Political war of words

Over the last 2 months or so the war of words between Congress-BJP and BJP-JDU have increased, even more so after Modi has been named as the chairman of the election campaign committee. The politicians have been bickering between bad, worse and worst with their rhetorics and idiotic statements which are nowhere near ground realities (A meal at Rs.12/Rs.5/Rs.1). They have tried to compete with each other in making more outrageous and stupid remarks. Probably, the noise in the media (read television news channels, digital newspapers and printed newspapaers) will get even more and become unbearable as the elections due next year come closer.

But, what I am wondering is how much of all this noise actually reach the majority of the voters in the rural areas. How much of it will they hear and how much will they read/hear about and consider it considering the following factors: illiteracy, availability of newspapers, power for viewing televisions, interest in national politics, considering that in villages the head of the village or the head of the house decide which party to vote to power, big political parties throwing money and liquor at the villagers to buy their votes.

Is all the noise generated worth it?

Chicken Republic

It is ironic that the relation between many top Government people and the people they are ruling is almost equivalent to the owner of a chicken farm and the chicken.

The society's people are treated the same way as the chickens are. The mighty/owner can do what they please irrespective of whatever the chickens do. The chickens can keep clucking, eating, sleeping, shouting, but the owner does what he pleases. If the chickens irritate him too much, he can put them elsewhere, shut their mouths with tapes, jail them in small cages in unhygienic conditions without food or water and even kill them. What can the chicken do? Cluck again? Maybe poke/bite the owner. Well, next thing, the owner blunts the beaks of all the chicken with hot iron rods. Meaning, more pain for all the chickens, including some who didn't do anything in the first place.

From the perspective of the owner, the chicken's only reason to live is to serve the owner by laying eggs and giving its body to be relished on the owner's dining table. Much the same way, many politicians in many countries view their own public. They use and abuse the people only to make gains at their costs. The only human aspect of intelligence they use is worse. They lie to the public by saying that they are doing is good for the public. They further prop up their loyal corrupt breed in key positions and control all the news the people hear by owning the media. They further make profit by setting up companies for which they illegally give inherent advantages (mining licenses; spectrum at throw away prices; by blocking and losing other people's applications; by changing rules to favour their favourite company; make even more money on the side betting on the companies they are going to favour; buying out lands initially where they are going to have some development; by taking name of free market whenever it suits them, else favour socialism if that is the garb by which they are going to make more money; bribes for taking a decision and more bribe for the decision taken in someone's favour). The politicians are going to keep getting stronger as they work day in and day out on how to build competitive advantages over the public to keep them controlled. The same way the owner keeps so many under chicken under control.

P.S: By no means this post is trying to demean the public as having a chicken-ish attitude. Instead, it wants to show how normal humans tend to become powerful relative to the people who they rule, that the difference between them is more like the owner and his chicken.

What this means is that: The day the chicken are truly free and are no longer prisoned, killed and eaten is the day I can expect to find a way to break the reckless politicians' agenda and expect a more just, ideal world this planet to have.

A solution to the Govt.'s Agency problem

Almost all govts. in the world are not working in the most efficient way they possibly can. One of the major reasons is the internal looting of the govt by way of corruption (lobbyists influencing policies in a way that the govt and its people suffer), internal fighting among many others. All govt jobs have fixed pay and perks. The motivation to not harm the organisation they are working for is not much (excepting Patriotism and Morality). 

One of the possible solutions for solving the agency problem of the govt officials can be possibly found in the concept of capital markets. (Related post disecting the problem: http://ajitjagan.blogspot.com/2011/04/aligning-interest-of-govt-and-its.html) Capital Markets are inherently more efficient and way faster in doing things.

One solution I am proposing is to have the concept of stock markets with the very govt. itself being treated as a company. Lets take the one market which is most open to accepting free market concept - USA. So USA could be a stock which is freely traded by the citizens in the country just like its sovereign treasury securities.

Source of capital:

Now, lets assume 5 or 10% of all the govt officials salaries are given in the form of the employee stock options with the stock of USA.

Concept of Returns:

As a stock price indicates the problems of the entity and the future potential of the entity, investors will make money if they work in such a way that the country's future is better. They would like to see higher prices of all their 5-10% of their salaries in pensions to not greatly affected. This has the potential to stop the govt. official to work harder, not do things that will harm the country. Similar to how a employee stock option feels for an employee. A sense of ownership is created. These people will be willing to work harder and make better policies as they now have a stake. Once a critical mass is attained in any organisation, the peer pressure will make the others also work more efficiently and effectively.

