Gross National Grace

In his classic novel, Shibumi, Trevanian describes "the ineffable quality" as follows:

Shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances. It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be real. Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency. In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming. And in the personality of a man, it is . . . how does one say it? Authority without domination? Something like that

***

Shibumi has stayed with me ever since I read it years ago. 

Spiritual tranquility that is not passive. Being without the angst of becoming. Authority without domination. Do these words not remind us of Gandhi?

And not just Gandhi. Such strength (and beauty) through grace has been the Indian tradition.

Maa Nishada Pratistham Tvamagamahsāsvati Samaa

Yat Kraunchamithunaadekam Avadhi Kaamamohitam

Our first poem was a graceful protest against senseless violence.

I also think of Shabri's ber and the grace with which Ram ate them. And the Bodhi tree under which Siddhartha found his own grace.

I think of the persecuted Parsis who arrived in Gujarat and gracefully made it their home. I think of Somnath that our people built up again and again as a graceful counterpoint to a marauder. I think of Akbar whose Din-e-Ilahi was a nonpareil act of grace.

I think of the universality of Yoga and the syncretic notes of Bismillah Khan.

I think of Ghalib and of Guru Tegh Bahadur.

I think of Rahul Dravid and I think of Irom Sharmila.

Shibumi may be a Japanese word but it is a thoroughly Indian ideal.

***

Modernity has made us less graceful alas.

Our cacophonous republic sees grace as weakness and vanity of intellectuals.

We mistake violence for strength, aggression for assertiveness, garishness for grace.

We pin gallantry medals on police officers who force pebbles inside hapless women.

Our cities are noise, our streets are sewers, our arguments are abuse, our politics is personal destruction.

***

I quite think that grace has been and should remain the eternal idea of India.

It is through grace that we will find balance at home and a place in the world.

We can be humble without being timid, simple yet sophisticated, vocal without being argumentative.

We are better off building reserves of strength, not brandishing the little we have. Indeed, when India eventually achieves Shibumi, she will find she has also become a superpower.

 

***

Lest I am accused of hypocrisy, let me hasten to note that I don't claim to be personally anywhere near this graceful ideal that I write of. It doesn't make me proud but that's how it is.

I do think it is worth striving for. Our reach may far exceed our grasp but at least we can reach for grace.

The Dunciad

Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall
And Universal Darkness buries All | Alexander Pope

***

Mamata Banerjee is merely one more petty dictator in our dunciad full of them.

You see them in buses and airplanes, on bylanes and highways, in pawn shops and palaces. Elbowing for space, clamoring for attention, snarling for effect.

Everyone is an emperor in their own mind. Everyone else is a serf to be trampled on. Our culture's apotheosis of political strongmen is to be seen in this context. They are national role models.

To be credible in this dystopia, Mamata di really has no choice. We should be kind to her.

***

Of course, it's not at all natural for a civilization to be this way. This is a warped way to compensate for something that's broken in the civilization's psyche.

Easiest way to see this is in Pakistan. We find the venom of Zaid Hamid amusing, the baseless boastfulness of her army mirthful, and the stylized propaganda from her analysts absurd.

Still, deep down, we sympathize because we know this lashing out compensates for dreams gone sour.

Much harder is to stare in the mirror. Our petty dictators are compensation too.

***

Going from serfdom to suffrage has not come easy to our profoundly class-obsessed society. Equality of vote has only served to expose every other inequity that scalds the Indian psyche like molten lava.

These inequities are perceived as grievous wrongs which must forcibly be reversed.

For some, the wrongs go back to Manu. For others, to Mohammad bin Qasim. For still others, to Robert Clive. From Bluestar to Babri, Godhra to Gulbarg, Kalahandi to Kargil, Naxalbari to Nelli - wherever one turns, there the wrongs are.

When we stare into history, to coin a phrase, it stares back into us. We all feel wronged in this eternal abyss.

Thence flow envy, bitterness, resentment, and rage - all jostling in a cauldron of deep-seated complexes - inferiority, mostly, which masks itself as superiority in some.

*** 

All humans have some degree of inferiority in us. A healthy response makes us better ourselves. An unhealthy response makes us lord over others.

This "will to power" is perfectly understandable in a traumatized people. This is how we compensate.

Sensitivity to harmless cartoons and disproportionate aggression are just one example of this. Violence against women is yet another. Also road rage. A more trivial illustration are internet trolls who delude themselves into thinking they are equals of more accomplished persons they abuse without provocation.

Once you understand the psychopathy, a lot of behaviors become crystal clear.

Institutional checks and balances can certainly keep a lid on such outbursts. But they can't cure them.

***

There are no easy answers here.

Part of the cure, however, is an honest acceptance of the malady. Dialogs of truth and reconciliation are a crucial place to start.

It then requires a mature people to look ahead, not with a view to reverse or avenge past wrongs but to make a world where all of these grudges have been set aside and buried.

But none of this is remotely possible as long as we keep looking up to leaders who can't overcome their own personal demons.

The Indian Right

National Review, founded by the late William F Buckley, has long been the intellectual fuel behind the American conservative revolution.

When faced with John Derbyshire, one of its prized writers, having penned an astonishingly racist screed, it fired him.

This is what human decency and moral courage required.

It's also what conservatism demands. We conservatives, after all, respect people as individuals. Demonizing people on the basis of their group identities is the very antithesis of conservatism.

***

It's worth contrasting how the self-proclaimed Indian "Right" dealt with a near-identical situation recently.

Subramanian Swamy publicly demanded that Indian Muslims acknowledge their ancestral conversion from Hinduism or forfeit their vote.

When he was confronted, the Indian "Right" reacted with fury. They stood by Dr Swamy over fellow Indians whose right to vote he had brazenly challenged.

They cloaked their indignation in intellectual terms. Freedom of Speech is at stake, they falsely claimed. Then, they welcomed Dr Swamy into their political embrace.

The only morally appropriate response came from Harvard where he will no longer be allowed to teach.

There is no circumstance in which thought leaders of the Indian "Right" would have repudiated someone like John Derbyshire in their midst. Instead, their defensive reflexes would have kicked in and they'd have viciously - and personally - attacked attacked attacked anyone who had the temerity to challenge him.

***

The Indian "Right" is in crisis.

It has no intellectual foundation, no political coherence, and no moral courage.

Intellectually, its views seem indiscernible from social bigotry that litters history's discard pile.

Politically, its machinations seem identical to the establishment it seeks to replace.

