Desicritics

The God Who Was Lost!

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Tue, 3 Mar 2009 01:00:24 EST

Buddhism and I have a strange relationship. I grew up listening to the stories of Emperor Ashok and later on when I could, reading about Gautam Buddha in the old Amar Chitra Katha books. Reading about Ambedkar’s conversion to Buddhism and how Buddha was actually considered to be part of the Hindu Gods' pantheon, because the 'Enlightened One' was considered to be a reincarnation of Vishnu. Growing up in Bhopal, I was also exposed to Buddhist artifacts in various tourist locations, as our local area has an ancient history of Buddhist kingdoms and pilgrimage sites (more on this later). But this was a strange journey for me and this essay is another weird combination of a book review, a photo essay and some thoughts about Buddhist history.

But typically, history in India is not taught from the perspective of the historians, the archaeologists, numismatics, the linguistic experts and so on and so forth. There are many reasons for this. For one, for most of India’s history, history has been a battle ground (if you excuse the pun). What the war of independence is for somebody, is the great mutiny for another (a previous essay on this). Then the fact that for a very long period of time, India was ruled by foreigners and history is usually written by the rulers, for the rulers. So if you wanted to know about Buddhism, it was a bit difficult.

But some aspects have rekindled the interest I have in Buddhism. The Dalai Lama is obviously somebody who is the apostle of non-violence and a hero to me (not least for his enchanting giggle) which obviously has emerged out of Buddhism. Second was another hero, namely Ambedkar.Ffor all his faults, he was a brilliant man who created a constitution which all Indians can be proud of. We do not give sufficient credit to that document. In my opinion, it is much more important than all the religious books. He obviously converted to Buddhism as a reaction against the Hindu Caste System (a previous essay here). But there is now a strand of Dalitism. This is not the place to go into the rights or wrongs of this, but it primarily is against Hinduism and its caste system (don't worry, it is seriously incoherent and I have never read anything that makes any less logical sense). But for example, many Dalit intellectuals have relied on colonial historians such as Arnold Toynbee to make their argument that Hinduism is bad (see here, here and here).

This concept that Hinduism is a civilization and is doomed to failure is wrong on both counts. The concept of civilization as a social identity construct is seriously flawed. Man draws his identity based upon several strands (see Amartya Sen's argument here), gender, language, religion, region, country, sports club, and so on and so forth. So for somebody to even think that there is something called as a Hindu civilization is seriously one dimensional. Second, think about the 5000 odd years of history of this religion, one of the oldest religions. It has evolved so much that one would be hard pressed to identify today’s Hinduism with what was there in say 2000 BC or 1000 BC. And finally, even if you do consider that it is one and the same, the fact that Hinduism has survived for 5000 years tells you that its actually in no danger of collapse, so this basic intellectual framework of Toynbee is not really advisable for the Buddhists to rely on.

But there were a bunch of other British and Colonial historians, linguists, archeologists, military personnel and the like, who from the 1700’s, have been poking around in India to determine where and how Buddhism emerged. For a very long period of time, the west and India as it so happens (with the incorporation of Buddha into the pantheon of Hindu Gods) there was no distinction between Buddhism and Hinduism. On the western front, the great Buddhist Kingdoms of Afghanistan were overpowered by the arrival of Islam and now its rubble (remember the dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddha’s by the Taliban and the persecution of the Hazaras who were reputed to be Buddhists before converting to Shia Islam?)

Anyway, between the Muslim invasions and the Hindu resurgence, nothing was heard or known about Buddhism in the west. Charles Allen, in his lovely book, The Buddha and the Sahibs, describes how a band of often lonely white men (and a couple of females), over 250 odd years, started to dig, decipher, investigate and uncover the history of Buddism lost in the mists of time. From Afghanistan to Sri Lanka, to Burma to Nepal to Tibet and all inside, Charles Allen writes a fascinating story about these orientalists, their associations (The Asiatic Society and the Theosophical Society) and how their struggles gave the world so much information about Buddha and Buddhism. Taking a well deserved potshot at that incomprehensible tome, Orientalism, it has seriously rejuvenated a body of work which is currently very popular. Mind you, the large sections of corpus of western scholarship in this area is totally aghast. The very idea of somebody actually claiming that it took orientalists to actually study and bring forth knowledge of the orient is shocking to them. Hence this book is not reviewed to that extent nor referred to that much.

Anyway, not that important, because besides arcane corners of the academic world, these worshipers of Edward Said are ignored. For anybody who wants to break out of that stultifying cult, you can't do better than to read this book. For one, it supports my argument that all history, science and knowledge is open to all, without worrying about the age, sex, religion, race of the researcher. Moaning about Orientalism is about as stupid as moaning about Jewish Intelligence or the fact that Hindus had invented Zero or it was a Christian who first noticed gravity.

Now returning to the book/ It is very good. It talks about how these white men struggled to piece together this giant multi-dimensional mystery, taking clues from old sanskrit books, talking to religious leaders in various temples and monasteries, deciphering and then translating old sanskrit and pali books to make them available to the wider public. They decoded and cracked the variants of the Brahmi language, one of the oldest languages in India, dating back to the 6th century BC. Don't get me wrong, this is not about Buddhism the religion, but its about the men who investigated the history of its birthplace. While I found his assertion that the Gita was part of the Ramayana rather than the Mahabharat a bit confusing, the book has lots of wonderful photographs and descriptions to make those little issues immaterial.

But reading it finally gave me another view of how widespread Emperor Ashok’s empire was. Absolutely massive and wide ranging. In some ways, it was even bigger than the Mughal Empire.

Can you see the bottom-most text called as Sanchi? That’s just next to my hometown of Bhopal. A couple of years back, we were enjoying a winter vacation there. As you would appreciate, if you are in your hometown, you end up visiting the local attractions hundreds of times and you never end up appreciate them. It's like my mother in law, she grew up in Agra and for her, the Taj Mahal is very commonplace, as she has visited it literally hundreds of times. It was the same for me with Sanchi.

