22
SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, MUMBAI
JANUARY 22, 2017
ALL THAT MATTERS
UP win? Modi
may not have
done enough
Men over-rate their knowledge. Don’t
know as much as they think they know
SWAMINOMICS
SWAMINATHAN S ANKLESARIA AIYAR
Last week, the International Monetary
Fund estimated that India’s GDP in
2016-17 would be 1% less than earlier
expected, thanks to the disruptions to
demand and supply caused by demonetization (henceforth DM). This was double the earlier
estimate of RBI Governor Urjit Patel, who thought GDP
might be 0.5% of GDP below expectations, of which no
more than 0.15% might be due to DM. Patel expected
DM to have just a temporary impact, whereas the IMF
sees longer-term effects, leading it to cut its GDP growth
estimate for the next year too by 0.5%.
Earlier, the IMF predicted India would be the fastest growing major economy for years to come. Its revised estimates suggest India will fall below China in
2016-17, but overtake China again next year, as the
pain of DM eases.
The IMF is not the best predictor in the world, but
it is independent of the government. Hence, its estimates carry weight. Casual labour, agriculture, auto
and housing have been badly affected. The hit to GDP
this year and the next adds up to a massive Rs 230,000
crore of income lost. CMIE estimates that the cost of
printing transporting and distributing new notes was
an additional Rs 16,800 crore. All this adds up to almost
10 years of wage spending via MNREGA.
Modi always knew the cost would be high, and called
on voters to bear it for the greater good of tackling black
money. Initially, there were high hopes that 10-20% of
high value notes would remain uncashed, costing black
holders Rs 150,000-300,000 crore. The RBI could write
off this liability and pay the sum as a special dividend
to the government, enabling it to put Rs 50,000-100,000
into the 26 million Jan Dhan accounts, and have cash
to spare for public investment.
Alas, recent reports suggest that the laundering of old
notes has been very successful, so barely 3% of old notes
will be uncashed and written off. The RBI says it is too
early to say: notes are still being counted. But even 3%
means a windfall of Rs 45,000 crore. Add taxes paid by
those declaring old notes as black income, and the government may have Rs 75,000 crore to re-distribute. That’s
much less than expected, yet enough to put Rs 3,000 into
each JDY account. This may seem a partial success to
many voters. Modi may look the first politician to redistribute black money to the masses. Besides, he will
COUNTRY MANGE MORE: Modi’s projection as a moral
crusader can yield only limited electoral returns. He
needs to deliver on his promises of economic growth
and a much cleaner government
surely promise follow-up measures against black money
yielding additional distributable money next year.
Only 15 million of the 26 million JDY accounts have
been seeded with Aadhar, raising questions whether the
government can really reach all the masses. But since
voters expect very little of politicians, even partial successes can win votes. The disastrous 2008 Kosi floods
looked fatal for Nitishi Kumar in the coming state election. Yet he won in most flood-affected areas since even
his limited flood relief was more than voters expected.
Neither the cost of nor goodies from demonetisation
will decide the coming state elections. Far more important
is the image Modi projects as a moral crusader who will
transform India. He won the 2014 general election by selling dreams that no other politician had the credibility to
purvey. One dream was of rising jobs for all, arising from
rapid economic growth. The second was of much cleaner
government, ending the old corrupt politics.
Till now, Modi has not delivered enough on either
count. GDP growth is below expectations, agitations for
job reservations highlight the lack of employment, private
investment has plummeted and exports -- the mainspring
of fast growth for every miracle economy in history—remain weak. Modi has ended big corruption in New Delhi,
but small corruption is endemic in state governments
(including Gujarat) and the lower bureaucracy. The Akali Dal in Punjab has a terrible reputation for corruption,
yet Modi dares not dump this coalition partner.
Whatever DM’s economic ill-effects and bungled
implementation, it carries a ring of credibility in
moral purpose. Now, moral purpose can yield electoral
returns for a time, but is soon overtaken by outcomes.
Indira Gandhi’s ‘Garibi Hatao’ platform and VP Singh’s
anti-Bofors crusade in 1989 yielded big temporary electoral gains followed by a crash. Modi is a better marketer of dreams, and a better implementer than these
two. But he could yet lose the UP election for not doing
enough to convert dreams into reality.