Morally, to coin an expression, it has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity to stand up for what is right.

***

The Indian "Right" seems to bundle pride in pre-modern tradition with a wooly notion of modern conservatism.

Not much more needs saying on its intellectual pretenses.

***

A social media star on the "Right" told me once (and I paraphrase) that pandering to India's sub-intellectual communal polity is a necessary means to come to power. Once in power, he asserted, the "Right" would do the right things.

Think about this for a minute.

He was saying that the political support Indian "Right" enjoys comes from people who he didn't think would support anything but the raw meat of soft bigotry.

He was also saying that the rabid views of these supporters could be ignored once the "Right" was in power.

The cynical and patronizing nature of this perspective is breathtaking.

Reminds one of the liberal establishment that this so-called "Right" seeks to displace, doesn't it?

***

The Dr Swamy episode is just one where the "Right" failed a moral test.

There are others.

What if the CM had gone to Zakia Jafri's home and said to her: you are like my mother. I can't possibly fathom your pain but I am sorry that you had to endure it. I can't reverse the horror of what happened and I can't make you less angry, but I can give you justice. This people, this state, this nation - and I -  owe you that.

She would still not forgive him. But he would be a mensch for doing this.

But being a mensch is not what the Indian "Right" does. Instead, its words and actions drip with a cauldron of complexes that are frequently ugly.

Even those who eschew such attitudes feel perfectly at home with those who embrace them.

***

The Indian Right needs to be reinvented.

God knows, we desperately need an intellectually honest, politically vital, and morally strong Right to confront the mediocrity of the Left-Liberal establishment.

But this Right will not emerge from sewers of bigotry, echo chambers of hate, or cultish adulation of individuals. Nor will it ride the horse of establishment mimicry.

Not until the Indian "Right" purges the bigots from its ranks, no matter how seemingly "respectable", will it have the legitimacy to confront the evil of the Left.

Too bad the self-proclaimed Indian "Right" couldn't be more ignorant about this reality.

A False Tryst With Destiny

"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die" | Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie

***

The India that emerged from that dark midnight in August was a fantasy.

The elite believed in it for they were the new viceroys. Freedom fighters believed in it for this was their life's work. Everyone else came along grudgingly or with indifference.

Over the decades that followed, these grudging acquiescences became political fault-lines. Kashmiris, Tamil, Nagas, Assamese, Sikhs - all fought in various ways to negotiate their compact with India. Hindus did the same as did Muslims. Every caste and tribe you can imagine got into the act as well.

The Indian elite - like the British before it - used Saam, Daam, Dand, Bhed to manage this manthan.

The Trillion Dollar question is why?

***

India was the jewel in the British crown for she had the necessary resources that powered the empire.

She had wealth buried in her earth, she had labor to man the outposts of the empire, and she had capital.

After the idealism wore off, the new Indian elite saw precisely what the British or Moguls had seen before. It isn't shared purpose or ideas or values that hold India together - it is her exploitable wealth. 

India went from being a colony of the British to becoming a colony of her new elite. Mumbai simply replaced Manchester.

***

In this sense, India's freedom struggle was a profound failure.

Indians fought the British when they should have fought the reasons British were here in the first place.

There hasn't been a shared sense of Indian destiny in at least two thousand years.

The freedom struggle could have shaped this. Instead, it blamed the British for divide and rule, papered over real Indian differences, and talked about a tryst without spelling out the destiny.

Its legacy is two bloody partitions and the kleptocracies that have inherited the severed limbs.

***

People I respect tell me social reform will resolve this original sin.

I am skeptical for I do not see the centripetal force that will compel such reform.

The Government is at best an impotent spectator and, at worst, a tool of the new colonialists. It borrows from future generations to buy time and space for these colonialists to walk away with India's wealth.

The small number of idealists count for nothing.

The vast everybody else is too distracted with Bollywood and Chetan Bhagat and Sachin's centuries or too numb from shock to even bother.

***

Maybe I see through the glass too darkly.

Maybe, magically, India's unified young have moved beyond their fragmented ancestors.

Maybe an Indian superman will fly in from Krypton to change the course of history.

Or, more likely, eternal India will look at the fantasy of our freedom and, in Eliot's words, laugh without mirth.

The Missing Mirror

The Indian State should have been as relentless as Zakia Jaffri has been.

It should have heard every allegation, pursued every lead, tried the accused, and jailed the guilty.

That it hasn't will haunt this nation for a very long time.

***

After 9/11, even as America reeled, it didn't unleash a murderous frenzy on its own people. Even its incensed bigots knew that the American State would not tolerate such murder. 

Indian bigots, on the other hand, knew full well that the Indian State looks away during such pogroms. The consequence was 1984 and 2002.

In the law, the Indian State may not be the accused. On moral grounds, it is fully guilty.

***

I don't know what Mr Modi did or say during those fateful hours.

I do know that Indians were charred by the hundreds and nobody came to their aid. I also know that men in power have systematically hounded those who've accused them of vile acts of commission and omission.

I'm not a lawyer but, just on this, I can argue for a prima facie case of obstruction of justice.

It matters little if the obstructor is innocent or guilty of the original crime. That he takes overt actions to prevent the airing of all possible evidence is in itself an affront to justice. That he does so using the authority of the State makes him still more culpable.

Even so, I doubt if the Indian State will press obstruction charges. That's not what it does.

Instead, it smothers the uncomfortable silences of places like Gulbarg Society and Trilokpuri.

The process of so-called justice takes deliberate decades. In this time, the victims - traumatized widows mostly - fade away into death or shadows. Numbness and forgetting constitutes justice for them.

If justice forces society to confront its own reality in the mirror of truth, India doesn't even have a mirror.

***

History is kinder to victims.

Aurangzeb may have been the Emperor in his time, but his legacy is that of cold-blooded murder.

He wasn't present at Sis Ganj in the November of 1675. Yet, it is he - not the executioner - who we remember. We spit at Aurangzeb's name and revere the unflinching Guru Tegh Bahadur.

That's how history is. That's how history will be.

It will silently record the failures of the Indian State and the cowardice of her people who - repeatedly - have failed to use democracy to show their own moral spine.

It will record that India voted for a leader who rationalized mass murder in 1984. It will also record that Gujarat voted for a leader whose abominable political views, at a minimum, set stage for 2002.

And, history will never forget Zakia Jaffri for her unrelenting efforts to unearth the truth. It will walk in her shoes and see with her eyes.

In her shoes, we would all do exactly what she has done.