It's perhaps when you get older, that you get a chance to appreciate those local attractions more. I whined and moaned till the family decided to humour me and we all piled into two cars and off we went. It's about a 50 km drive on a pretty good road actually. Quite surprising as it happens. On the way, we crossed the Tropic of Cancer which is signposted.

On the way, one of the main north-south railway lines are crossed and the railway crossing was closed. So we were forced to wait. And one of the most typical Indian sights was on the left. Here’s a gentleman, having a nice nap on one of the Milestones on the State Highway. I just find this image so evocative. Welcome to India!

The actual stupas are up on a hillock. At the bottom between the town and the hillock, there is a neat little museum with a nice small park. Here’s a pipal tree with a sign in front, called as Creation in time wheel. Obviously, the connection is that Gautam Buddha attained enlightenment while meditating under a pipal tree. We were not allowed to take photographs of the museum artefacts so that was a bit of a shame. Also, it was disappointing, why on earth can't the Museum authorities put in more explanation of the various sculptures, ornaments and other nice pieces?

But as you come out of the museum, you can see the tip of the stupa in the background in the middle.

Also, on the side of the road, guess what I found? spicy chanas. Before anybody could tell me off, my hand was inside my pocket, money exchanged hands and I quaffed a rather large quantity of chana. Ah! Heaven! Beyond this is a papad seller and across the road was a guava seller. Needless to say, I checked out ALL of them. (oink oink). There is something just brilliant about eating road side food, it's the awesome combination of dust, dirty oil, smoke and spices. Nowhere else, does it taste anything like it, I tell you. Anyway, we piled back inside the cars and drove up the hillock and parked.

Right outside, you can see a memorial temple made by pilgrims from Colombo and on the right, you can see another pipal tree, surrounded with the typical Buddhist railings and with prayer flags fluttering in the wind. Did you know that the prayer flags are not meant to carry prayers up to the Gods? But they are meant to use the wind horses to scatter the printed mantras and prayers for goodwill and compassion across the surrounding place. Interesting, no? And as it so happens, this concept of prayer flags is very Tibetan, not Indian nor Sri Lankan at all.

Below are some photographs of the very intricately carved gates. The Great Stupa, the big one, was made by the great Emperor Ashoka way back in 250 BCE (approximately). This amazing emperor is supposed to have built about 86,000 temples and stupas across the country. One of the greatest men of India indeed. Somebody was joking when I said that India owns Afghanistan. As it so happens, Ashoka ruled over a kingdom which extended up from Afghanistan down to deep Deccan and as far east as Bangladesh. But anyway, the carvings show the history of Buddha and lots of carved jataka tales

If you observe the central pillar closely, you will see an inscription on it in a strange language, Ashoka Brahmi. Most of the horizontal or vertical pillars have these inscriptions. They are nothing profound, but are in fact donor cards. Just state who gifted that bit. And check out the sculptures on the right, they resemble me - rather my potbelly.

The above and below photographs show the intricate carvings. One has to remember that these are well over 2 millenea old and are still crisp and clear. They have been restored a bit, but still. Amazing work!

Here’s a story of the tree (the tree stands for Buddha) and even monkeys worshipping the sacred tree. Remember the monkey tale from the Jatakas? I was not able to take a photograph, but here’s the story with another photograph of the particular panel.

On the left, one can see the second Stupa with its solitary gate (the Great Stupa has 4) and on the right, a load of smaller stupas.

But this completely bewildered me. It was the first time I ever heard about Buddhists worshiping the Naga Gods. Can you see the statue of the Naga God in the left photograph? The temple itself is of Buddha, as can be seen from the right hand side photograph. So what’s the connection between Nagas and Buddhists? That too in the middle of the country? As it so happens, Nagas were considered to be the guarantors of adequate rainfall and agricultural productivity. Hence, the Buddhists would go about merrily worshiping them. Here’s a good reference site if you wanted to check out dams, irrigation, Nagas and the rest in Sanchi

Two more temple ruins, faintly Grecian in nature, but I did not find sufficient background to really investigate.

As you enter any gate, you are faced with a statue, well a headless one. Somebody got very upset sometime in history and lopped off all the heads. Bloody vandals.

And finally, you have the middle corridor and one of the staircases to climb up to the middle corridor which encircles the stupa.

Then you move up the hillock where there is a monastery which is practically in ruins. They have stacked up the stone work columns in rows. Can you see the checkerboard pattern on the right? Pretty impressive, no?

There is a temple up in the monastery, also pretty much a ruin, but one can still see some exquisite carvings on the doorways and columns.

Can you see the notches on the flagstones? Those were for iron staples which would lock the flagstones together to make it into a pucca floor. On the right, you can see a stone work window and a narrow passageway which would allow one to circum-perambulate the temple. There is also a little imp trying to hide from Baba.

There were two statues of Buddha, an outside statue, which had lost its head and the second one inside the sanctum which was better preserved. Unlike the first statue, which was made out of sandstone, the second one was made out of granite.

I am not sure if you can see the carvings on one of the flagstones but it's supposed to be ancient graffiti. Apparently this part of the monastery was for the trainee monks and they, the little rascals, would spend their time carving into the stone floors. Glad to see that things do not change, eh?

Here is an example of a doorway to one of the side shrines. The guide told us that those two figurines at the bottom were of Ganga and Jamuna, the two sacred rivers of Hinduism. When I gave him a skeptical look and asked, why on earth would you have river goddesses from Hinduism being depicted in a Buddhist temple? I did not get a good answer. Also, I have to admit that the smaller carvings were quite risqué. The guide said that they were offering and accepting votive offerings, but hey, I can identify a couple in love and flirting when I see one. Anyway, we headed back down to the mid layer.

