Big Bad Wolves & Red Riding Hoods

Big Bad Wolves & Red Riding Hoods

The good thing about the Indian Me Too movement, kindled at long last, despite  a  seeming rape and murder every other minute somewhere in the country, is that it will empower women/men, and some others too.

At the top of this whole conundrum is the issue of attempted force, as in pressure exerted by powerful people, or actual manhandling, and the lack of consent from the object of their desires. This is indeed valid. Anyone who wants to play Romeo or Juliet should have a willing subject. And have the grace to accept no as no.

In the post article 377, post triple-talaq world, Me Too seems like a logical development and progression. It will empower potential or actual “victims of predators”, at least in the work place. This, as people - owners, promoters, officials, politicians, take care to have their HR departments properly address sexual harassment, and put out suitably stern missives on expected behaviour. And it is already kicking quite a few expendable movie directors and sundry others out of their jobs.

The bad thing about it, mediafest included/notwithstanding, is that it floats like inedible Hyacinth and its cousins, atop our highly polluted rivers.

The dirty rivers being a living metaphor for the Indian people, and their ways, including, in its embrace, the masses, and not just the classes. And the inedible Hyacinth is, of course, the desi Me Too movement.

In mass-market Bharat, niceties like sexual harassment are just foreplay for rape and murder - for the dead tell no tales, except, that is, to the forensic experts.

In urban work places, there are actually men and women who evidently enjoy using their power to demand sexual favours, without too much emphasis on the actual sex. Though, all accounts point to the fact that they get very peeved if they are not granted said favours.

It probably is not really about sexual gratification at all. Certainly, not in a two-way street sort of manner. It is more like a white collar version of “honour stalking”.

If it was about sex down and dirty, it might be altogether better for these well-heeled people to take a quick trip to Bangkok, Dubai or London, and pay for it, short-time, long-time, with or without adoration included - with no resultant fallout, and no strings attached.

But what prompts the high and mighty to want to play “house” and “doctor-doctor” right in the office, is one for the shrinks.

Hollywood stars, caught receiving gratification in parked cars in Beverly Hills, have said they prefer prostitutes to dates. It is, they have said, a lot less complicated and far less expensive. It certainly cannot lead to long-term relationships, at least in the usual sense, and therefore no aggravated damages/alimony when it goes south. It also does not, unless caught out by police torches, alert wives and girlfriends parked elsewhere.

Nevertheless, the global Me Too movement and its desi chapter has added a raspberry to the statute of limitations clause that save even tax dodgers.

Instead, it is au fait to remember being molested, harassed or raped, if not all of the above, ten, twenty or more years later, and demand retributive compensation with a straight, if tearful face. And so, almost anybody can be trashed at will, and every person in the public eye is vulnerable. If you think about it, a blameless existence is no insurance against a perceived transgression. An accused person is expected to deny wrong doing is he or she not? But, who can assuage the alleged victim’s hurt if not the polluted State?

The entire issue smacks of a probity that neither the Indian people nor the Americans or their developed world compatriots across the Atlantic possess. Ask a priest or godman for a view these days, here or there, and he looks away in guilty embarrassment. Compared to the washing of dirty linen in public Me Too entails, the invasiveness of Aadhar is like a love tap.  

And how will allegations stand up in a court of law that generally revels in incontrovertible proof, and lets murderers off if there is less?

Or will sexual harassment and rape, in our post-modern jurisprudence, be decided on the victim’s accusation and recollection of doings and sayings decades ago? Will it be thought sufficient and good enough to punish the accused?

On the other hand, perhaps it won’t come to that. Involving the police with FIRs, is not the same as involving the judiciary over several years if not decades afresh.

Isn’t dragging people through the mud of calumny enjoyable enough after all? Ruining a reputation with salacious allegations, true or otherwise, is certainly hilarious till someone commits suicide over it. People have done so over less. Or more. Ask any real rape victim. And the probable moral clincher if one is at all bothered about morality. Why was it tolerable then and not so now?