***

What about those who wield words to dismiss the wail of widows? For them, history reserves obscurity - its ultimate contempt.

Their politics is cynical pandering to the insecure impulses in human nature. Their justice is clever arguments, brazen intimidation, and a technical reading of the law. Their closure is a self-congratulatory game of blaming the victim for her own unfathomable sorrow.

History will not care for any of this. It will ask where they stood in the deliberate decades of injustice.

With the powerless widow helping her in every possible way to uncover the truth? Or, with the powerful State helping it at every step to delay, deny, and diminish the widow's wail?

And that is the bottom line.

The Wheel of Ashoka

Watching "Inshallah Kashmir" the other day, I had an epiphany.

I now understand why we talk past each other on so many things.

***

All issues worth debating have layers in them. Which layer one chooses to look at frames one's narrative.

There is the human layer. Nothing more personal than raw human emotion.

There is the institutional layer. Nothing more practical than policy prescriptions.

There is the ideas layer. Nothing more inspiring than the force of ideas.

We talk past each other because we talk in different layers.

***

I've often made larger points using stories of humble people.

Personalizing any issue makes it hard for empathetic people to turn away. The stories of the tortured and the exiled of Kashmir are precisely that. Or those of Indians charred to death in their own homes, by their neighbors in Gujarat. Or the human-level horrors in Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Jaffna, Iraq, Afghanistan, Balochistan, Dharavi, Rwanda, and all manner of other places.

Suffering lives where humans dwell. Their stories tell themselves, often ending without closure.

***

Then, there are failing Governments, amoral Corporations, and communal identities to talk about.

Talking at this layer moves the conversation away from personal horrors to policy debates. These stories are about institutional interests, goals, capabilities, actions, conflicts, successes, and failures. They lend themselves to analysis and prescription. It feels great to lay out options, debate pros and cons, and make recommendations - even if nothing is ever done about what one suggests. Kashmir, for example, becomes a discussion of Center vs State, Army and AFSPA, Pakistan and jihadis, NHPC and CRPF, etc etc etc

Institutions are actionable. Their stories are mostly academic, but satisfy like comfort food.

***

Finally, there is the realm of ideas.

Here, we abstract far away from the suffering people or their failing institutions. Our focus is on the eternal story of right versus wrong. There are larger patterns in the ebb and flow of history. These allow us to see the world beyond our own humble existence. Here, Kashmir is not a heaven on earth or hell on people but a battle of big ideas like faith and identity and freedom and modern nationhood.

Ideas are where history is made. Their stories are grand because this is how humans become gods.

***

We talk past each other because we talk in different layers.

Those without authority talk at the human-layer. Those with authority talk at the institutional-layer. The dispassionate talk at the ideas-layer.

For example, I do not like Narendra Modi and his government in Gujarat. My arguments are almost always about human suffering and failure - Zakia Jafri and Sanjiv Bhatt and Mayaben Kodnani and Narendra Modi. His supporters talk about institutional success. Look at Gujarat, look at its governance, look we have data and upward pointing GDP charts. We end up talking past each other.

Happens in every situation. I can write the foregoing paragraph for Kashmir or Salman Rushdie without any effort.

The arguments are all fine - it's just that we aren't engaging at the same layer. Parallel polemics don't a debate make.

***

In my humble view, we should really talk at the layer of ideas. That's what history remembers.

There was a lot of human suffering and institutional failure in Ashoka slaughtering Kalinga. Today, his Chakra is India's national emblem. Not to diminish anyone' suffering, but we don't remember the names of those who died at his sword. We remember his embrace of Buddhism as a consequence. In the end, this big idea is all that mattered.

I believe that some ideas are better than others and, in time, they always prevail.

In my eyes, there are no better political ideas than secular democracy and free markets. All other ideas have had their moment in the sun, and they have always come up short. Always.

Regardless of how I feel at the human and institutional levels, ultimately the only question that really matters for me is this: 

Will my argument advance secular democracy and free markets or set these winning ideas back?

You don't have to agree with the ideas I favor but surely you can see this is an extremely clarifying way to think. It cuts through the heart-rending emotion of human suffering and the never-ending boasts of human institutions. It makes the complex simple.

I think we can make great headway if we all talked at this level.

Black Swan in Dal Lake

The specifics of the CISF shooting will emerge in time. I'd like to make three larger points.

One. The governance capacity of the Indian State falls far short of the demands on it.

Two. This capacity deficit is dramatically exposed in conditions of extreme stress.

Three. Addressing this requires both capacity building and impact mitigation when the State fails.

***

Let me draw a parallel.

In Finance, credit analysts use two independent measures of risk. Probability of Default measures the odds that a borrower will fail to make the required payments in a given time frame. Loss given Default measures what the lender is expected to lose in the event of default by the borrower.

One can have a high probability of default (say, if the borrower doesn't have income to pay his interest) but low loss given default (say, if the loan is collateralized by real assets).

Imagine the Indian State as the borrower. It has borrowed governance authorities from the citizenry. In return, it must provide good governance as interest for the authorities it has borrowed.

Given its means to provide such good governance are limited, the Indian State defaults repeatedly. In other words, the probability of default of the Indian State is high, which manifests itself in a myriad of ways too numerous to list but familiar to us all.

This does not mean, however, that - when the State inevitably fails - the impact should be tragic. The loss given default can be managed and mitigated in the event the State defaults.

***

When the demands on the State are many and it further arrogates to itself a breathtaking array of responsibilities, it can either find limitless resources to satisfy these demands/responsibilities adequately, or cut corners everywhere to make its limited resources appear to be satisfying these.

The Indian State specializes in the latter. It pretends to do a lot while doing very little, and that too poorly. 

This pitiable circumstance is made much worse under conditions of stress. All human systems are designed for "acceptable" fault tolerance levels. They work - more or less - under normal conditions but start fraying at the edges under stress. Even the best of systems will fail, by design, under extraordinary stress. The black swan cannot be evaded.  

A State with means designs systems that fail in extremely rare circumstances. A State without means designs systems that fail far more frequently. What is manageable stress for the former can be extreme for the latter. These are tradeoffs States make based on their political and economic realities.

***

That Indian State is designed poorly and fails - repeatedly and pervasively - shouldn't be surprising. India has a patronizing State that thinks it must supervise and control every aspect of human existence. Its reach exceeds its grasp by a mile, but that doesn't seem to deter its dismaying ambition. 

Should we really be shocked that Indian security forces are simply not equipped enough to do their job professionally? I've written about the Indian police previously here. What these forces lack in capacity, they make up in brutality.