Here’s the Great Stupa. The archaeological department has done a good piece of work to maintain the surroundings, I must admit. It is well maintained with a broad pavement around the stupa. Here’s grandpa the engineer who suddenly decided to calculate the amount of materials required to construct the Stupa with his grand-daughter assistant.

Heading down to the Stupa 3, you can see a rock hewn water tank on the left and another monastery in the distance. Also one of the monastery cells on the right hand side.

Heading down, there is a strange boulder on the way. It is cut in half and hollowed out. Apparently, with a very straight face, the guide said that this was Buddha’s cup. Some cup and some lips, eh? Anyway, belting down a rocky path, we soon spotted the third stupa.

And here’s the famous Ashoka insignia. Can you recognise the images shown? The circle on the top with the 24 spokes is the Ashoka Chakra. While the Ashok Pillar below it is topped by the Emblem of India. That is how well India respects one of its most illustrious ancestors. This stupa is not as richly decorated as the previous two, mind you. It also does not have any gates.

There is a modern Buddhist temple just outside the fence which surrounds the Stupas. I found it deeply ironical. The temple architecture, its detailing, the scupltures, the paintings were like comparing chalk and cheese. The modern architecture was simply unsuitable for the surroundings. It felt awkward, as it was shabby, manky, and really very disappointing. To consider that this Chetiyagiri Vihara actually contains the remains of Buddha’s two disciples, Sariputra and Mahamoggallana, is rather shocking. But as a factoid, do you know that certain elements of Buddhism believe that Sariputra was reborn as Laxman to Buddha’s rebirth as Ram? Now that’s an interesting turn for the books. So the next time, a Buddhist complains that the Bhagwat Purana is claiming Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu, you can comment mildly that it is difficult to keep track of incarnations and you are simply following Buddhist tradition :)

Anyway, looking back across the valley, its a very peaceful place. You can see a train haring down to Bhopal. One can really imagine to be actually back in Ashoka’s time, sitting on the blocks and meditating, while overseeing the peaceful work of God. It is indeed a beautiful place.

But all good things come to an end and just like the birds in the sky, we were following the power lines back home in the evening. And that’s where the rumination started. What a wonderful place this is. I could sit back and think of the white men digging through the dirt to uncover our history. The hundreds of thousands of men who built the tens of thousands of Buddhist monuments across this country. How ideological battles have been fought between Hinduism and Buddhism, between Orientalism and Occidentalism, between Dalitism and (not sure what…). In the end, you end up with such wonders in front of your eyes. If you can, do visit Sanchi and read Charles Allen’s book. Gives you such peace of mind.

Full slide show here.

Technorati Tags: India,History,Buddhism

How To Make A Small Fortune

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 05:37:50 EST

There is a joke which you will appreciate, especially in these days of plunging asset prices. The joke goes something like this: how do you make a small fortune? You start with a large one. As the newspapers mentioned in a recent item, Russian multi-billionaires are actually just ordinary billionaires because of the sheer drop in stock and other financial markets around the world. But then there was the original billionaire, when there were no other billionaires. I am referring to the Nizam of Hyderabad, the erstwhile richest man in the world, the last living Caliph of Islam, a man, who is currently living in a seedy anonymous seedy two bedroom apartment somewhere in Istanbul, Turkey. This essay is not about him, but is about my frustration and regret and bout the sheer waste of it all.

First, here are the bald facts. Of course, there are no official kings and queens in India any more. The last living Nizam was His Exalted Highness Rustam-i-Dauran, Arustu-i-Zaman, Wal Mamaluk, Asaf Jah VII, Muzaffarul- Mulk-Wal-Mumilak, Nizam-ul- Mulk, Nizam ud Daula Nawab Mir Sir Osman Ali Khan Bahadur, Sipah Saula, Fateh Jung, Nizam of Hyderabad and of Berar, Knight Grand Commander of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India, Knight Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Honourable General in the Army, Faithful Ally of the British Government who died in 1967. He was reputed to be worth roughly $2 billion in the 1940s. Despite him being divested of much of his kingdom and properties by circumstances and the Government of India, he still died a billionaire. I quote from Wikipedia:

Adjusting for inflation, however, he today ranks as the 5th richest person in the history of the world, the wealthiest-ever Asian, the wealthiest-ever Indian and the second-wealthiest monarch in world history, with a fortune that at its high point was $225 billion (in 2008 US dollars).

Asaf Jah’s eldest son got married to Durrushehvar, daughter of Abdul Mejid II, the last Ottoman Caliph. Abdul Mejid left a will stating that his grandson, Mukarram Jah, should be the next Caliph. Can you imagine the ancestry? Three of the most powerful empires all rested and ended on Mukarram’s shoulders. One of the most powerful and richest empires in the world, the Mughal Empire, which gave rise to the Nizam’s empire of Hyderabad, perhaps the richest empire in the world (arguably exceeding the Inca or any other empires in history) and finally the third empire, namely the Ottoman Empire.

And what did Mukarram Jah do? He literally pissed away his inheritance by way of an unholy mixture of incompetence, corruption, five marriages, legal battles and basically being a silly sod. He is still alive today, the man who would never think twice about ordering a charter flight or thousands of Tattinger champagne bottles is now restricted in a tiny seedy apartment in Turkey. Abandoned by all - family, courtiers, jewellery, friends, lawyers, everyone, with nothing is left other than some mouldering palaces and buildings; a pile of rotting and decaying furniture; hundreds of civil and criminal court cases in various courts across the world ranging from London to Delhi to Hyderabad; hundreds of blood sucking relatives and hangers on and so on and so forth.

I have lots of connections to Hyderabad and have been there many times in my childhood. It was fascinating to go around the Salar Jung Museum. I have gone there on Ma’s shopping trips to purchase pearls and now I have recently been there several times, as one of my offices is based in Hyderabad. While I am quite impressed and proud of seeing those lovely collections of jewels, artefacts, buildings and works of art, something burns inside me whenever I see these.