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A few years ago, Rolf Dobelli wrote a piece in a British newspaper
warning people that news was injurious to health, and they were
better off kicking their breaking-news addiction. Though it did earn
him the wrath of some journos, the viral article helped the Swiss
thinker and entrepreneur sell some more copies of his bestseller ‘The
Art of Thinking Clearly’. The book is a handbook of thinking errors –
99 to be precise. In India at the invitation of IDFC Asset Management
Co to educate investors about common cognitive errors, Dobelli
tells Neelam Raaj why you should choose logic over gut feeling
Let’s start with the last chapter
in your book in which you’ve argued that like sugar, we’re consuming too much news. Is the
problem quantity or quality?
I’m not against journalists but I am against
these short bits of news that are clogging
our brain and not doing anything to improve
our understanding of the world. A plane
crashed in Mozambique, a bomb exploded
in Syria. I don’t need to know that. What I
need to know is what the war in Syria is all
about. Long articles, books and opinion
pieces do the job. News is as bad as sugar for
our system. It gives you a distorted risk map
of the world. If you go by headlines, terrorism is way more prevalent than say, antibiotic resistance. Nobody wants to read about
the less flashy things; they’re not scary, and
you can’t show shocking pictures.
FOR THE
RECORD
What about you? How long have you been
on the no-news diet? Haven’t you been tempted to break it?
I’ve avoided newspapers for about sixseven years. I did break it for the US elections. I’d really hoped Hillary would win.
In hindsight, I shouldn’t have wasted my
time because I can’t change it anyway. But
now I’m clean again.
So what’s your take on social media? Should
we shut ourselves from that too?
I was one of the first guys in Switzerland
to go on Twitter. But now I am off it. It
thinking errors. These are so hardwired in
our brain that they’re hard to get rid of. And
I’m happy if I can improve the quality of my
decisions by 5 or 10%.
The Times London called you the self-help
guru Germans love. Why do you think you click
with German readers?
The books have sold extremely well in
Germany. I don’t know why. I think people
are fed up with the other genre of self-help
books – look deep inside of you, the truth
is inside of you. My message is contrary
to that and it’s fresh and practical.
But you’ve said in the preface in that your
book is not a how-to guide…
Yes, it’s not. How-tos are like playing the
lottery. Some tips will work for you, others
won’t. My book is based on research and
psychology.
doesn’t help me make better
decisions for my life, and it is
stressful. Social media is entertaining but if it’s entertainment
I want, I prefer a book or movie.
You’re in Delhi to give a talk to IDFC’s investors. So what’s the kind of advice you’re giving
them?
If you have a financial decision to make,
don’t go by the skin of your pants or listen
to your gut. Be as rational as you can because your first instinct is usually wrong.
If you know the thinking traps, then you
can better avoid them.
There are certain environments where
you can go by your feelings say, in choosing
your partner. But when it comes
to complex financial decisions, geopolitics, internet,
etc, don’t go by your gut.
You might get lucky but
it’s better not to go with
your gut.
What’s next?
This book is mainly for business and financial decisions. I’d like to show how to
apply these to life decisions. The sunk cost
fallacy, for example. Say, you’ve taken a
course and you realise early on that it’s
wrong for you but you stick on. We tend to
stick with the wrong decisions because
you’ve invested time and money. If you
have to quit, the sooner the better.
Are there some thinking errors that men
or women are more prone to?
Men are completely outlandish
when it comes to estimating their
skills or knowledge. We don’t
know as much as we think we
know. It’s one of the reasons we
make unrealistic resolutions. How
often does it happen that you do
everything on your to-do list? Yet we
don’t learn from it. When it comes to
social proof – a phenomenon where
people copy the behaviour of others
– women tend to be swept away.
However, in most of the
traps, men and
women are
equally bad.
How have you applied the
book to your life?
Yes, and it has helped me
tremendously, as an entrepreneur who has built a company
and I am now an investor
myself. But you
will not be
able to get rid
of all these
Before pointing fingers, let’s not forget that there’s a Trump within all of us
POLITICALLY INCORRECT
SHOBHAA DE
American poet Anne Waldman’s
call to arms at the Jaipur Lit Fest’s
inaugural session, has got the
chattering classes – well, chattering some more. After our very
own Gulzar’s genteel yet ‘zabardast’ comments (“If
you don’t get your feet dirty, the ink of your pen can
dry up,”), it was left to Waldman to remind the audience about why we read and write in the first place:
“Literature should wake up the world to itself...” The
call to direct action did not surprise anybody familiar with the poet’s work. Describing Donald Trump’s
inauguration as ‘horrible’, Waldman gave a “shout
out to sisters, children and all women marching
towards Washington...” It was promptly dubbed the
lit fest’s Meryl Streep moment.