The excesses of poor policing are amplified in places like Kashmir or the North East where war-like conditions have prevailed over extended periods of time. The fault tolerance of the State has a much worse threshold in these conditions.

Clearly, the people who live there know this. Their provocations are partly a means to expose the weakness of the State through its dramatically tragic failures. The fact that a young child dies is supremely tragic - but his death becomes a very powerful stick to beat the State with. Such opportunistic cynicism is at least as bad as the original tragedy.

These tragedies will continue, alas, because the State is weak and brutal AND its foes are not above exploiting the death of a young child to make their political argument.

***

So what is to be done?

Far be it for me to suggest solutions to the cynicism of the human heart.

But, this is not an altogether hopeless situation. We may not be able to stop State failures in the short term but we can and must mitigate their impact. With that in mind, here are a few suggestions:

1. Strengthen State capacity

This will take time and resources and - most crucially - a willingness of the resource-constrained State to focus on the things it must do and let go of things it need not do. Also, merely because the horizon for this is the long-term does not mean the State can make pious noises and go back to its comfort with failure. The long-term after all is a series of short-terms - so the effort has to begin now.

2.  Identify State failures that hurt national interest

Not all State failure is created equal. My parents await their passport renewal four months after application but this is not a life and death issue. A high school kid being shot in his chest, merely for protesting, is.

So, State failures should be analyzed to identify those whose impact is so severe as to damage national interest. Every Kashmiri kid who is shot while protesting non-violently, for example, falls in this category. An innocent Indian dies, the stress on the State rises further causing even more failures, and India is demoralized by the politicization that follows.

Identifying such failures is crucial if India is to prevent them in the long-term and mitigate their impact in the short-term.

3. Mitigate failure impact

Once the State knows its greatest vulnerabilities, it should mitigate their impact. This requires resources, yes, but in a prioritized way. So, maybe my parents can wait another month for their passports but if that delay creates resources to buy rubber bullets for CISF, it's entirely worth it.

India wouldn't have strengthened its governance capacity as the CISF jawan would still shoot at the kid. But, at least, the kid won't die.

***

This is basics of management. Why the Indian discourse doesn't take this form baffles me. All the debate tends to be is about disputes on a specific tragedy, arguments of political oneupmanship, and a transient outrage that solves nothing.

Instead, the conversation should be about how to fight off the Black Swan when it inevitably flaps its wings.

Fire and Rose

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice

T.S. Eliot. Little Gidding

***

Unrelenting hope amidst unfathomable despair.

India was here before. Bofors, Shah Bano, Mandal, Kashmir, LTTE, Masjid, IMF, Bluestar, Bhopal. India endured.

Best part, it wasn't a messianic strongman who led us out.

***

Gandhi spoiled us. We search for superheroes who do not exist.

Democracy spoiled us. We seek angelic outcomes from human institutions.

Vastness spoiled us. We summon strength from our continent-sized weaknesses.

***

It isn't a superhero or an institution or her vastness that will save India, rather the common sense and ability and hard work of ordinary Indians.

I learned this from an illiterate Indian carpenter. Born in caste-riven Eastern UP to parents who could give him nothing, he bootstrapped himself out of despair, went overseas, and became indispensable to privileged hotshots like me. I asked him, why? So that, one day, my children will grow up to be like you, he told me.

I've never been more humbled in my life.

He couldn't care less for patronizing superheroes who saw only his faith and caste and poverty as vanity projects to pad their egos. There were no institutions where he grew up. He was a nobody among India's intimidating vastness. 

But this illiterate carpenter taught himself to be more skilled at what he did than superheroes could ever dream of being. He saved himself with unrelenting aspiration, sheer will, and his own two hands.

This is how India will be saved. All she needs is for superheroes to get out of her way.

***     

Let me end where I started.

And all shall be well and

All manner of things shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one

Happy new year!

Bangladesh

India's median age is 26 years and falling. A majority were born after Bangladesh. The '71 war is a fading memory. Alas.

Forty years have elapsed since that emphatic victory of light over darkness. Bangladesh finally became free. India emerged as a military power to reckon with. Pakistan shied away from overt war since.

The partition of Bengal in 1947 followed a debilitating famine. Its proud people, who share Tagore's music as their anthem, were torn asunder by forces impossible to comprehend. Denied basic human dignity, they asserted their nationhood. The Pakistani Army, which hasn't seen a war it cannot lose, unleashed a campaign of terror - a genocide on its own people that the world looked away from. Tellingly, there were no UN Security Council Resolutions on Bangladesh until December of 1971.

Yet, Bangladesh won the war. She thrives today, a nation at peace with her neighbors. Pakistan never found its footing again.

India did what any moral nation must. It intervened with decisive force and clear military purpose. Few military campaigns have been so effective since the Second World War. Korea remains in armistice. Vietnam burned America. Afghanistan toppled USSR. Other "savage wars of peace" have been costly, prolonged, and bloody. In Bangladesh, in a matter of weeks, Pakistan was crushed and shattered forever.

I look at Balochistan where Pakistan still wages the exact same war that lost it half of its bifurcated nationhood and most of its boastful manhood. But Pakistani Generals, sadly, see no parallels. If there were an exemplar of insanity, surely this is it.

Are there lessons from that great moral and military triumph? At a time when India is mired again in self-doubt and political paralysis, it's instructive and satisfying to note that - when the moment called for it - the nation came together, stared down two superpowers, and demolished the enemy with remarkable ease. It took conviction, iron will, and leadership. I watch Mrs Indira Gandhi's interview from then (http://youtu.be/nRAfs_LPFI4) and take solace that, even in the era of Manmohan Singh and L K Advani, India may yet find a decisive leader among its Billion people.

Let me close by saluting the brave people of Bangladesh who won the war and the triumphant Indian army that made this happen.

The Thunder, Perfect Mind

I am shame and boldness.

I am shameless; I am ashamed.

I am strength and I am fear.

I am war and peace.

From The Thunder: Perfect Mind

***

Veena Malik bared her body and exposed the nakedness of her society.

But she is not alone. In recent weeks, Egyptian Aliya Magda Mahdi posted bold self-photographs on her blog. Tunisian actress Nadia Bostah posed provocatively to promote a film.

Something's happening here. And it could be very significant.