Recently reading a recent book, The Last Nizam, by John Zubrzycki, bought it to the fore. The author has written a biography of Mukarram Jah. And I think Mr. Zubrzycki lets off Jah far too easily. He skates over his faults and does not talk much about the basic tragedy of India, namely to have rulers such as Jah and his ancestors.

India was called as the golden bird of antiquity. Its fields were so verdant and fertile, its people so industrious, the metals/gems/mining so bountiful, that it kept a huge motley crew of royals well fed and watered over hundreds and thousands of years. Not only that, all this wealth called those thieves and buzzards over from all over the world ranging from Central Asia and Persia to the United Kingdom, Netherlands, France etc. to come rob India. And how they robbed India! You go to Lucknow and find that it was considered to be one of the richest nation states in the world. Where and how did these Nawabs spend their money? They send the money to Karbala in Iraq to build canals and hostels ignoring the crying need to build even a single canal in Lucknow. What about tiny Bhopal? The Begums of Bhopal sent millions of rupees to Mecca to make pilgrimage hostels and ignored building up Bhopal. What about the Nizams? They owned hundreds and thousands of jewellery pieces, massive buildings and automobiles but gave nothing to their peasants and citizens.

Nothing for the peasants! They spent their countless generations toiling away for their kings, queens, Nawabs, Maharaja’s, Nizams who were bloodsuckers. They sucked out the life of so many Indian citizens. I know you can accuse me of judging them by today’s standards, but that is not really true. Every religion that they followed, whether Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Islam, Hinduism, nothing influenced them to rule justly. Maybe one ruler in a thousand would be just and do something for his or her people. And not that these rulers were driven by love for their country either! And this is not a communist/socialist polemic against the rich, if you have earned your dough by virtue of business or inventions, have fun with it. But this wealth was based on coercion and to make things worse, it was used purely for their own individual pleasure, almost nothing went back to the poor peasants.

Think back to the first war of independence. Some war - where most of the rulers rushed to the assistance of the British. See the titles given to the Nizam: Knight Grand Commander of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India, Knight Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Honourable General in the Army, Faithful Ally of the British Government. You don’t get these titles for revolting against the British. Heck, most of the rulers who actually fought against the British were fighting for their own gaddis and rights, the idea of fighting for their people/country was totally foreign to them.

All these countless diamonds, all those huge opulent palaces, those shimmering silks and expensive clothes, those hunting trips, the vast fleets of automobiles Were for what? Can you see the tragedy of lost opportunities? All that wealth, amassed out of the blood and sweat of the common Indian peasants, went to the maintenance of an inefficient and ruinously expensive Australian sheep farm, a huge boat, jewellery, travel, banquets and massively expensive parties.

Can you imagine what Hyderabad could have been like if a fraction of all this wealth had been invested in developing the agriculture, mining, factories in the state? But no, the Nizam stood on the top of a pyramid of blood sucking royals, courtiers and hangers on, who were simply rent seeking. No development, just keep on giving me tax/rent and I will simply spend my time in enjoyment. In a way, the fact that the last Caliph and Nizam ended up in genteel penury, coughing his lungs away, unloved and hated by his friends, relatives and other assorted cockroaches, might seem to be poetic justice.

But what I really regret are the missed opportunities. Just imagine what could have been done by an enlightened ruler with all that wealth and opportunities? And reading the book constantly reiterated that Jah, the last Nizam did not find anything surprising in his behaviour or the fact that nothing was done. It was simply his right and his money to do what he wished. It was not like he was uneducated or did not know what was happening. He has been very well educated in the best Indian and British educational institutions. Presumably he has seen and read about his people. But no, nothing. This is what I find frustrating. So he not only ended up with a tiny fortune, he has also made sure that couple of generations of Hyderabadi’s missed out on a chance to improve themselves. And finally, if he still thinks that it’s a god given right, then I can only quote two quotes, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away” Bible, Job 1:20-21 and “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to” – Dorothy Parker.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Technorati Tags: History, India

Innovation - That Strange Mythical Animal

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sat, 7 Feb 2009 05:16:13 EST

It was an interesting email that I got from Google Alerts. I have an alert setup for “innovation” as a keyword. The interesting thing is that I get the most interesting and curious hits on that keyword. As it so happens, on the same email, I got referred to a Businessweek article on innovation and another article on how Nortel could not save itself from bankruptcy despite investing heavily in innovation.

Innovation is a tough thing. What exactly is it? Something to do with new things? OK, lets run with it for now. But everybody and his dog wants to be known as innovative. Nothing wrong with it at all. But just like every buzz word, it needs to be treated carefully. People can get into all this innovation business too much and then forget about the basics of business. The two articles given above are interesting examples of this phenomena.

My son has been on World of Warcraft for the past 4 years now and has a good little business running there. So I have a fair idea of what is happening there. He has also managed to rope in my little princess as a magic maid, so that promises to be a good story one day. Anyway, I do appreciate the points made in the article about how WoW has managed to incorporate basic principles of innovation into its game so that it is doing brilliantly. I quote some of the main principles that the authors quote as lessons from the game:

Reduce barriers to entry and to early advancement
Provide clear and rich metrics to assess performance
Keep raising the bar
Don't neglect intrinsic motivations
Provide opportunities to develop tacit knowledge, but do not neglect broader knowledge exchange
Create opportunities for teams to self-organize around challenging performance targets
Encourage frequent and rigorous performance feedback
Create an environment that rewards new dispositions

But I have a bit of an issue here, and that is that the principles seems to be driven from the story and then generalised. To put it in another way, if I had to pick up these principles and plonk it into any other business, i can, very easily, but does that mean that my old business has suddenly become innovative? Or that innovation starts gushing from each pore? No, obviously not. None of these principles are wrong at all. But at end of the day, people have to keep a a laser eye out on the main business of selling profitably.