A couple of days earlier, at another lit fest in
Kolkata, anguished writers and poets were making
similar points. An American poet read out his
work, with each verse starting and ending with
an impassioned refrain: “There is blood on our
hands.” The night was cold. My blood was running
colder. Another speaker referred to Trump’s inauguration as an “apocalypse”. In a dignified and
moving keynote address, Nayantara Sahgal reminded the spell-bound audience that India is for
all Indians and is certainly not exclusively a
‘Hindu India’. The evening’s topic, “Love in the
time of vitriol ’, generated a fascinating array of
presentations. Haji Syed Salman Chishtey kept
his address charmingly tender, quoting Rumi and
using his expressive hands to make pertinent
points about the 800-year-old, non-discriminatory
traditions at Ajmer Sharif. There was Sahitya
Akademi Award winning writer-poet Jerry Pinto
sharing his ‘My prejudice is better than yours’,
work. Sandip Roy recounted a personal encounter
with a Muslim taxi-driver that, to him, encapsulated the true meaning of love while Ram Rahman
relived his past via the poignant love story of his
remarkable parents. And then, there was welcome
and unexpected mirth, as veteran actor Barun
Chanda commented, “There are two things all
Bengalis must suffer at least once during their
CALL TO ACTION: Literature should wake up the
world to itself, American poet Anne Waldman
told the audience at Jaipur Literature Festival
lifetime – malaria and poetry.”
As invitees left the venue after expressing solidarity and hope by lighting candles, they were sniffling and wiping tears. Yes, the mercury had indeed
dropped dramatically, in more ways than one.
At about the same time, a teenager was being
Why both Modi and Trump
are textbook populists
BY INVITATION
AMIT VARMA
As Donald Trump raised his tiny paw
and took the presidential oath this
Friday, I had just finished reading an
outstanding book that, I thought, explained Trump as well as many other
leaders on the world stage today. In ‘What is Populism?’
Jan-Werner Müller, a Princeton professor, lays out all
the ingredients from which you can cook up a populist
movement. I was struck by how closely our own prime
minister, Narendra Modi, matched Müller’s definition.
Consider the following characteristics that characterise
populists, as defined by Müller.
One, they claim that not only do they represent the
people, but that whoever does not support them is, by
definition, not part of ‘the people’. Müller says this is
“the core claim of populism: only some of the people
are really the people.” As Trump put it in May last year,
“the only important thing is the unification of the
BIRDS OF A FEATHER? Populists think in simplistic terms.
Modi’s demonetisation is an example of this, as is
Trump’s attribution of America’s job losses to
immigration and outsourcing
people— because the other people don’t mean anything.”
Think of how the BJP treats Muslims and Dalits as
second-class citizens.
Two, populists are not just anti-pluralism, but they’re
also anti-elite. Müller writes, “Populists pit the pure,
innocent, always hardworking people against a corrupt
elite who do not really work (…) and, in right-wing
populism, also against the very bottom of society.”
Think of Modi’s railings against the “Lutyens elite”.
Three, they portray themselves as victims even when
they are in power. As Müller puts it, “majorities act like
mistreated minorities.” Modi still rants against the elite
even though he is now their leader, and paid BJP trolls
still call journalists ‘presstitutes’ even though they control much of the media. Trump, who has been a crony
capitalist insider all his life, is a classic example of a
pig calling the pigsty dirty.
Four, populist parties tend to become monolithic,
“with the rank-and-file clearly subordinated to a single
leader.” Trump decimated the Republican Party on the
way up, just as Modi is now the Supreme Leader within
the BJP, which once had multiple leaders of stature.
Five, populists pride themselves on their “proximity
to the people.” Modi being a ‘chaiwalla’ is a key part of
his narrative, and as that famous photoshopped picture
of him sweeping a floor shows, the common-man element
is important to him. As it is, indeed, to other populists.
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez
both hosted shows similar to Modi’s Mann Ki Baat.
Six, populism is simplistic, so populists can only
think in simplistic terms, which can lead to “an oversimplification of policy challenges.” Modi’s demonetisation is an example of this, as is Trump’s attribution of
America’s job losses to immigration and outsourcing.
Seven, they tend to believe in conspiracy theories,
which “are rooted in and emerge from the very logic of
populism itself.” Indeed, the RSS’s view of history is
itself a sort of giant conspiracy theory.
How do populists behave once in power? Muller outlines three things that they tend to do.
One, they “colonize or occupy the state”. They fill
up all the institutions with their own people, co-opt those
that are independent, and reshape the system to their
will. Think of Modi’s appointments of cronies to the
Censor Board and FTII, the replacement of the Planning
Commission with Niti Aayog, and the recent virtual
demotion of the RBI to an arm of the finance ministry.