***

We heard the footsteps of what was coming in Naipaul's 1982 classic Among the Believers. We sensed it in 1988 when Ayatollah Khomeini threatened Salman Rushdie over Satanic Verses. We saw it in the 1997 film My Son the Fanatic (based on Hanif Kureishi's short story).

Then we saw it play out on our television screens on 9/11.

The destructive anger, the rejection of modernity, the war on freedom.

Something had gone badly wrong in Islamic societies.

***

Much has been said about how to change this dynamic.

From toppling dictators to killing terrorists, from settling intractable political conflicts to encouraging democracy - all manner of ideas have been proposed to change this ugly bend of history.

There has been some success. Arab societies, in particular, have rebelled against their stagnant status quo. Their dictators have been shown to be paper tigers - they hide in spider holes and gutter pipes when under fire. Their armies are weak - they run from the battle and don't dare defend national sovereignty. These tigers, that roared at home and terrorized own people, turned out to really be mice.

Where change has been slower is social practice. The community's failure to stand with Shah Bano, the illiterate stabbing of Naguib Mahfouz, Salman Taseer's assassination by his naat-singing bodyguard all tell the story of social darkness. Honor killings happen even in the West, Saudi women still can't drive, Ahmadis cannot exhibit the Quran in India, and raped women are still put in prison. The 2002 Arab Human Development Report drafted by distinguished Arab intellectuals is a stunning and powerful lament on the horrendous state of that society.

This sad circumstance is partly due to a community frozen in the glare of excruciating scrutiny. Also, Wahabi and Salafist financing of mosques and madrasas is a major problem, even in secular societies. Finally, the men in this male-dominant community - with rare exceptions - have failed to champion change.

In response, non-Muslims have either taken the multicultural view of "respecting" the community's practices, looked to "moderate Muslims" to make change happen, or (in bigotry) claimed that Islam is somehow incompatible with modernity.

But none of this has led to change.

***

Then, Manal al Sharif decided to drive a car in Saudi Arabia. Prof Amina Wadud led Friday prayers in America. Shaista Ambar released a model nikahnama to protect women's rights in India.

And, yes, Veena Malik, Aliya Mahdi, and Nadia Bostah boldly defied the purdah.

These may seem like acts of small defiance but they are no less significant than an old man making salt to challenge the empire in which the sun never set.

We may be witnessing a nascent social revolution in Islamic societies. Their women have wept through vicious wars and suffered through brutal suppression. Now they are leaping to lead.

This is perhaps the most promising development of the last decade of war.

Social change won't be easy. Entrenched tradition and extreme misogyny are hard to overcome. But, such change is surely an idea whose time has finally come.

It's not our wars or diplomacy or aid that will make this happen. It's not moderate Muslims or reformist Kings who will make this happen. It's the humble Muslim woman in all our communities who will lead this change.

Standing with her as she fights to honor her faith, community, and society is the most important thing non-Muslims can do.

We Are All Soni Sori

Not long ago, I was in mofussil UP for a cousin's wedding. We woke up one day to a commotion. My aunt was arguing with the sabziwallah about a payment she thought she had already made to him. He was pleading she hadn't.

A family friend, a police man, grabbed the sabziwallah by his collar and slapped him black and blue. Didn't ask anything, didn't hear anything, just beat him up. The poor man left humiliated and in tears.

Shellshocked, I harshly protested the violence. My friend told me this is how he and his colleagues deal with "these people" all the time, and that I should keep out.

This is the heartland of India's political culture, the region where several Prime Ministers have found their respective paths to parliament. There's a lot of baggage here - caste and class, history and tradition. The modern State is here too - it wears the wardi and beats people up.

Of course, it turned out, my aunt was mistaken about having made the payment.

***

In his seminal book, The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama told us we were witnessing the end point of mankind's ideological evolution, that liberal democracy had prevailed in the clash of ideas.

Independent India has been on the right side (for most part) in this clash. Whatever challenges the Indian State confronts, we know, it will eventually prevail due to the superiority of its ideas.

All Maoists have is a discredited ideology. Religion-based separatism is not exactly the world's cup of tea. Finally, Hindutva is so ideologically bankrupt, it can't even convince devout Hindus of its purpose.

India is impregnable. This is a wonderful thing. But, it also makes the brutality of its State instruments extremely dangerous. This brutality is here to stay and there is no escaping it. We can endure the murderous ways of all manner of cults and movements because we know they will eventually fade away. But how can we possibly cope with the murderous ways of a State that is here forever?

This is Dante's inferno.

***

India's defense budget in 2011 was ~$36 Billion. The budget for police was ~$9 Billion.

I don't have the data on this but I'd wager more Indians die each year just from murder and violent politics than from war or terrorism by foreigners.

Police in India are resource deprived. This leads to bad recruitment, weak training, sub-standard equipment, stress filled facilities, poor wages, limited accountability, shattered morale, and non-existent leadership. Let's not even talk about outdated laws, political interference, and a broken justice system.

Police find themselves trying to survive in a brutal environment. To this end, they can really only rely on the nobility of our constitution, the authority of their wardi, the command of their superiors, and the brotherhood of their peers.

This must be a highly insular, morally corrupting, and terrifying context to operate in. As Milgram experiments have shown, even moral people can be coerced into "obeying authority figures who instruct them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience". And as William Golding describes in The Lord of the Flies, terror creates the perception of a beast that has to be viciously destroyed for survival.

Does it surprise any of us that men in these conditions would psychologically succumb to slapping an innocent sabziwallah, shattering shins of under-trials, shooting dead college girls, watching passively while mobs lynch Indians pleading for their lives, and now - engaging in the most vile (alleged) sexual torture on Soni Sori?

***

For too long, India's middle class has looked away. After all, the police are instruments of our State, the people they torture are not like us, and they have surely committed crimes for which they deserve to be harshly treated. Besides, they are likely making false allegations any way.

The sheer moral bankruptcy of such thinking is self-evident.

We don't fear evil because it is dancing on the screams of, what my friend in UP called, "these people". What I didn't tell you is that he also said the police could do the same with me - and I, with all my means and vocabulary, could do very little while they trample all over my constitutional rights.

It may not seem it but, at the wrong time in the wrong place, I could be Soni Sori too.

And because my tormentors would be the instruments of a State that will always be here, so will my tormentors. Waiting for me. Waiting for you.

This, ironically, is how impregnable India will fall. From deep within, at the hands of its own protectors.

***

Better men than I have written about this topic. All I can do is plead that we make police reform the highest priority of our nation. Thank you for reading.

