally solved these issues.


If INDIA has to become a Knowledge Economy we need to do the following:

1. Aim for 95% to 100% Literacy in the next 10 years

2. Decontrol and involve the management of all primary schools to the local bodies such as Panchayats, Village Groups, Municipalities and local Citizen Groups. Allow the community to manage.

3. Consider the use and issue of "Education Coupons" for school children, so that they can choose the schools of their choice and funding from the government, which would have been dispersed for the funding of Government run schools in rural and urban India, should be paid out. See www.ccsindia.org

4. Scrap “Licence Raj” in Higher & Technical Education, after and including class 11th, to allow innovation, creativity and excellence in Education. See www.epsfi.org

5. Ensure that 80% to 90% of the population in the age group of 14 years to 50 years goes in for some sort of relevant Vocational Education & Training. See www.wakeupcall.org

6. Allow starting of Enterprise Skills Education, ESD, from Class 5th to the 12th. This will teach the youth about how the real world works. Only 100 hours per year required. Nearly 60% of the workforce in India is self-employed. See www.deispune.org

7. Start Prevocational classes from Class 8th. Have Vocational Counsellors in all Higher Seconadary Schools. Upgrade all Higher Seconadry Schools for Vocational Education & Training.

8. Have a dynamic interaction between all stake holders, Academia-Industry-Business-R&D-Chambers of Commerce-Student bodies-Parents organizations-Civil society and NGO's. Chambers of Commerce, who represents the employers and business, must lead from the front.

9. Allow private finance and participation in all sectors of education, till we reach the goals as mentioned under item 8 in section one above.

10. Allow tax breaks and incentives for private and NRI funding, for the next 20 years or till we achieve bench marks as mentioned under item 8 in section one above.

Krishna Khannna
Chairman & Founder
i watch……www.wakeupcall.org......Transforming INDIA Sphere: Related Content

Further reflections on solving India's talent shortage (aka education crisis)

I have already argued earlier, in this Blog, that the single most effective move for sorting out the talent shortage (or educational crisis in India) would be to entirely deregulate primary and secondary education. Let the market sort out what works and what does not. There should only be final exams at state and national levels, so that there are comparable results.

The present system of inspections and controls only tends to extreme corruption in our BIMARU states, though in other states the situation is not as bad – I make both statements on the basis of recent personal experiences in India.

State aid and subsidies should be gradually withdrawn, and incentives and rewards given to entrepreneurs willing to create schools that take educationally and economically poor students and get them through the state/national exams at above average levels. That will only work if there are state-wide and nationwide exams at which students are incentivised to do as well as possible, so that it is clear who is doing well and who is not – say at ages 8, 12 and 16.

Alternatively, entirely abolish schools and move to internet-based technical and vocational education – and why should a gifted child of, say, 12 have to sit through 4 more boring years of irrelevant and unhelpful subjects in order to study for a Bachelor's or a Master's degree?

Rather than spending government money in creating more schools, colleges and universities, why not offer tax-incentives for IT/ Pharma/ Space/ Nuclear and other knowledge-intensive companies to set up their own programmes for gifted 12-year olds that will produce first-rate scientists and technologists by the time they are 16 or 18 or 20 in the fields in which the companies want or need them? Sphere: Related Content

Nano food nonsense

I see that a manufacturer has now announced a a chocolate 'slim' shake "containing nanoclusters" which, the manufacturers apparently claim, carry nutrition "directly into the cell".

Unable to verify the claim using Google (which produces only 7 hits when searched for "chocolate slim shake nano direct cell" - none of them relevant), I thought it worth drawing attention to the nonsensicality of the claim.

*All* food is digested by the body (as needed, in the alimentary canal), and is then taken by the blood "directly to the cells" where that nutrition is needed or otherwise should be delivered.

So whether or not a product contains any special "nanoclusters" is not relevant to the process.

Certain "nanoclusters" could conceivably *impede* the process but I can't think of why or how they would *enhance* or by-pass the process. And, if they did so at all, they should certainly not help you to stay slim and/or lose weight. Rather the opposite! Sphere: Related Content

Is colonialism always bad? (The case of Japan in Korea)

Though it does not raise the broader question (above), and though it is not going to be liked by Korean nationalists, a new book documents the positive impact of Japanese colonialism on Korea (Young-Iob Chung, Korea Under Siege, 1876-1945: Capital Formation and Economic Transformation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. xv + 390 pp. $74 (cloth), ISBN: 0-19-517830-0).

Being Indian, I usually think of the question of colonialism in terms of British colonialism in India.

This book provides a useful comparative perspective. I have followed the development of Japan for some time, though my interest has been in Japan post-WWII, and this book significantly extends my knowledge into an earlier period.

It is politically unfashionable to defend colonialism, and I am not sure that there is any moral justification for it.

However, colonialism is "natural": more vigorous and able societies have always colonised less vigorous and able societies in human history - and will probably always do so.

Positively, this enables an inferior culture to learn rapidly and deeply from a superior culture in ways that the colonised culture is usually unable to do because of institutional barriers to learning.

Beyond that generalisation, I guess it is right to assess each colonial legacy in terms of how much it deliberately destroyed versus what it positively tried to contribute.

So British colonialism was better than French or German or Russian or Chinese colonialism in the twentieth century, because the British did not deliberately destroy anything except what they needed to in terms of their economic interests, and they put a certain proportion of money and effort back into the history, archaeology, economic development, infrastructure, education and culture of their colonies. By learning as much as they taught, they left behind new colonial-style institutions that became fundamental to the self-definition of their ex-colonies in almost every case. Sphere: Related Content

British Airways' new campaign against religion

It is interesting to see the furore developing in the UK over Nadia Eweida's wearing, on her necklace, a cross.

Nadia Eweida is of Egyptian descent and has for years been a highly-regarded employee of British Airways, but she was suddenly asked to remove her cross because it was held to be no longer in conformance with BA's regulations regarding uniforms.

The cross in question is the size of a five-pence piece or, for those not familiar with old British coins, about the size of three thumbnails.

Media discussion seems to be focusing on whether or not wearing such a symbol is "essential" to Christianity. However, that is entirely beside the point.

Why has British Airways suddenly starting persecuting people who wear a cross?

This is not, I understand, because BA is anti-Christian.

It must therefore be because British Airways believes that eliminating the cross will help health and hygiene. As well as the punctuality with which aircraft take off and arrive. Not to mention the level of service to passengers.

This is a victory to the campaigning atheists and secularists who are fortunately gaining ascendancy in British Airways.

It is indeed admirable to see atheists, secularists and British Airways now joining the band of those who do not tolerate beliefs that deviate from their own. Sphere: Related Content

Open Letter to the Indian Finance Minister on co-operatives

Dear Finance Minister

Much of India's progress over the decades since India's independence was due to the encouragement of India's co-operatives.

However, the most recent national budget has imposed taxation on co-operative bbanks.

This is an entirely unnecessary and backward step. It will not raise much by way of revenue for the government but will discourage these banks and make life even more difficult for them than it is already, in terms of competition from the commercial national and international banks.

Co-operative banks serve the poorest sections of Indian society and need continued encouragement, not discouragement.

I urge you to remove this new taxation on co-operative banks and restore the situation to what it was before the current year

yours sincerely

Prabhu Guptara Sphere: Related Content