What kind of defence is it that is being trotted out over the media? Sample a few of the statements - I didn’t have the courage to out the predator days or months after it happened, but am doing so now because people in America have made it alright? At the time, I was focused on getting ahead in my career, which my “monster-predator” was in a position to advance. I took the benefits, trading my integrity if not my virtue at the time, but now I cannot let a day go by without naming the wolf in the paddock of my desirable years.

Is it gender insensitive and patriarchal to trash this fraudulent nonsense? Victims- men, women and people of other genders are not going to be trusted if they employ such tactics. Even Harvey Weinstein is about to get off stock free for lack of proof. So when will our urban warriors for gender equality try to earn their place in the sun by dint of their merit, instead of trying to bring down people they happily took favours from in their misspent youth?

Many women and men who do not use their sexuality to get ahead in the work place are left behind by those who have no compunction in doing so. This includes, of course, the not so good looking, and older people who may be very competent at their jobs, if nowhere near as sexually attractive.

In the age of television and the internet it is evident that the Me Too complainers, almost without exception, would theoretically have no problem trading on their competence today if not their looks. That most are unemployed and alone is telling and not without irony.

It is nobody’s case that progress on gender equality, gender pay etc. usually takes a tortuous route through such back alleys. And perhaps in years to come, the Me Too movement, here and elsewhere, will seem as quaint and droll as Suffragettes chaining themselves to the railings at Westminster to demand voting  rights for women.

Of course, the other implication, unintended perhaps, is that anything goes, as long as it is not in the workplace, does not involve a powerful predator playing wolf and a victim wearing Red Riding’s hood, or in all the fun places and events related to  work offsites. And this goes double for pluralities.

All this legitimate if tiresome fuss might make the art of making a pass a thing of the past in the work place. Who knows before-hand, except for clairvoyance, whether Jack or Jill actually wants to take a walk up the hill?

(1,254 words)

October 12^th, 2018

For: My Nation

Gautam Mukherjee

BOOK REVIEW: GURU: NARENDRA RAVAL OF KENYA

BOOK REVIEW

TITLE: GURU

AUTHORS: NARENDRA RAVAL &KAILASH MOTA

PUBLISHER: BLOOMSBURY, 2018, Rs. 499/-

Story Of An Impoverished Ethnic Indian Made Great & Good In Kenya

Forewords to this autobiography of Narendra Naval ( nicknamed Guru), one of Kenya’s greatest Industrialists, include congratulatory letters from Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has long known Raval, and President Uhuru Kenyatta, the Amherst educated son of the legendary Jomo Kenyatta.

Another is from Lord Raj Loomba of the UK, whose charitable foundation Raval supports.  The Loomba Foundation helps widows in India, and at the behest of Raval, in Kenya as well.

This book speaks endearingly and conversationally, in Raval’s voice. It is cast in inspirational terms, with a plethora of slogans, pieties and bon mots, with a clear belief in destiny. It descends from time to time into a family and organisational scrap book - without however taking anything away from the impressive tale at its core.  

Raval was born in a joint family in the tiny village of Mathak in the Halvad Taluka of the Surendranagar District of Gujarat, the gateway to Saurashtra. His father and family were thrown out of the prosperous family home by his grandfather before Raval turned 10.

Raval’s early years were spent dodging school and book knowledge, not only while in his father’s care, but elsewhere in Gujarat, with his maternal grandparents, and maternal uncles.

A key turning point was his induction as a priest into the Swaminarayan sect. It became something of a lifelong association and network for him. It began in his late teens, as a priest, first in Bhuj, and later in Nairobi, when he was sent to a Kenyan temple.  It laid down the basis of his freelance priestly work carried out later at Nakuru, a Kenyan hill resort.

It also has a good deal to do with his own spiritual outlook and honesty, his caring attitude towards employees and colleagues, animals and birds. All this combined with Narendra Raval’s extraordinary abilities in palmistry and astrology that made him much sought  after in the Gujarati business circles in Kenya and the UK.

It was at Nakuru where the young Brahmin priest began to be called Guru for the first time.   This, both for his priestly and astrological skills, the latter learned initially during his time at the Bhuj Swaminarayan Temple.