Which brings us to the second example, that of Nortel. Nortel did everything that these principles said should be done. It turned its attention to new products, it brought in imaginative thinkers, changed its investment policy, new products were gushing out, strategy was changed, people were let go and new people hired, and so on and so forth. But does this mean that they did wrong? No, just that their basic idea of migrating the firm into a new world of web 2.0 was simply not good enough. It just bombed. As a matter of fact, you could point towards its debt load but then again, they already had $2.6 billion in cash. That again was not enough to save it from going under provided its products were good enough to provide a good cashflow. Which it didn't.

Depending upon which product category you refer to, innovative products have a very high failure rate, ranging from 40% to 90% (as reported in the HBR – June 2006 edition). When you are talking about such a high failure rate, to maintain innovative capability is paramount. You have to dust yourself off and keep on working. In a recent research paper where innovation was studied with respect to Sun, what is normally held to be an innovative company. After one of their products bombed, the researchers coin what is called as Innovation Trauma. This manifests itself by disillusionment, cynicism and contagious demotivation.

So what do you do to improve matters? The researchers suggest that individuals who were championing and pushing innovative products should be given time to disengage from their previous work. Second, they need to conduct post-mortems on the failure to find out why that happened and if they can learn from the results. Third, this postmortem is best if its done collaboratively by the original team or a team of some sort, an innovation anonymous, if you will. Fourth, seed the failure aspects into a new project so that the old failure is uplifted by the excitement of the new project while the new project is calibrated downwards by the caution of the old failed project. Expectations management.

So what do you do? Here’s something that we are trying to do. The British Political system is pushing heavily on the idea that Britain has to become an innovative idea. Pretty good stuff, but how do you deal with innovation? I have recently been invited to join a group on Innovation which will assist in coming up with strategies to improve the UK innovation footprint. It is not easy. Actually, anybody can come up with a good idea. Ideas are dime a dozen, but to get from the idea stage to a company which is stand alone, has some cash in the bank, has a good order book with some good client companies, ah!, now that’s the holy grail.

So what we are hoping to do is to provide that bit of a helping hand from the corporate and government sides. If a small firm does have a good idea, we will get together and try to do two things, (1) try to assist in framing the new idea as something that is innovative in terms of resolving a business problem and (2) try to assist by championing it inside our firms. Obviously no money and all that stuff, but in my experience, innovators fall in love with the idea rather than how it will resolve the problem.

They forget that we are in business to sell (anything, potatoes, widgets, credit cards, etc.) to somebody who can pay for it. Do not want to go into detail, but the idea has to be something that somebody is willing to push his hands into his back pocket and put out money. So despite having great ideas, if you forget the basic elements of selling and making products that will sell, all those innovative ideas will be useless.

Technorati Tags: innovation

How Companies React To Major Crisis Events

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 4 Jan 2009 20:17:29 EST

The infamous Mohammad cartoons crisis had reached global proportions. One of the most common reactions by Muslims was to embark on a consumer goods boycott against firms which were primarily Danish, but other firms were involved as well, all the way from New Zealand. Similar situations like these keep coming up, whether it relates to boycotts of Israeli made/associated firms/products, or environmental disasters, or religiously oriented issues, corporate firms keep on getting in the crossfire. Unfortunately and unlike nation-states, they are not organised to handle political, religious and other crisis like this. So it was instructive to read how various firms reacted in different ways to the Cartoon crisis.

The paper was quite interesting indeed. Crisis management of this scale is not something that firms do very well. Take for example the recent news story that Lehman Brothers so totally mismanaged their bankruptcy and demise that it cost creditors up to $75 billion US Dollars. The authors quote some interesting events such as:

Environmental catastrophes such as the Union Carbide/Bhopal industrial accident and the Exxon Valdez oil spill had long-term ramifications for the companies involved. Criminal and terrorist acts such as the Tylenol poisonings, the Lockerbie/Pan American disaster and the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks have sensitised the public to a world of intense danger. Some crises, such as the Perrier water contamination crisis, seem largely of the company's own making through quality control failure.4 Others, such as the Belgian Coca-Cola crisis, seem to have arisen out of nowhere, apparently attributable to mass hysteria triggered by the previous dioxin scare, but intensified by corporate mismanagement. According to Johnson & Peppas: “A senior Coca-Cola Enterprises official, Phillippe Lenfant, did state that the scare had been mishandled, that communication was inadequate, and that the company was unprepared for a crisis of this magnitude

But religion is perhaps the one which is most difficult to deal with. Usually religion is the furthest from the minds of corporate executives (with perhaps the exception of praying for divine intervention when sales tank or losses mount) and the authors point to some events:

In 1994, the McDonald's fast-food restaurant chain, during its promotion of the Soccer World Cup, printed the flags of participating nations on its disposable bags. Included was that of Saudi Arabia, which bears the Shahada (Islamic creed) including the name of Allah. Muslims were outraged that the name of God was printed on material to be crumpled up and thrown away.18 A similar situation arose when Amstel, the Dutch brewer, printed the flags under the caps of beer bottles, in contact with alcoholic beverage. In India, Reebok encountered huge controversy over its brand champion, Indian cricket captain Mohammed Azharuddin, autographing footwear – including on the sole – resulting in the name Mohammed being trampled in the dirt, which was seen by some as particularly offensive.

The authors have given a nice timeline for the Mohammad Cartoons crisis.

30 September 2005: Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten publishes editorial cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.

12 Oct: Eleven ambassadors from Islamic countries complain to Danish prime minister and request a meeting with him.

17 Oct: Egyptian newspaper El Fagr reprints six of the cartoons together with an article strongly condemning them.

21 Oct: Danish PM replies to the ambassadors, indicating that freedom of expression is the foundation of Danish democracy and the Danish government has no means of influencing the press. (Refusal to meet the ambassadors has been subsequently condemned by 22 Danish former ambassadors).

