Sunday Posts

(Image Courtsey: The Economist) As we wait for the Trump Presidency, the transformation of the American Corporatist State into a Corporation, with a billionaire-filled Cabinet. It is one of those fairy-tale moments of capitalism, of singularity of corporate interests with the most powerful institution in the world, the United States of America.  This is a BIG moment! But the hopes and fears that surround it, the language we are speaking, are widely off the mark. Here are some examples: 1. This is the moment of Fascism, liberal politicians and newspapers are saying. Perhaps not. Fascists were pretenders - but Donald Trump and his administration pretends nothing. Their intentions are quite plain, their methods are predictable. This is more of a Corporate Takeover than a Fascist regime, and what we get should make Fascists look benign. 2. This is madness, brought upon us by a crazy 2016! That Hillary Clinton failed to beat Donald Trump is not an aberration: We sho...

Today can be anything: Start of a prolonged war of civilizations or the end of it. Let us hope it is the end, as it appears to be. The most important figurehead of Islamic extremism is gone. This may not weaken the Al Queda units across the world in real terms, because of their decentralized nature, but this should rob them of their most recognizable icon and the most effective recruitment tool. This should lead to a thaw in Afghanistan, give Americans the breathing space they need. This should allow other Muslim leaders to emerge in the limelight, hopefully with more moderate voices. On America's side, this may mean a boost for Obama, which should be good for America and the world. Obama isn't unduly combative, not a war president like his predecessor. He is measured and cerebral - he took great pains to emphasize that America is not at war with Muslims - and he understands the dangers of stoking the flames more than anyone else. While the dancing crowds outside white house an...

From McKinsey Quarterly: "When Michael Crow became president of Arizona State University, in 2002, the former Columbia University vice provost had ambitious plans to turn the school into a new American university devoted to educating a wider swath of students and focused on higher productivity in cultivating competitive graduates who can succeed in today’s volatile job market. Nine years and a 25 percent increase in student enrollment later, Crow, 56, has delivered big changes in those areas and others at ASU and has garnered a growing reputation as a pace-setting thinker on higher education. He has made strides toward expanding ASU in areas such as ethnic and economic diversity, graduation rates, freshman retention rates, and in the number and intellectual reach of graduates. In fall 2010, ASU boasted an 83 percent first-year retention rate, up from 75 percent in the mid-2000s, and a record enrollment of more than 70,000 undergraduate and graduate students. A survey of...

Four separate incidents in the last few weeks, and suddenly, Samuel Huntingdon's Clash of Civilization thesis looks like a self-fulfilling prophecy: First, a pastor in an obscure church in Florida decides to burn Koran on the 11 th September, apparently in retaliation of the perfectly legal plan to open an Islamic community centre at a site near Ground Zero. The event ended in a farce, the Pastor finally agreeing to cancel the event after worldwide condemnation, though not before making a face-saving claim that the community centre in New York will be moved, which the Imam in New York flatly denied. Next, France's legislators outlaw wearing Burkha in public places. This comes after their completely illegal and racially motivated expulsion of Roma gypsies from the country, another desperately xenophobic stance by the deeply unpopular President, the neo -Napoleon Sarkozy . If the French Muslims took a leaf out of Gandhi and turned this into a non-violent civil disobedience, ...

President Obama had to muster all his oratorical skills to deliver this year’s State of the Union address, just as Americans started blaming him for their plight. He had a lot at stake. He was under pressure, this being another election year, from his own party and those who voted for him. He had to answer his critics – those who are thinking that he is trying to do too much and those who are thinking he is doing too little – and show the country that he is still in control and setting the agenda. It was, in all, a difficult speech, he had to strike a balance at every step, and he had to answer the critics and naysayers while calling for an end to ‘an election every day’ and unnecessarily divisive politics. Clearly, his greatest worry is the economy. Justifiably so, especially as the employment figures look dismal. Even when business outlook has started looking up and other economic indicators are also on the way to recovery, there are fears that America is looking at a jobless ...

I found Paul Krugman's The Big Zero - how the first decade of the twenty-first century eroded value rather than creating - interesting. This article is deservedly having an impact and references to the Big Zero are springing up everywhere, at least in the liberal press. Many people may actually disagree, particularly in India, which has gained significantly over the last decade, and thousands, if not millions, have their lives transformed by the emergent opportunities in various industries. So, it may be worthwhile to look at Krugman's assessment on balance, and see whether it is fair to write off this decade as a time when nothing happened. In all fairness, Krugman was writing about America. As most American commentators tend to do, he treated the American economic universe as his primary field of observation. And, no doubt, for all the talk of recovery, the mood is particularly gloomy in America. America lost, over all, during the last ten years. It is not just about the e...

The US engagement policy abroad, for last forty or so years, has always been shaped with the lessons learnt in Vietnam in perspective, as it is being done now. President Obama, as I have noted previously, is supposed to make the decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan. From the media gossip, one gets to understand the decision is likely to be that General McChrystal will get some troops, but not the 40,000 he requested for. This will actually be no decision at all - a few thousand American lives, and a few thousand Afghan lives, will be sacrificed because the President and his advisers will not be able to make up their minds. Common sense dictates that the solution is elsewhere, not in sending additional troops; but there will be this shadow of Vietnam weighing over their head. The civilian administration and democracy lost the war - that's the lesson learnt - and this time, no one would want to take that political risk. No one wants Afghanistan, and Pakistan, go over to t...

The Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to President Obama, was a distraction. The world's attention was focused on whether this is a just reward, given that the President, who assumed office on the 20 th of January, had just 12 days work to show for it [when the nominations closed on the 1st of February]. The stated reason from the Nobel committee pointed to various initiatives and policy pronouncements by the President, including a clear commitment to nuclear disarmament and an intent to engage in Arab-Israeli conflict. The President himself was far more practical in his reaction and said that he was 'humbled' by the Prize and views this as a 'call to action'. It indeed seemed that President Obama had got the prize just for the act of winning the Presidency itself, which marked the pinnacle of achievement of Afro-American rights movement, which intensified in the last 40 years and became the Civil Rights movement in general. So, this prize is somewhat for the Barack Obama...

To someone who grew up in India, and knew what it meant to have below par healthcare and greedy doctors, and then lived in Britain and experienced NHS , world's greatest mystery is indeed why do Americans fear the idea of universal health care . The news have it that tens of thousands marched last week protesting against the government spending money on health care reforms, which will cover most people in America and possibly fix a broken system. But, truth be told - my wonderment did not start in the last few days; I have always found it baffling that Americans do not like the idea of government paying for health care , and label it 'socialism' for some unfathomable reason. I would have tucked it away in my brain as another peculiarity of the strange country which is possibly the most religious in the world but holds the right to own a gun so dear to its heart. But, America's refusal to let its government spend money on health care is more serious than that and ...