It was also at Nakuru where he met President Daniel Arap Moi for the first time in rather mundane circumstances when he had tagged along with a couple of technicians who had gone to fix the President’s TV.

He was invited, soon after, to live in as resident priest and spiritual adviser by the owners of Kenya’s most successful steel rolling mills – the  Kikuyu Steel Rolling Mills in Nairobi. Raval was thus introduced, in his early twenties, to an opulent business environment by the Dayabhai H Patel family.

He started going to the office with the head of the family, and learnt about the steel rolling business in all its aspects. By the time, not very long after, this family sold up and went their separate ways, to the US, UK, and elsewhere, Raval had his basic grounding in the steel business. He also had a renewable work permit for Kenya.

Next, Raval teamed up with some of his Nakuru friends who ran a hardware business –Delta Hardware, and persuaded them to open a Nairobi branch for wholesaling. Introducing more and more steel items to the mix out of his knowledge at Kikuyu, Raval gradually took the business national, started importing quota regulated items, and grew Delta Harware to the biggest business in its field in Kenya. But Raval was not a shareholder, nor did he work for a salary. The very growth he induced led to the split and closure of Delta by its four partners. By now Raval had also got married to Neeta, a qualified chemist. Though so much had happened, he was only 23 and not yet a Kenyan citizen.

In Raval’s life, many turns for the better, it is seen, was always preceded by being sent back to square one.

Married and almost penniless, Raval resolved to  set up for himself, opening the “Steel Centre” in the name of Neeta who was a Kenyan citizen already. They rented a warehouse in a new business district of Gikomba in Nairobi, even though it was in a rough neighborhood.

But in 4 years, between 1986 and 1990, the business had grown to Kenyan Shillings 1 million. Raval found finance from wealthy friends and friendly bankers, all due to his priestly  work of yore and his ongoing astrology that he still dispensed to help many people free-of-charge.

By 1993, Steel Centre in turn was now the largest hardware trading business in Kenya encompassing wholesaling and retail as well. The two existing steel rolling mills in Kenya could not keep up with demand, and so, Raval resolved to set up a steel rolling mill of his own. The Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) was instrumental in both financing Raval’s move into manufacturing (Devki Steel Mills Ltd.) and seeing it through to stability by 1996.

And meticulous accounting, he says is: “The heart and soul of your business. A small error, if not nipped in the bud, can bring down a well established business”.  

Gradually, Narendra Raval expanded, acquired, diversified, and backward integrated, growing his businesses into the “one stop manufacturer for all infrastructure products” he dreamed of. This, in time, meant Steel, Building Materials, Cement, and spreading out into the countries neighboring Kenya as well.

The sheer humility of the narration is impressive, coming as it does from a self-made billionaire, and one of the leading private sector lights of Africa.

And yes, one has to agree with the Narendra Raval of 2018, priest, astrologer, philanthropist, industrialist, pater familias, when he says: “ Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others”.

(955 words)

October 3^rd, 2018

For: The Sunday Pioneer, AGENDA, BOOKS

Gautam Mukherjee

BOOK REVIEW KAUSHIK BASU THE REPUBLIC OF BELIEFS

BOOK REVIEW

AUTHOR: KAUSHIK BASU

TITLE: THE REPUBLIC OF BELIEFS-A NEW APPROACH TO LAW AND ECONOMICS

PUBLISHER: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2018

Law And Economics Must Meet At The Crossroads

Kaushik Basu currently teaches Economics and International Studies at Cornell University in the US. He has had an illustrious career, with distinguished stints as chief economist and senior vice president at the World Bank, and later, in this neck of the woods, Basu was chief economic adviser to the Government of India during UPA rule.

Basu mostly leans Left in his economic ideas, and is a former student, amongst several others, of Nobel Laureate and “Welfare” economist Amartya Sen - who is also from India and a fellow Bengali too.

This latest, extensively researched book, that quotes many thinkers to illustrate his points, has Kaushik Basu exploring the co-relationship between laws and economics. It tries, to an extent to speak to the ordinary reader, but is, in fact, quite an academic tome.  Still, some of its basic premises are readily graspable.