Reflection on 26/11

Indians don't wish ill of Pakistan. Rather, we are apathetic to its fate. The only thing we really care about is expanding prosperity and security for our people.

Pakistan sought and obtained divorce. Sixty four years on, Indians are glad. Other than a few lunatics, most Indians are relieved Pakistan's 180 million are not part of our national life.

If Pakistan is burning itself down, we care about it as much as we care about Rwanda.

***

To the extent, Pakistan has presented itself directly to India, it is through war. Interestingly, for all our angst about this, India has already prevailed.

This in spite of the apparent Pakistani belief that each of their soldiers is equal to ten of ours :p

There are good reasons for this. While Pakistan has inflicted a painful cost on India, it hasn't been nearly enough to derail our economic advance. And while India has seemingly been passive, it has craftily expanded the war from lonely glaciers and crowded bazars to the high tables of economic globalization.

Arrival of nuclear weapons in the region has prevented outright conflict. For Pakistan's commando generals, this means we are now in the era of - what Steve Coll called - Ghost Wars. These are fought mostly in the shadows and, on occasion, on world's television screens.

What their tunnel vision misses is that, while still painful, such terrorism no longer terrifies. When something is expected, it doesn't shock any more. It still hurts, but more like a rubber band snap than a scorpion sting.

Anything more than a scorpion sting risks provoking all out war. Anything less than a rubber band snap is futile. The terrorist finds himself deterred into a range of tactics that are too weak to hurt India while sufficiently ghastly to make the world recoil from Pakistan.

India has wisely portrayed this dynamic as Pakistani terrorism against Indian economy. This is a real powerful narrative that doesn't require India to compromise on her values. Sixty four years after the war began, the increasingly globalized world sees India as an emerging economic superpower while routinely calling Pakistan a failed State. Easy to see who has prevailed.

The definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior while expecting different outcomes. By this definition, Pakistani huqmaran have not only lost the war, they have lost their sanity too.

***

I disagree with those who call on India to match Pakistan's murderous ways.

We have an approach that is already very effective. All we need to do is to keep reinforcing the narrative of Pakistani perfidy in every possible forum - in this, we are aided by Pakistan's galactically stupid conduct. Each terrorist gambit of theirs only serves to make our point. You'd almost think Pindi and Aaabpara are agents of New Delhi!

Each time we ask Pakistan to arrest and bring to justice the perpetrators of Mumbai, they come across as dragging their feet. It doesn't take a 150 IQ to see how self-destructive this conduct is.

***

Where we really should focus, is hardening our defenses against Pakistani terrorism. We need ever higher walls to hold back their pawn soldiers - not bridges to engage their killer brass.

We need homeland security of the sort that has prevented attacks on US since 9/11. I favor adopting the 1% doctrine on these matters.

We need police reform to focus on real terrorists rather than gunning down college girls and pretending this somehow makes us safe.

We need to ensure that our economic growth brings prosperity to Indian muslims and that they emerge as role models for the newly democratizing Islamic world.

We need our media and political elite to stop hobnobbing with Pakistani elite merely because they can offer titillating sound bites and scandal fodder.

As private Indian citizens, we can do even more. Indians are now an integral part of the global economy and culture. This gives us unique visibility and influence over flows in capital, trade, and ideas. We should deploy this power to deny Pakistan wherever we can.

***

My Pakistani liberal friends call such views of mine hate.

They tell me these views only serve to strengthen the grip of army and obscurantists on their national discourse.

They ask me to engage the good in Pakistan and stand with civilians in Government.

I believe these are great prescriptions for Pakistani liberals to follow. It's their country and they should fight to preserve its honor. Nothing will give us in India greater happiness than the day Pakistani liberals prevail.

In the meanwhile, we have to take steps to protect our people and prevail over enemies.

Starting with the man in the mirror

I love India but no longer like much of what I see.

A billion people have swung on destiny's pendulum. From scarcity of means to scarcity of class. As if trying to compensate by escaping what we used to be. Bad and good.

The past is a place we don't want to be. So we're systematically erasing it all away.

Indians are becoming refugees in our own mind.

***

The 80s and the 00s can't be any more different in Indian consciousness.

80s was when fate switched off the light. We were riven by identity, suffocated by air, vulnerable to theft. Bluestar, Bhopal, Bofors. And most of us were poor.

00s was when fate shone on us. The earth became flat, India became young, the world accepted our bomb. Davos, Demography, Deal. And some of us became prosperous.

On the surface, this is a great narrative. And, yet, something seems amiss.

***

We used to be humble. Now we are brazen.

We valued achievement. Now we value accumulation.

We thought our birth made us Indians. Now we insolently ask for loyalty oaths.

The angry young man on a bicycle could still serenade with song. Now the angry young man shoots models in the face and rapes schoolgirls in cars.

***

The pendulum will swing back again some day. From a surplus of means to a surplus of class. But this will take a generation or two and a lot of effort.

The refugee in the mind may yet come back home. But he'll have to start with the man in the mirror. This is the hardest thing of all, alas.

Hindutva

As long as I can remember, I've viscerally disliked Hindutva.

Visceral is a strong word. Deeply felt, intensely real.

This wasn't inevitable. My family and social context would have suggested otherwise. Even my personal sense of faith.

***

I think this has to do with doubt, reason, and free choice - ideas on which modernity is based.

My own politics are motivated by self-interest. I doubt the Government as an institution. I reason we'd be better-off if it got out of our way. And I make a free choice on who to stand with politically to achieve this goal.

Given the secular character of India and US (where I live), faith is rarely a driving motivation in any of this. I don't feel politically more in common with random co-religionists than with folks who share my social and economic reality.

***

Hindutva, in contrast, demands we make unquestioning common cause with other folks merely because they too were born into a common faith. This is imposed politics of incidental commonality, of religion over reason.

There's also some caprice here. There are many incidental commonalities based on birth. Wealth, class, gender, language, left handedness - you get the point. Why is faith any more important than any of the other such commonalities?

There is a cult-like character to this strain of politics. There is no room for doubting the central artifice on which the cult is built. If outcomes are not favorable, it's because of personality issues or implementation mistakes, never the ideology itself. Since there is no room for doubt, exercise of reason makes one's loyalties suspect. And if one exercises free choice of political (dis)association, one is hounded (as whistleblowers are) and sometimes even worse.

Does this not remind one of socialism, that other great cult that has afflicted India? Except that socialism pretends to be born out of doubt and designed by reason, although it too rejects free choice.

***

There is no doubt that Congress' socialist legacy has been debilitating for India.

