Nuclear Deal

Here is a hilarious post on the nuclear deal that makes the point that “common people” have no clue of what the whole nuclear issue is all about.

And that is as it should be. Issues such as “energy security”, the extent of availability, nature and feasibility of various energy sources cannot properly be the concern of “common people”, i.e, those who are not involved with the energy industry. All that common people need to do is to vote with their money for the best producer of energy and these complex issues will be taken care of by those who are best equipped to deal with them - the energy producers in a free market - who have the necessary information, the ability to understand and interpret it and most importantly the motivation to do so. 

That these issues are going to be decided by the political circus that is going on is not as it should be. No matter what decision the government takes, the right of some people (companies) to act on their economic judgements will be violated. This fact has gone unnoticed in all the commentary and debate that the nuclear deal issue has raised, mainly because energy is usually considered far too important to the nation’s economy to be left to the free market. But as Ayn Rand eloquently noted in this speech in Atlas Shrugged

“When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men.“

An industrial economy cannot survive without trade. The only choice that a society has is whether the trade is in money, goods and services in a free market or in favors, cabinet seats and MP’s. And once the latter is chosen, the original issues lose significance. The issues shift from ”What is to be done?” to “Who gets to decide?”. That is the irony of this debate - the debaters who want a voice they have not earned in the running of an industry they know very little about have made the result of the debate inconsequential.

Balancing Rights

In a blog post about pre-marital HIV testing, Sakshi Juneja writes,

“The question of pre-marital HIV testing has been debated in media and on blogs. We are still searching for a balance between:
A) A nation’s effort in curbing a dreaded disease
B) Freeing the society of its prejudices/taboos
C) An individual’s right to protect what is ultimately a private and confidential matter regarding his/her health”

Who is the “we” that is searching for a balance? Presumably it is the voting public. How is the “balance” going to be decided. By majority vote¹. What happens to the rights of the dissenting minority?² They get “balanced away”.

There can be no standard by which to balance any individual’s rights against any “desirable social outcomes”. No social outcome can be desirable if it comes at the cost of deliberately violating someones rights. The sole purpose of proper political action is to secure everyone’s rights. Unless we³ realize this, we will reach a stage where there will be no rights left to balance against anything.

Notes
1) By majority vote - in the theory of democracy; by whoever happens to be in a position of power - in actual practice
2) This is not about the privacy of an HIV+ person in particular. The issue of pre-marital HIV testing raises several legitimate questions which I will try to deal with in another post.
3) We here is everyone who cares about rights.

Found this on Professionalism

“Professionalism is not about adherance to the policies of a bureaucracy. Professionalism is about having the integrity, honesty, and sincere regard for the personhood of the customer, in the context of always doing what is best for the business. Those two things do not need to be in conflict.”

I found this in a reply to a comment on an interesting post on Eric Lippert’s blog. Very well put.

Rest Regulations for Pilots

In a leading article on the front page on 3rd June 2008, The Times of India warned “Sleepy pilot may be flying you“. The article reported that airlines had been operating without any rest rules for pilots for the last two days. The article opened with

“They may have the best inflight service possible, attractive air fares and a great on-time performance record to top it all. But behind those cockpit doors, your airline may have rostered a set of fatigued pilots who have to try hard enough to keep their eyes open.”

Todays edition reports (again in a leading article on the front page):

“An Air India Jaipur-Mumbai flight flew well past its destination with both its pilots fatigued and fast asleep in the cockpit. When the pilots were finally woken up by anxious Mumbai air traffic controllers, the plane was about half way to Goa”

(For context, Air India is the government run airline that for most of its existence was the only airline in the country. Private airline companies opened in the 1990’s after the government opened the airline sector)

Does anyone see the irony?

Civil Service and The Constitution (part 3)

Part 2 of this series examined the contradictions and ambiguities in the Indian constitution.

A contradictory and ambiguous constitution has direct effects on the functioning of the judiciary and the legislatures. With no firm principles to guide them, judges have no standards other than their own convictions. With no clear limits on the powers of the legislature, legislators succeed in enacting laws with the sole purpose of extending their hold on power.