Two, they “engage in mass clientelism: the exchange
of material and immaterial favors by elites for mass
political support.” Think of the sops Modi offered before
the Bihar elections, or the ones expected in the next
couple of budgets leading up to important elections.
Three, they shut down dissent in civil society, starting with NGOs. Muller writes, “rulers like Vladimir
Putin in Russia, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and PiS in
Poland have gone out of their way to try to discredit
NGOs as being controlled by outside powers (and declare
them ‘foreign agents’).” Sounds familiar?
I’ll leave you with a pleasant thought, though.
Here’s why I think both Modi’s and Trump’s populism
will ultimately fail. The narratives of populism, based
on some of the people being all of the people, only
work in broadly homogenous societies. The US will
be a minority-majority country by the middle of the
century (ie, whites will be less than 50% of the population), and a Trump won’t be possible then. As for
India, our diversity is our greatest defence against
creeping fascism. Populism might work at the state
level, but nationally, we are too diverse. That puts a
ceiling on how much support Modi can get, which I
believe already peaked in 2014, when he could be all
things to all people. I think he already senses this.
How will he respond?
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aggressively targeted across social media. Zaira
Wasim, a 16-year-old actor who has won the hearts
of India in this year’s biggest film, ‘Dangal’, was
struggling to cope with waves of hate directed at
her for meeting Mehbooba Mufti, and accepting
the chief minister’s description of her as a ‘role
model’. For that ‘crime’, Zaira was mercilessly
trolled to the extent she was forced to apologise
and delete an innocuous post. Irony!
Today, that single word – inclusion – has become dangerous. Anybody using it publicly is
dubbed anti-national. It is a loaded word, with deep
political connotations. But, while leaving the
peaceful garden attached to the beautiful St John’s
Church in Kolkata (Lord Brabourne’s grave is in
the cemetery), where so many speakers had attempted to interpret ‘inclusion’, I felt weary and
sad. Yes, we can continue to meet at similar venues
in different cities, light candles, sing songs, talk
solidarity and oneness...but what happens when
we walk out, holding on to our sentiments and
shawls, hugging ourselves against the biting chill?
Here’s what: We climb into our waiting cars, driven by men who work long hours and need the
money to send to their families in the village of
their birth. We go home and are served food cooked
by people we hire to feed us. Our bathrooms are
cleaned, our dogs walked, our clothes washed, our
gardens tended...by the poor. They represent the
real ‘majority party’ in India. And we do not include them in anything. They know just one religion – poverty. Political pimps exploit them – have
been doing so for years. But wait a minute. We
exploit them, too. So what ‘inclusion’ are we talking about? Till the day our domestics don’t sit at
the table and eat with us. Till the day we don’t
‘allow’ them to use ‘our’ bathrooms. Till the day
they are expected to stand and never sit in our
presence. Till the day we don’t feel outraged if
they believe they can share our sofa...sorry, till the
day we transform this blatant inequality and treat
our staff as equals, let’s console ourselves with
poetry. I’ll skip malaria, though, thank you!
Donald Trump is not the only villain in the
world. All of us are equally guilty.
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Hindu nationalism is more Italian
and Christian than Sonia Gandhi
BY INVITATION
PANKAJ MISHRA
Hindu nationalists have always made large claims
about their exemplary and
inimitable Hindu-ness. In
Essentials of Hindutva, the
book that comes closest to defining the ideology of modern Hindu nationalism, V D Savarkar claimed that the Hindus are a people
who possess a common pitrubhumi or fatherland, common blood, “common Sanskriti
(civilisation)” and a common punyabhumi
or holy land.
A range of figures — from Narendra Modi
alleging that Sonia Gandhi with her Christian ancestry represents ‘Rome Raj’ and V S
Naipaul raging about the Muslim invasions
of India to today’s trolls attacking Western
scholars and journalists — have offered a
distinctive version of Indian history: one in
which a glorious Hindu past is violated by
various foreigners.
This history calls for an acute consciousness of the defeat and humiliation of ancestors,
an awakening to historical pain, and a resolve
to rectify the wrongs of the past with superhuman efforts at power and glory in the present
and future. The latter include self-sacrifice for
the greater cause of the nation, as Modi has
repeatedly exhorted after unleashing demonetisation. An intellectual genealogy of Hindu
nationalism, however, reveals that there is nothing uniquely ‘Hindu’ about it.