28 Oct: Coalition of Danish Muslim groups files criminal complaint. A regional prosecutor investigates but decides against prosecution.

10 January 2006: Norwegian Christian newspaper Magazinet reprints the cartoons, greatly inflaming the situation.

26 Jan: Saudi ambassador to Denmark recalled; retaliatory boycotts against Danish products initiated in Saudi Arabia with supermarkets displaying signs indicating that Danish products have been removed. Norwegian foreign minister condemns publication of the cartoons in a Norwegian newspaper, on the grounds that they incite hatred or hateful expressions.

30 Jan: Jyllands-Posten publishes open letters in Danish and Arabic: “In our opinion, the 12 drawings were sober. They were not intended to be offensive, nor were they at variance with Danish law, but they have indisputably offended many Muslims for which we apologise.”

31 Jan: Danish Muslim group says the apology is “ambiguous” and demands a clearer one.

1-2 Feb: Media in many European countries (France, Germany, Spain, Iceland, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland etc) and in Jordan reprint the cartoons.

2 Feb: Boycott again mentioned in Friday prayers in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait; in Qatar, the Grand Mufti calls for boycotts of Danish products; in Yemen, posters of Danish PM set alight; in Lebanon, the boycott situation “has worsened significantly”; in Morocco, “the affair continues to run in the media”; in Egypt, “the controversy is the main topic in the media and Danish products have been removed from all Egyptian supermarkets”; in Sudan, “the president has issued a statement forbidding buying or trading in Danish products.”

3 Feb: Wellington NZ newspaper Dominion Post indicates an intention to republish the cartoons in spite of the outrage in the Middle East and the already-significant losses reported by Danish dairy giant Arla.

4 Feb: New Zealand ministers warn that the decision by New Zealand newspapers to publish the cartoons is irresponsible and could threaten NZ trade. Specific mention is made of Fonterra which “sells much of its product in Muslim countries”. NZ meat industry officials lambast the media for placing trade at risk. Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus and Danish embassy in Beirut torched.

6 Feb: Supermarkets across the Middle East remove Danish products from their shelves. Arla is losing €1.3m a day in sales.

7 Feb: The Iranian government sets up a committee to look at possibly annulling trade deals with countries that have published the cartoons, threatening more than NZ$100m-worth of New Zealand exports.

8 Feb: Politicians in Jordan call for cancellation of trade worth NZ$70m. Prime Minister Helen Clark condemns the publishing of the cartoons and refers to New Zealand's reputation as a “peaceful and understanding nation”. Arla – Fonterra's partner in the UK butter market – closes its factory in Riyadh as the boycott bites. Fonterra publishes advertisements in Middle Eastern newspapers emphasising the NZ origins of its Anchor brand milk powders. NZ diplomatic posts are placed on high alert.

By April 2006: retailers across the Middle East were beginning to restock Arla's products, although uptake was slow, with only 20 per cent of pre-boycott sales being recorded by the end of May. Market recovery proved slow in spite of Arla investing heavily in advertising campaigns in selected markets such as Algeria.

Dec 2006: The cost to Arla Foods of the boycott of Danish products in the Middle East amounts to approx. DKr400m for 2006. This equates to a loss of DKr40,000 for each of Arla's 10,000 Danish and Swedish co-operative members. “It's a relief that the boycott has come to an end … many products have been sold at discounted prices.” According to Finn Hansen (divisional director, Arla), “the boycott will have pushed back Arla's development in the Middle East two years.”

March 2007: Arla chairman Knud Erik Jensen was able to say: “We're back in the Middle East and expect to return to previous levels of sales by the end of 2007.”

What I found amusing was the last line, all that outrage and foaming and what was the result? Not much and not for long. But time heals all wounds, so to say, and all it needed was a bit of courage and lots of communications to heal those wounds. Arla went after the crisis with a perspective of doing something is better than doing nothing. They tried to communicate the fact that freedom of speech was part and parcel of western life and supporting the Danish stance. This did not work, and then Arla tried to distance itself. On the other hand, the New Zealand firms simply refused comment or tried to comment as little as possible, keeping heads down hoping that it blows over.

I have certain issues with this. Letting things blow over, especially when you are talking about quarterly financial reporting cycles, free flow of capital, footloose capital, fast changing credit ratings and the like is just not possible. Firms cannot absorb losses over such a long period of time. So one thing which corporates should remember is whenever governmental or Societal related boycotts hit you, you should immediately ask you’re your government’s support so that the firm can endure the boycott or survive the event. Public memory is short and as they say, a week is a long time in politics. It might take longer when we are talking about religion, specially considering that religion is the opium of the masses, but pass it will. You just need capital to ride over the issue.

Second is that corporates should not tie themselves to government or political stances. That is dangerous. Firms are not organised to handle political issues nor can they spin news as is required in today’s 24 hour news and media management. So they will simply stumble and cause issues for themselves. Keeping the head down is a good idea indeed.

Third is the use of gatekeepers. The authors recommend using gatekeepers to link into the populace. Looking at this cartoon issue itself, who would be the gatekeepers? I wrote some essays on this issue.

So go to Al Azhar or to Qum? Or start debates on Al Jazeera or MBC? Or get some fatwas in your favour? Or start dealing with the famed Muslim / Arab Street? And how do you keep them listening to the message? This area is highly emotional, charged with religious symbolism, prone to minefields, subject to linguistic interpretations, full of politics, in short, everything that a corporate executive will never have had handled before in his life. So how on earth would the executive or the corporate communications team know how to handle such aspects? I mean, they themselves make heavy weather of investor relations with bog standard corporate disasters such as losses. Can you imagine them working with a religiously sensitive topic such as this? That said, there is nothing like getting some discreet conversations underway with the gatekeepers and opinion formers directly (and be prepared to pay out of your nose, as these opinion formers are not going to be cheap), but put them on retainer and see what comes up.