However it is the indirect effects of the constitution on the functioning of the executive (the bureaucracy) that this post seeks to examine. Consider a bureaucrat who sincerely intends to do his duty. His duty consists of implementing rules and policies decided by the legislature. The policies decided by a legislature concerned only with extending its hold on power cannot be implemented without violating the rights of individuals. The bureaucrat is left open to charges of discrimination or improper implementation if the victims of the policies seek justice. This creates a motivation to delay any required action or to push responsibility for it on someone else. Moreover the policies of the legislature are subject to arbitrary change as the balance of power shifts. The bureaucrat is then forced to reverse any actions he may have taken. The bureaucrat simply has no way to do his duties honestly. Any principled action he takes will earn him enemies from people in positions of power. Now consider a bureaucrat who has no scruples in doing whatever it takes to advance his career. All that he has to do is to ensure that he remains in the favor of his superiors and take as little responsibility as possible.

The arbitrary and unlimited powers conferred on the legislative and executive branches by the constitution make it impossible for the bureaucracy to function honestly. It is futile to complain that the bureaucracy is ‘corrupt’. It is impossible to reduce ‘corruption’ in the bureaucracy or bring transparency to its functioning without a proper constitution. And it is impossible to have a proper constitution without a widespread recognition of the proper role of a government.

(concluded)

P.S.

In a comment to Part 2 of this series Aristotle The Geek pointed me to this link to Ayn Rand’s essay “The Nature of Government” hosted on this page of The Center For Civil Society.

Civil Service and The Constitution (Part 2)

Part 1 of this series concluded with

“The Indian constitution grants parliament almost unlimited powers to enact laws. It is this that allows politicians and thus the bureaucracy to get away with anything. It is this that breeds corruption.”

This post seeks to elaborate. A constitution is a document that establishes the structure, procedures, powers and duties of a government by means of principles. A constitution is the standard to which enacted laws must confirm and by which they are to be interpreted. For a constitution to be meaningful, it must be unambiguous and consistent. For a constitution to be successful, its principles must be valid.

Here are some articles from the Indian constitution (available here and here)

15. Prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.
(1) The State shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.
…
(3) Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any special provision for women and children.
(4) Nothing in this article or in clause (2) of article 29 shall prevent the State from making any special provision for the advancement of any socially and educationally backward classes of citizens or for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes.

16. Equality of opportunity in matters of public employment
(1) There shall be equality of opportunity for all citizens in matters relating to employment or appointment to any office under the State.
…
(4) Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from making any provision for the reservation of appointments or posts in favour of any backward class of citizens which, in the opinion of the State, is not adequately represented in the services under the State.

23. Prohibition of traffic in human beings and forced labour
(1) Traffic in human beings and begar and other similar forms of forced labour are prohibited and any contravention of this provision shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law.
(2) Nothing in this article shall prevent the State from imposing compulsory service for public purposes, and in imposing such service the State shall not make any discrimination on grounds only of religion, race, caste or class or any of them.

31A. Saving of laws providing for acquisition of estates, etc.—
(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in article 13, no law providing for—
(a) the acquisition by the State of any estate or of any rights therein or the extinguishment or modification of any such rights, or
(b) the taking over of the management of any property by the State for a limited period either in the public interest or in order to secure the proper management of the property
…
(2) In this article,—
(a) the expression ‘‘estate’’ shall, in relation to any local area, have the same meaning as that expression or its local equivalent has in the existing law relating to land tenures in force in that area and shall also include—
(i) any jagir, inam or muafi or other similar grant and in the States of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, any janmam right;
(ii) any land held under ryotwari settlement
…

The Indian Constitution is for the most part not a codification of principles at all, but an attempt to solve some of the social problems (such as untouchability, feudal land holdings, extreme backwardness in most sections of society etc) at the time it was written. Most of the articles follow a pattern of expressing a principle and then laying out conditions under which it can be violated by the state (Also see Ergo’s post as an example of this). This mess of contradictory and concrete-bound articles institutionalizes an approach of rampant pragmatism to governance. It institutionalizes the idea that there are no absolute rights, no absolute principles and no absolute limits to the actions governments can take. The Indian constitution is not a document that protects individuals from the misuse of power by the state. It is a document that protects the state from any legal challenges that individuals might raise (Perhaps the most common phrase in the constitution is “Nothing in this article shall prevent the State…“)

Part 3 will examine the relation between civil service and the constitution.

Individuals and Society

It is very common today to find people advocating political solutions to problems (imagined or real). For example,

Problem:
Lot of people take to smoking
Solution:
Tax tobacco products heavily, Ban the portrayal of smoking in cinema, Punish celebrities who dare to smoke

Problem:
High incidence of fatal accidents on roads
Solution:
Make it mandatory to wear helmets while driving

Problem:
Low representation of women in parliament
Solution:
Make it mandatory for political parties to field women candidates in a certain percentage of constituencies.

and so on.