Two generations lived through undeserved poverty. Hundreds of millions still do. India's entire politics was reduced to patronage by printing money. And pitting one group of Indians against another. This is a horrendous legacy of what is essentially a personality cult.

Even worse is the reactionary whirlwind all this has spawned.

Hindutva attempts to be everything Congress is not. And yet, it has become everything it is. The cult of personality has been challenged by its cult of othering.

Instead of asking Indians to doubt our ideological chains and asking us to use reason to make free political choices, Hindutva has made that choice for us in a presumptuous and patronizing act. The choice it has made is communal hatred. And it has sought to impose this on us in an imperious manner.

Hindutva is not Hinduism. It pretends that it is and brooks no dissent. The cost of dissent, ultimately, is violence. This too is typical of how cults act.

Arun Shourie is a leading modern intellectual within Hindutva. He is also a decent man who has suffered much personal pain in life. Yet, here is his reaction to 2002: Frankly, I must say, I was more affected by Atalji’s pain than by what had happened in Gujarat. Maybe this is my inhumanity or something. I can’t claim that I was that great liberal

This comfort with, and indifference to, violence is deeply ingrained in such cults.

***

It is not a surprise that such attitudes attract support from sociopaths.

We see this in the so-called "Internet Hindus" who stalk the by-lanes of cyberia.

Leading Hindutva voices contemptuously dismiss them as fringe elements, in private. In public, they say nothing as they watch these demented mobs mug decent people.

Even if we concede these are fringe elements, it is worth contemplating their nature. When I blogged harshly on Binayak Sen, I was challenged by those on the left but in a relatively civil way. My own politics also has a fringe - that would be Ayn Rand purists! I do think there is a qualitative difference between the trolling by Internet Hindus and the tortured argumentation by leftists and Randists. It says a lot, doesn't it?

Lest I be accused of letting off the Left gently, I should note that while the Maoists leave the internet alone, they do reserve their violence for the jungles of Dantewada.

***

Sonali Ranade has written about why Internet Hindus are on the wrong side of history (http://bit.ly/qjqoRW). I think, the same can be said for the entire Hindutva project. History is evidence that human advance has come not from unthinking obedience to cults but from doubt, reason, and free choice. Hindutva denies us all these and is not the antidote to socialism we've been looking for.

This is why I have visceral dislike for this false idea.

AWOL youth in a B-grade India

When I was younger, I had even less time than now with all the burdens of age.

There was so much to learn, places to see, fortunes to make, reputations to shape, fall in love, break a few hearts, rebound from heartaches, and find my authentic voice. The only things I didn't have time for is to breathe or sleep.

Can't imagine I would have given up any of that for Twitter or Facebook.

How do today's twentysomethings manage it all?

***

The conventional wisdom is that India's economic growth is a consequence of reform.

In truth, we've barely had any reform. India is still infatuated with socialist chains that criminally impoverished two generations. The political contest is between the secular-left and the religious-left. The economy is still micromanaged with five year plans.

How has India grown when this discredited thinking took down the mighty USSR?

I think this has to do with growing confidence. A confident population consumes more things, which creates demand for products and services, which creates higher paying jobs, which creates a confident population.

This confidence is not the result of any geopolitical change or domestic policy. Rather, I'd argue, it's because India has progressively grown younger. The median age is now 26 years and falling. The youth may lack knowledge, experience, even social graces - but they don't lack confidence. A long life lies ahead, caution is not in their vocabulary.

I've not researched this but am certain that the older the Indian, the less confident he/she is.

You can see this in the polity. The octogenarians who pretend to rule India are anything but confident. Their inferiority complex on the world stage is something to behold. And despair about.

Caught between the uninformed confidence of youth and the unfortunate caution of the experienced, India sails on as a middling nation with delusions of past glory and day dreams of future greatness.

***

Amy Winehouse died recently. She was merely 27.

Silicon Valley is all about the young. Fresh ideas pursued with infinite boldness.

The young are busy shaping their era. Except, I fear, in India.

Maybe they are out there. Putting their heads down and chasing their dreams. Maybe those on social media are not the dreamers and doers. We should look elsewhere.

But what if this is not the case?

What are the big ideas and achievements of the youth bulge in India?

I may disagree with him, but Mr Anna Hazare has big ideas. And, Nandan Nilekani. They are not young. Where are the big ideas of youth?

When we think of art, we still debate M F Husain & bow before Gulzar. Where is the twentysomething art to give expression to a young India asserting its place in the world?

Let's take politics. Yes, there are a few young voices but they are hardly authentic. And, no, trolling people on twitter is not a big idea of politics.

***

I've interviewed a lot of people over the years for jobs. Many of them Indians. I've noticed a growing brashness in Indians, not usually substantiated with real knowledge.

I think of when I came to business school. All these smooth talkers discussing swaps and options and beta and gamma and this and that. I was rather unnerved for I had never studied economics nor ever understood what stocks and bonds are. Then, in my microeconomics class, I discovered I was the only one who understood what slope of a line is. Or, how compounding works. The rest, as they say, was a breeze.

I think that Indians used to be more like me. Maybe we didn't know all the fancy stuff but the foundations we knew better than anybody. This is why we won.

Now, they have become more like my classmates. They know all the fancy stuff but the foundations are cracking. You know where this leads.

***

India is growing because it is increasingly confident.

But it isn't reforming. And its confidence is the callow brashness of the young.

There is so much for them to learn, places to see, fortunes to make, reputations to shape, fall in love, break a few hearts, rebound from heartaches, and find their authentic voice. The only things they don't have time for is to breathe or sleep.

Or spend their time chitchatting on social media.

I'm not so confident about India's future. I guess my age is showing.

The Sweet Smell Of Sorrow

At a distance my God stood

With his hands folded

And said nothing at all

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When I think of 9/11, I think of the smell that lasted that whole month.

The sweet smell of sorrow. The young flesh charred too soon. Some were friends. All were family.

For years, it felt like someone had socked me - and my city - in the jaw. The magic was that we took the blow but did not fall. For months the city was a dark, brooding, miserable place. Then, still in the midst of a harsh recession, we found a way to start smiling again.

It had been a tough year. The internet bubble had burst. Buddha's face was shredded in Bamiyan. Politics were ugly from the hanging chads of Florida.

America wasn't ready for jihad on its soil.

Still, there were no riots in New York. Instead, there were inter-faith prayers in Yankee Stadium. Om and Allah and Christ and Yahweh and the Gurus were all invoked.