Oh! Also pray.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Book Review: White Gold by Giles Milton

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 14:34:44 EDT

Slavery was - and still is - a world wide phenomena, but I best know it to have happened in the USA in the past, not least because it was a country which went to war with itself over many reasons and slavery was one of them. It recognised the gigantic crime it had committed and is still making restitution for it. It produced literary giants such as Samuel Clements and Alex Haley who wrote about slavery. That said, while I knew slavery existed elsewhere, I did not really know much about the incidence of European slaves till I read a very interesting story about Thomas Pellow. I am sure he will be as famous as Kunta Kinte and Spartacus, the other two famous slaves.

Thomas Pellow was a young lad from a coastal village in England, who was seized by Moorish pirates off his ship in 1715 and was enslaved. His story and that of the slave Sultan of Morocco, the forcible conversions, the attempts of the Europeans to buy back the slaves or to wage war to stop slavery are all quite well described in the book called “White Gold” by Giles Milton (ISBN: 0340794704). Do remember that I am not judging them that much. What’s the point of judging long dead people on the basis of today’s morality? Would you want to be judged on the basis of the morals existing in 2500 AD or 2500 BC? While the book itself is very highly recommended, I would like to extract a few aspects from the book which I found thought provoking and run them past you.

The first was the cost of slaves. While it is tough to estimate the price of slaves based upon local costs, I can do the mark to market based upon the price of slaves which the British government paid at that time. In 1646, the cost of a white Christian slave (let’s not mention the black slaves here) was averaging £38 per slave. That’s male slaves, mind you. Female slaves were brood mares, of course, and their redemption costs in 1646 ranged from £800 to £1392. I think there might be an element of ransom involved but well, that’s neither here nor there.

Considering that wealthy London merchants would hardly earn £40 per year, which was a gigantic sum of money for that time. In today’s terms, a very conservative solely inflation adjusted value would be £4,930 for the male slaves and £104,000-£180,600 for the female slaves. The average annual wage today is about £26,000. So you could perhaps get the male slave, but you will think twice about purchasing a female slave. Quite a turnaround, eh? Now, women are paid less than men, but back then, if you were a female slave, you would be worth 38 times that of men.

The second item brings me to the moral hazard question. You see, this is a classic example of moral hazards. The varied assorted Sultans had it great. They would go and grab Europeans from all over the European seaboard. Bring them back and make slaves out of them. Then get the boys working as slaves, turn the girls into brood mares. So you get work out of them and beat and torture them to convert them so that you get theological brownie points. When the Europeans come around bleating about slaves, ask them for very expensive gifts and then sell their own citizens back to them for huge sums of money. Repeat till they get tired and they wage war. Then sign a treaty and as soon as possible, break it and get the pirates pirating and slaving again. Repeat.

It is a brilliant conveyor belt of money, resources, sex and theological brownie points. If it did not rely on slavery and some very weird thinking, I would admire the sheer economic brilliance of it. And think about it, this system lasted for more than 300 years, longer than the United States of America’s history. It took the combined efforts of many navies, many decades and hundreds of thousands of people before slavery in the North African Arab states was stopped. But it could have been brought to an end earlier if they had stopped buying back slaves and used the money to invest in their respective navies to stop the pirates or to thump the assorted Sultans hard. Just one Sultan of Morocco, Moulay Ismail, is estimated to have had up to a million European Slaves during his admittedly long regime (not counting the Black African slaves).

Third, conversions to Islam. This is what was shocking to read. The fact that Christianity did exactly the same did not obviate my surprise to read the lengths to which the Sultan’s guards went to convert these slaves. Not that conversion would change their situation materially. And they were tortured in very gruesome ways (starting from the bastinado to actually sawing the person into pieces) and only stop when the person would agree to turn moor. If you were beaten every day for years on end, most will agree to be converted, if only to avoid the beatings and torture.

Now this was a problem because when the European politicians and ambassadors came around to ransom you, if you had turned moor, then you would not be ransomed. This is the reason why so many white Europeans were left behind and also the reason why so many European slaves did not convert despite torture. A possible reason for their resistance could also be attributed to their faith as evidenced by the example of the Saint Berard of Carbio and his four companions, who were the Franciscan Martyrs of Morocco in 1220. But again tragically ironic, you save yourself by converting, but you cannot be ransomed because you have converted. A medieval catch 22, if you know what I mean!

Fourth, I always thought that Arabs themselves never did the slaving, but only did the trading bit. But no, there were full fledged slaving expeditions. And perhaps “expeditions” is too weak a word for what happened as described. Thomas Pellow was a guard (he moved up the ranks after “gone Moor”, had a public circumcision and all…) in a slaving expedition and the numbers which are mentioned in the book are absolutely amazing. We are talking hundreds of thousands of camels and people who take off from Morocco and travel hundreds of miles across the western edge of the Sahara and then come back with hundreds and thousands of slaves. Now I did read about how the American, British and European slavers would pick up hundreds and thousands of slaves from the African ports and would have slaving expeditions brokered by the Arabs and other African tribes, but I never heard about Arab slaving expeditions. Well, it was quite interesting how they checked teeth, preferred children, and so on and so forth. But now the image of the stinking American slaving ship has been complemented by the image of a miles long Arab slaving camel caravan.

Lastly, and this is the crucial aspect. Back in those medieval times, nobody batted an eyelid at the fact that slaves were captured, mistreated, tortured, forced to convert, bought and sold etc. It was a fact of life and most importantly, it was theologically permitted. So everything was fine. But if you look around the world today, beyond some very limited circumstances (sexual prostitution, domestic servants and the like), slavery has largely vanished. More importantly, while slavery remains in the theology, nobody actually supports slavery any more. That reform has happened and people have accepted it, the Druze abolished slavery way back in the 11th century itself. So for people despairing of reform, do not give up your faith and hope.