The implicit premise leading people to advocate such ’solutions’ is that human behavior is primarily conditioned or determined by social circumstances and so the way to solve problems is to frame the right rules, to nudge people in the right directions. This premise is false. Society is merely a group of individuals. It is individual thoughts and actions that determine the course of a society, not the other way round. In fact it is redundant to talk about individual thoughts or actions. It is only individuals and not society that can think or act. Social conditions do have an impact on individuals’ decisions but the choice to act in a particular way ultimately lies with the individual.

Although it is easy to see that the fundamental power of choice lies with individuals, it is a fact that a large number of people do go through their lives like automatons, passively accepting widely held beliefs and acting accordingly. It is this that tempts people to advocate political solutions as a short cut to change peoples’ beliefs and thus their behavior. Further any attempts to implement political solutions makes a society more authoritarian and makes more of its members passive automatons. What then keeps such attempts from being successful? It is the fact that all human achievements are the result of the power of choice. As the number of passive automatons in a society increases, the achievements of its members shrink. Ironically those who believe that social conditions determine human behavior are the ones who do not understand the value of a society of free and independent men.

Civil Service and The Constitution (Part 1)

In an article in The Indian Express, Meeta Rajivlochan says that civil servants should “owe allegiance to the constitution first and foremost”. She goes on to say

“Overt neutrality and strong commitment to the Constitution and the rules of the land make a bureaucrat function much better”.

and concludes

“It is the danger of relinquishing a commitment to the Constitution of India in favour of a more personalised commitment  (political, religious, cultural or otherwise), and not corruption, which is by far the greatest malaise facing the civil service today. Corruption merely undermines the moral integrity of the individual. Abandoning of political neutrality undermines the entire structure and logic of bureaucracy.”

Meeta is right that corruption is not the greatest problem with the Indian state. She is also right in her identification of the problem. But she misses out on its cause. The idea that civil servants should be committed to upholding the constitution comes from the idea of rule by laws, not by men. But an implementation of that idea is only possible if laws are objective, principled and limited. The Indian constitution grants parliament almost unlimited powers to enact laws. It is this that allows politicians and thus the bureaucracy to get away with anything. It is this that breeds corruption.

(Part 2 will take a more detailed look at the Indian Constitution)

License-Raj

An article in today’s The Times of India - Cool cab overcharges ex-top cop (link unavailable) - reports that a cab driver who refused to carry an ex top cop at the fare he was willing to pay was fined and will probably have his license suspended for a month.
“Ribeiro (an ex top cop) argued with the driver that the fare could not exceed Rs 200 (the driver wanted Rs 350) but the driver refused. Ribeiro then took a non-AC taxi and got to his residence and the fare came to Rs 150. Later, the officer complained to the transport commissioner and gave him the taxi number. Following Ribeiro’s complaint, the traffic police fined Singh (the driver) Rs 200.”

“ … While Singh is likely to have his licence suspended for a month, action will also be taken on the vehicle owner. “

“…A L Quadros, the general secretary of the Mumbai Taximen Union to which Singh belongs, admitted that the driver had made a mistake and that they were also considering some action against him.”

Some moral questions:

Why does a driver require a license to operate a cab? Why is it obligatory for a cab driver to carry a passenger against his judgement? How does the government acquire the right to decide legal fares (in the form of mandatory meters)?

Some practical questions:

Would the same action have been taken if the passenger did not have acquaintances in the ‘authorities’? Aren’t unions supposed to protect the interests of their members?

So much for the socialist claim that the license-raj and price controls protect the interests of the poor from “exploitation” by the rich.

Satire and Cynicism

The editorial page of The Sunday Times has columns by Shobhaa De, Jug Suraiya and Bachi Karkaria, often by all three of them (out of a total of 6 columns). These columns are satirical at best and merely sarcastic at worst. What does so much satire (and sarcasm) on the editorial page (titled ‘All That Matters’) of a widely read newspaper reveal about today’s culture?

The purpose of satire is to ridicule, discredit or expose vices or folly by means of wit and/or sarcasm. Satire is unserious by nature. It deals with concrete details and not with abstract ideas; with effects and not their causes; with the incidental and not the essential. It appeals to emotional evaluation and not to reasoned argument. It has nothing positive to offer.

So much satire reveals that a lot is wrong in the world. There is no dearth of events that can be ridiculed. But more importantly it reveals the cynicism that has set in. It reveals a culture that recognizes that a lot is wrong, fails to identify the causes and believes that any attempts to identify them are futile.