Valuation of Stock:

This is the most tricky part. Unlike companies where future earnings is the most important parameter to be considered (if today's company abides by rules and destroys the environment, so be it. The investors dont care). But, in case of the country as a whole, there are many subjective parameters to be considered. National Security, Environment,  Sustainability of natural resources, mortality rate, quality of the govt officials making decisions, etc

Maybe an earnings index can be calculated based on the other indices. Take for example the Transparency Index the topic it relates to which is corruption and ease of doing business. Say, Corruption is given a weightage in the earnings as 10% and Ease of doing business as 5%. Next, if the country comes in the top 5 countries where corruption is least, it is given a full score of 10 points= full weightage; Top 10, 9 points; top 20, 7 points; so on and so forth.

So this will enable the country to come to a number based on the current ratings of Indices. As valuation is always subjective and depends on the uncertain future, different investors will predict different ratings and better/worse situation of the country on various parameters. This will make the people govt understand what is it that people want. If they dont do as per the wants of all their citizens, they get a lesser share of their pay/pension. If they manage to reduce crime, increase efficiency, etc, people will be happier and the govt officials will get more money. This also prevents petty politics in the country, which is nothing but a drain on national resources.

Foreign entities as investors:

Once foreign entities buys these stocks, there is an opportunity for the country to get someone who is interested in the well being of the country and get more favourable responses to various initiatives.

Concept of Holding company:

Since USA is made of various states and states resources/financials actually have a major role to play in the countries well being, state govts. should also give their employees the shares of their states.

Today, the govt. officials can play petty politics and get all their money in cash in priority. If the people can have a indirect say in what they think about the decision everyday instead of once in 5/6 years, I am sure better wiser decisions will be made by the govt. officials.

Aligning the interest of govt. and its people

There is a serious lack of alignment in the interests of the government and the collective of the people ruled. How else can anyone explain the future government's intention to liquidate the state/country in the name of helping the poor people.

Take the example of Tamilnadu. The DMK government came to power promising a television for each household (along with )if they win the election. They won the elections and this time upped the ante. Now, they want to give grinder or mixie to all the women. Plus, a laptop to all the students studying in govt. and govt aided colleges. The opposition party, AIADMK, is desperate to win and is playing the DMK's card even better. If they win the election, they promise to give grinder, mixie & a fan to all the women. Students of govt, govt aided and private colleges will get a laptop each and even class 11 and 12 students.

One question that begs to be asked here is: at whose cost? Is it at the  leader's personal cost? Of course not. It is with OPM. Other People's Money. In this case, the very people they will rule.

This problem is occuring and re-occuring due to two different reasons. One, the politicians and the government say that the ultimate test is people's vote and thats all that counts. Easy for them to say. After all, they have no stake or interest in the common people and it is the people who are going to suffer in the medium to long term.

They are no KPI (Key performance Indicators) that their bosses(the common people) or an independent arm of the government have setup or are monitoring. And there is no reward/punishment for the government and its officials based on these KPIs. The KPIs are usually used as a passive parameter to compare the policy initiatives with the effect on the ground by statistical organisations and is used more for academics and deciding policy directives. They are not currently being used as a strict performance measure of the government based on which its rewards are based.

Two, the government is able to exploit the differences between the poor and the others (working middle class and rich). The non-poor have televisions, fan, can afford spending on gold in marriage, etc. The poor on the other hand cant think of months or years ahead when they are focussed on earning their next meal to survive another day. This difference in interests gives the government ample leverage to play the pro-poor populists game while ignoring the long term impact of the decisions. This is equivalent to selling the family silver to get some income to dispose off immediately. I am not against poor, but providing televisions to all of them doesnt serve the purpose of taking them out of poverty. Where will they keep the television? Whats the use of the TV if the government doesnt have enough money to setup power plants and hence doesnt provide electricity to run the TV.