Much has been written about the RSS modelling itself on the Nazis and the Fascists of
the 1930s. But the origins of Hindu nationalism are more accurately located in the emotional and psychological matrix of exiled 19thcentury Europeans. Savarkar and many other
upper-caste Hindus derived from these Europeans their obsession with identifying a common fatherland or motherland, blood, civilisation and holy land.
Many educated Europeans in the 19th century, who were entering or being coerced into
the modern world of industry and commerce,
tried to construct an awesome past, often with
the help of outright forgeries (such as the poems of Ossian, which inspired Napoleon as well
as German Romantics). Ransacking the debris
of the past for signs to their glorious future (as
distinct from Gandhi alighting on the humble
charkha), they endowed ruins that had been
ignored for centuries with profound meaning.
Ancient Greece suddenly became for many the
symbol of a lost unity and harmony (budding
Italian nationalists, however, succumbed to
grand visions of ancient Rome).
This new historical consciousness was a
particularly soothing balm to people uprooted
and bewildered by the revolutionary processes
of industrialisation, urbanisation and secularisation. Those traumatised by a profoundly
disruptive modern world developed a strategic
— and selective — memory of the past in order
to reorient themselves in the present and define
the possibilities for a better future. History itself began to seem, as in the Muslim-invasion
version of Indian history, like a series of abrupt
breaks — one that also held out the promise of
radical new beginnings.
The most seductive of these fables of tragic
collapse and imminent rebirth were told by
people from fragmented countries who found
themselves ranged against vast empires, such
THE NATIONALIST: Savarkar was deeply
influenced by Italian thinker Giuseppe
Mazzini who spoke of an Akhand Italy
as the Germans, the Scots and the Italians. And
the most fervent among those dreaming of a
common holy land were exiles and expatriates.
Like the Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) of
today, expatriate Europeans were also the most
zealous nationalists, longing desperately for
identity and belonging in their alien settings.
The most famous and internationally influential among them was the Italian activist and
thinker Giuseppe Mazzini, whose organisation
Young Italy found imitators as far as Japan.
It would be an understatement to say
that Savarkar was obsessed with Mazzini.
Living in London in the first decade of the
20th century, this Chitpavan Brahmin in
his restless exile published a volume of
Mazzini’s writings with a breathless introductory essay. He modelled his organisation
Abhinava Bharat on Young Italy and he
continued to immerse himself in Mazzini’s
writings during his long imprisonment in
Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Militantly irreligious, like Savarkar, Mazzini spoke of regeneration of the Italian nation
rather than of traditional religion. In his view,
Italians had a sacred mission — the establishment of the ‘Third Rome’ following the First
and second Romes of the Caesars and the
Church. He wanted the Italian people, whom
he only knew from afar, to dedicate their lives
to the fulfilment of their nation’s special mission, which involved, among other things, the
creation of undivided or ‘Akhand’ Italy
through the re-conquest of territories that had
once belonged to the first and second Romans.
Nationalism, as Mazzini conclusively defined it, was a system of beliefs that ought to
pervade collective existence, and encourage
the spirit of self-sacrifice. His writing resonates with praise for martyrs who ‘consecrate
with their blood and idea of national liberty’.
Indeed, Lala Lajpat Rai explicitly identified
Mazzini as the founder of a whole new religion
of martyrdom and sacrifice — one that Modi
has pressed upon Indians with special vigour
after the fiasco of demonetisation.
But, like many upper-caste Indian devotees
of Mazzini, Lajpat Rai did not realise that
Mazzini’s own notions were derived from a
hugely influential French Catholic priest
Félicité de Lamennais, whose 1834 book Words
of a Believer was one of the most widely read
books of the 19th century. It was Lamennais
who tried to establish a precise relationship,
subsequently insisted upon by nationalists in
India as well as Italy, between the ‘motherland’,
and the isolated individuals who voluntarily
‘penetrate and become enmeshed’ with it.
Savarkar could not have formulated his
messianic nationalism without the help of
such deeply Christian ideas of sacrifice,
martyrdom, resurrection and redemption
that his hero Mazzini introduced into the
political discourse of the 19th century. Indeed, Mazzini’s fantasies of re-establishing
Akhand Italy and Rome Raj hover over
every page of Essentials of Hindutva; his
pseudo-Catholic obsessions have suffused
all subsequent Hindu nationalist dreams of
a common blood, fatherland, civilization,
and holy land. In this sense at least, Hindu
nationalism is more Italian, and Christian,
than Sonia Gandhi.
Mishra is the author of the forthcoming
book, Age of Anger: A History of the Present
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