Why are some laws both obeyed and enforced, he asks, while others stay quite ineffective on the statute books? In India, he points out, there are, in fact, many laws that are rarely used or enforced.  Basu writes, that in order for a law to be  properly implemented and used, it must intersect at a “focal point” with society and its economic ideas. 

In other words it must make sense both to the enforcers of the law and the people it is intended for. Otherwise, both are likely to collude in its subversion or leaving it on the shelf.

“The most important ingredients of a republic, including its power and might, reside in nothing more than the beliefs and expectations of ordinary people going about their daily lives and quotidian chores. It is in this sense that we are all citizens of the republic of beliefs,” writes Kaushik Basu. He goes on to write: “The focal point is a somewhat mysterious concept that emerged from modern game theory”.

This concept of intersecting beliefs however, is the main point of this book, and Basu’s suggestions towards a more effective socio-legal environment essential for orderly progress, are predicated upon it.

Basu believes one of the purposes of law, which is an instrument of the State as a collective, is to influence and alter the collective behavior of its people towards preset objectives. In this he goes beyond the more usual objective of an “orderly society” so that economics can do its stuff in peace. He actually wants to influence the populace via the laws adopted. He writes, “The focal point approach relies on the expressive function or suggestive power of the law and not on any human irrationality. It is purely a device that uses suggestion to facilitate coordination”.

Basu clarifies further: “What the focal approach to law and economics does is to take on the full economy game, including the police and the judge, and then tries to explain how and why the law works”.

In other words, you need all the ingredients to be in some form of tacit agreement on the premises assumed by both the given law, and the economic context it operates in, for it to be widely adopted and used.

But, quite often, “It is not evident what constitutes a focal point for different groups of people”. In a highly diversified country like India this becomes doubly relevant  and even more difficult to arrive at.

Traditional laws, he says, were less inclusive in their approach, and usually were made up based on the consensus of a few, and then, sometimes imposed, when they were vigorously enforced, upon the many. He states that is why they often did not work, even though his outright demoting of the traditional approach without very much ado, is less than convincing. 

However, for a left-leaning thinker, inclusiveness must appear far more attractive as a basis to build upon, rather than a top-down approach to economic order and law-giving. Even if the latter method goes back to the Hammurabi Code and Moses’ Ten Commandments.

Basu is an admirer of the ancient Greek City States, and the way they went about their business. He wants to see the principles enunciated then, spread across a 21^st century global canvas to the extent possible. But this tends to be an impossible seduction, as the many self-contradictory effects  in Democracy show. The idea is pleasant, but it is not easy to remain democratic in a so-called Democracy!

Focal points can be arrived at via custom, and tradition, writes Basu, as in the “tenacious” Indian caste system. They can also be arrived at by discrimination. That is, by giving advantages to a specific group over another or several others. But predictably, Basu is not for allowing free play to it with its overtones of apartheid.

He writes: “The popular view is that if you leave it all to the market, with no government regulations and intervention, discrimination will go away, is not valid. Discrimination arises from a free market. If you want to stop discrimination, you may, in fact, need regulation and conscious affirmative action”.

Kaushik Basu is certainly not for rank Capitalism. He writes: “Once we move beyond payoff-focused critiques to generalized ones, many challenges open up. Human beings are guided not just by their own payoffs but also by habit, fairness, altruism, empathy, envy and many other emotional and psychological proclivities….Conservative economists, who condone selfishness by believing Adam Smith’s concept of the invisible hand will invariably lead such a society to optimal results, end up creating failed societies”.

Is Basu right?  That depends on your own politics and economics. But he certainly puts out an entertaining variation on Nash’s Game Theory to support his plumping for the old economic concept of the Focal Point.

Is such a thing rather theoretical when it comes to Law and Economics? My view is that it certainly is. And also it is not the job of Law so much as Justice to set Society on the right track. Economics marches to its own drummer.

Recent progressive Supreme Court judgements on Homosexuality, Triple Talaq, and women  between the ages of 12 and 50 being allowed to go  to a revered temple that kept them out for millennia,  are all cases in point.

(1,024 words)

October 2^nd, 2018

For: The Sunday Pioneer, AGENDA, BOOKS

Gautam Mukherjee