This problem of differed interests in similar that of secured and unsecured lenders in case of a distressed company. While the secured lenders would like a restructuring to happen and turn around the company, the unsecured lenders would like to see the company liquidated. The secured lenders have nothing much to lose as they have security cover over what whatever amounts have been lent. On the other hand, the unsecured lenders have some amount of money to get out of liquidation and if the restructuring doesnt turn the company around, they lose everything. One of the solutions used to align the interests of the secured and unsecured creditors is the concept of strips. Here, all the debt(secured and unsecured) is pooled up and stripped into equivalent pieces. So now, each creditor has both secured and unsecured portions in his 'strip'. Once, these strips are there, all the lenders can come to the best effective way to solve the problem (restructuring or liquidation) based on the business risks involved. 

A similar approach needs to be planned and used to align the interests of the poor and the non-poor so that the government doesn't play the divide and rule game with its people. I am yet to figure out how to make the 'strips'.

Stop losing yourself

Here is what former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh has written in one of his sharpest blog comments on his association with Mulayam Singh Yadav: “I used to think that the most painful thing in life is losing the one you value the most. But I have realised the most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of valuing someone who is so non-deserving. My love to all my erstwhile non-deserving friends for setting me free from their all kinds of burdens and responsibilities. May God give them sense”.

Irrationality?

http://news.oneindia.in/2010/11/18/i-will-not-denotify-lands-illegally-again-bsy.html

According to this logic, I can kill someone or do any crime I want and then promise to not do it again if I am forgiven. WTH?

On a slightly different note, after reading an account on the 26/11 terrorist who got overwhelmed by the spaciousness of the Taj Hotel while he was to put it on fire(as per commands of his commander), I was wondering the following scenario. Suppose say the fellow calls for a negotiation with the government and asks for a lawyer and demands that all his crimes to be irrevocably pardoned and he be given a posh permanent residence in the country in lieu of not harming anyone anymore and giving all details about his crime. Is this 1. Rational, 2. Justifiable to the govt for an agreeable settlement, 3. Govt's response tenable in the court of law ?

What do you think?

Good cop - bad cop strategy

The latest happenings with JMM political party in Jharkand has many of the same traits as that of what JD(S) done a few months back to BJP( yet again!) in Karnataka. Say yes, say no, say maybe and keep the other party frustrated and guessing. These political outfits played good cop - bad cop with the other party and no one knows who is to be believed and who is the decision maker. Trying to straddle (eat & keep the cake too) is the main motivation for these kingmakers. Who says you should be a major party to get handsome gains? In these days, the smaller ones make far more coalition governments with enough monisterial positions and horse-trading behind them. Ethics is something these parties dont know and cant expect them to share anything according to any unwritten rule (Even wriiten constutional rules and laws and openly flawed by politicians).

Coming back to the strategy, I have realised that this is one of the best strategies to use against someone to see what the other party will consider doing and to what extent under each of the conditiion. Call it testing the enemy's response to each of the scenarios and signals you give by playing both sides. From a personal experience I can tell you that this gets worse if the other party talks to you in a friendly manner and is emotionally blackmailing you by signalling consequences.

Dirty politics

Members of Parliament (MPs) and the Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) are corrupting the democracy all for their own benefit. They will pass only those bills that will benefit them get more votes or get more money into their pockets. All those bills that will provide benefit to the people at no benefit to the elected people or those policies that make the government transparent, convict criminals and sieze the corrupted properties are never done. Surprisingly, the same is happening in India and the UK despite years of difference. I wonder how China works...the corrupt people who were caught infamously were hanged till death... Any lessons for the other countries from this? Even terrorists are not hanged till death in India....Are you keeping them for being blackmailed for their release? US even hanged Saddam Hussain in a year or so after capturing him. I just wonder...

Very interesting political song

One of the most interesting songs ever: A new genre, called propaganda song.

The song is so hip and modern and about the man who got the sexiest man alive title in Russia: Putin

My boyfriend is in trouble once again
Got in a fight, got drunk on something nasty
I've had enough and I chased him away
And now I want a man like Putin

One like Putin, full of strength
One like Putin, who won't be a drunk
One like Putin, who wouldn't hurt me
One like Putin, who won't run away!

I've seen him on the news last night
He was telling us that the world has come to crossroads
With one like him, it's easy to be home and out
And now I want a man like Putin

One like Putin, full of strength
One like Putin, who won't be a drunk
One like Putin, who wouldn't hurt me
One like Putin, who won't run away!

Innovative outsourcings

Outsourcing prisoners to another country? Nice idea :P

http://www.businessinsider.com/schwarzenegger-outsource-prisoners-to-mexico-2010-1