This wasn't the blood-soaked Delhi of 1984. Too bad Gujarat did not learn.

No, this wasn't about naive self-flagellation and othering that India is so used to doing. America was going to war, united. It would - over the next decade - hunt down Bin Laden, topple a murderous Saddam Hussain, and incite Arab Spring.

I supported both wars. I desperately wished India had the same resolve when hit again and again and again in Kandahar and Kaluchak and Akshardham and Sansad Bhawan and Mumbai and Delhi and so many other places.

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We had returned from a meeting that had lasted all morning. Having missed most of what happened, I was trying to grasp it all. A colleague barged in. I'm leaving to re-enlist, he said, I must be in the fight.

He was a marine. He had lost fingers in Desert Storm. He had lost firefighter friends that morning. He was ready to avenge that loss.

All I could tell him is that he should do what he felt he needed to do.

Then I started reading and couldn't stop for years. Ahmed Rashid's Taliban. Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. Fukuyama's The End of History, Kaplan's The Coming Anarchy, Coll's Ghost Wars, Naipaul's Among The Believers, Perkovich's India's Nuclear Bomb, Maxwell's India's China War, and so many others.

I was an engineer discovering history. Radically reshaping my worldview.

I started writing. A few newspaper columns. A lot of blog posts.

It took me years to reconcile my liberalism with the new hawkishness I felt. Eventually, it became self-evident that liberalism must be fought for. That some ideas are superior to others. That while I respect everyone's right to whatever views they hold, only modernity - underpinned by the twinning of freedom and reason - must shape how we live.

I came to see myself as a neoconservative. A liberal mugged by reality.

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Ten years later, my rage at jihad's temper tantrum hasn't yet ebbed.

I'm also glad that, unlike India, America doesn't move on. It fights back - whatever the cost.

I watch people taking potshots at this great shining city on the hill. Iraq was a mistake. Drones are wrong. Pakistanis see Americans darkly. The wars have depleted America. Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo.

I've even heard people argue Iraqis were better off under Saddam than under freedom.

I guess they haven't spoken to the little Afghan girls freed from the tyranny of the imposed veil. Or, the Shia of Iraq liberated from genocidal chemical attacks.

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Sometimes I feel we are back at 9/10. Commercial buildings are full of people in downtown. Tourists visit where the twin towers stood. Hawkers sell them trinkets. We are mired in yet another recession.

But that smell of 9/11 wakes me up quickly in the sweet hereafter.

The air has been cleansed. The clothes dry cleaned. The dead interred. But the smell is still here.

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The caravan departs in a rising dust of memories

The dirge wafts in through the windows of my heart

My God turns and walks away

A Unified Theory of Everything

I find it more than a coincidence that India's Anna movement is playing out concurrently with American Tea Party resurgence, Israeli Tent City protests, UK underclass rioting, and Arab Spring revolutions.

Sonali Ranade, in her recent Daily Times column, linked middle class protests to the credit crisis. In her thesis, the enormous losses suffered by large financial institutions are being surreptitiously socialized through stealth taxation on middle class savings.

In this essay, I'll attempt to expand on this analysis.

Clearly, the aftermath of the credit crisis is crucial to explaining the global governance crisis. When highly indebted financial institutions tottered in 2008, they threatened to take down the global economic system. Governments, themselves highly indebted but with some residual ability to print and borrow money, found a variety of ways to take the bad debt off bank balance sheets.

In the US, Government partially nationalized leading banks and the Federal Reserve provided them with near-zero cost funding. In Europe, authorities did the above plus allowed banks to not fully recognize their losses. The principle was the same. Postpone the reckoning where possible, socialize private sector losses where necessary, and transfer wealth to banks so they can recapitalize.

All this played out while Governments in India and China went on debt-fueled binges of welfare and infrastructure expansion respectively.

This is how the banks were saved and the Governments imperiled.

How do deeply indebted Governments resolve their debts? They can print money to inflate it away, sell assets to pay for it, impose taxes, seize private wealth, cut back entitlements, or declare bankruptcy. No other way, really. Except war.

In all of these, there is an implicit transfer of wealth from one set of citizens to another. To expect this to happen without political push-back is naive. Each group will inevitably flex its political muscle to lay down a marker for politicians to contemplate.

Where entitlements have been cut back (e.g., UK), the underclass has revolted. Where entitlements have expanded financed by corrupt asset sales & inflation (e.g., India), the middle class has revolted. Where the debate is raging between entitlement cuts and increased taxes (e.g., US), everyone is morose. Where a kleptocratic autocracy has financed its lavish lifestyle through taxation, inflation, and forcible appropriation of national assets (e.g., Maghreb), revolutions have happened. Where utter confusion has reigned (e.g., Europe), everyone has gone on vacation!

The global credit crunch has become a local political crisis - everywhere.

This is how we must understand what's happening. This isn't about dial 101 for integrity or democracy in the desert or even a new social contract between the rulers and the masses, this is fundamentally about money. And the way this is resolved is not the tedious (and violent) battles for redistribution, rather through new wealth creation.

So how is this to be done?

Prosperity has come to the world in waves, riding the euphoria of new ideas. The end of the cold war, the peace dividend, technology, globalization, and easy credit carried us for two decades. We now need new catalysts to carry us forward.

Some of these can be the end/down-gearing of seemingly interminable wars (e.g., India-Pakistan, Israel-Palestine), new agreements for expanded global trade (e.g., the much delayed Doha round), radical economic reforms in BRIC countries (e.g., privatization and professionalization of economies), dramatic increase in technology usage to rationalize the highly inefficient welfare States in OECD countries (e.g., healthcare subsidies), a new surge of investment in education for the information era, etc.

These are big ideas that require big visions and bold leadership. Our challenges are not going away by use of batons on protestors or expressing helplessness about lack of political consensus. And the Jan Lok Pal ain't going to create prosperity by diktat out of thin air. If we don't take bold steps for reforms now, we should be deeply pessimistic about the coming decade. Not only will we see Anna style protests at home, we are likely to see regional and even global wars break out. This is the lesson of our history. Every major turning point of this magnitude, where huge wealth has been taken from some and given to others, has always come with protest, revolutions, and war. We have a small window to head off this fate. This is the bottom line.

The stock market is a great barometer for our collective belief in the future. Presently, it is telling us we don't believe our leaders have it in them to be bold. Were they to start acting as leaders instead of chickens with their heads cut off, we will see this reflected in the markets immediately. Mr Hazare can then go home.