I have spoken before about piracy and how the Americans stomped hard on it. This story of Thomas Pellow is before that time, but is quite interesting indeed to see how the Europeans approached this case of slavery in Morocco. During my research, I came across another slave, Ibrahim Pasha, who was Suleyman the Magnificent's first appointed Grand Vizier in the Ottoman Empire. I will be writing a further essay on him, but in the meantime, have a think about Thomas Pellow and his amazing if heartrending story of slavery. Perhaps this quote by Abraham Lincoln might help: "Slavery is founded on the selfishness of man’s nature—opposition to it on his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow."

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!

Technorati Tags: Arabs, Islam, Piracy, Slavery, Shipping, History

The CFO-CIO Cross-over, Part I

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:33:47 EDT

The CFO and CIO roles are interesting roles when compared from various dimensions. As it so happens, I just moved from supporting a CIO to supporting a CFO in a bank, so I thought of shedding light on some aspects of these two roles. The two roles are simple, one looks after the financial matters and the other looks after the information technology of a firm. One would expect the twain would not meet other than the CIO is supporting the CFO's technology and the CFO seeing the CIO as a supplier and a cost line, but life is much more complicated. In a small way, a good CFO-CIO relationship especially in financial institutions, can lead to massive competitive advantage.

Where does one start? One way would be to talk about the past and present of the technology/financial relationship and then my thoughts about the future. As there is a lot of information and facts about these two roles, this will be a series rather than an essay. But before delving into the prosaic matters of organizational structures and strategic alignment, there is the small matter of philosophy to be handled. And that is the philosophy of technology to the CFO herself. And this is where I see the crucial issue.

Accounting and finance, by their nature, are backward-looking and are oriented towards making sense of disorder according to strict rules. There is nothing wrong with that, because that is how you come up with a normative view of the world, something that you can compare and contrast with a fair degree of accuracy and consistency across the world. The field and thus the people working in it are also fairly predictive and reactive in nature. Their remuneration patterns are high and consistent in nature, job descriptions are standardised. This world handles change rather slowly, systematically and gradually, with due consideration and with controls - Salt of the (business) earth so to say. But that sits uneasily with the broader technology world.

The technology area, whether on the web 2.0, the applications, the networks, the technology people, their remuneration, the IC chips, the massively online multiplayer worlds, virtual worlds, ERM systems, virtual reality, Offshoring and outsourcing, SOA, you name it, are almost like the anti-thesis of what I described above. Change is something that is constant; it is creative destruction all the time. The basic foundations of what you believe in change so rapidly, skills become obsolete quickly, and so on and so forth.

You might want to ask, how does that matter to me as a CFO? Here is precisely where it hits the CFO, because technology is redefining our customers, our employees, our ways of doing business, our ways of valuing assets, the question of governance, the communication channels, the people interaction, the coverage of events, and so on and so forth. In other words, just when the CFO is desperately trying to make things simple, explain everything and keep things under control, technology is making things agile, mobile and hostile. You do not believe me? Well, here’s something that you can see for yourself. In a finance department, more and more people are non-financial or accounting people. More and more, the regulators are finding it difficult to just rely on accounting data and demand further information to control the business. And internally, the business also demands much more than just accounting data, it demands commentary which allows the business to be agile, mobile and hostile. Customers walk in and demand information which we cannot provide. Can you imagine trying to provide bank account level information as rich as what you can get from a web page counter software application?

How does the idea of a going concern relate to a website originated business which can be fully automated, dealing in virtual assets such as songs or coding applets with payment in Linden dollars and the possibility of doing a gift exchange within the World of Warcraft? How do you handle a customer who has no conception of paying for assets because he has spent his lifetime getting his songs, films, phone calls, entertainment, software, assets etc. for free or through swapping them online?

What is the role of an intermediary - like a financial institution - when the concept of assets themselves is changing and everybody is running like mad after Intellectual Property and Virtual Assets? How do you account for depreciation of assets which have no discernible way of judging decay or usage? I can put aside 33% every year for a machine because I guess it has a three-year life, but how much should I put aside for an online constantly regenerating random number generator which theoretically has an infinite life? Actually, most software online technology assets have infinite lives. And if the value addition is happening by a group of enthusiasts based on a free open source model, then what do you say to the tax man?

Lest you assume I am just talking about software, how about virtualization of servers? If the asset based was dependent upon a number of servers, then it has just been virtualized, and if you want to go for the virtualized servers, then they have just gone into the Google or Amazon cloud. It is not like everything is moving 100% into the technology world, but every bit of interest to the CFO is being impacted by technology and is making structural changes. Take the example of resource planning. Previously, if your business grew, you would simply increase the number of analysts and accountants you had and kept on supporting the business, but now you cannot do that. You have to have technology to preserve history, run the rules, generate the reports, do the regulatory stuff.

Basel II taught a deep lesson to the world of finance, namely that if a CFO ignores what’s happening in the business, then satisfying requirements such as Basel II will not be possible. This is so, because the front office business and their systems are simply unable to provide the information in the right fashion which the CFO wants, and mostly, it is because the CFO did not specify or demand the front office business and systems to be transparent and fungible as far as accounting and financial information are concerned. This very same point also applies to the CRO by the way. While there is a surprisingly large number of CFOs who are forward-looking and technology literate, CFOs should recognise that there is a philosophical tension between their profession and technology.

While you might differ, my gut feel is that a CFO has to have a very firm control over the technology that she/he has, what’s coming down the pipeline and what’s generally happening around the technical world. In other words, she/he has to be clued-up and work closely with the CIO to manage the business going forward. Now what does this “manage the business” mean? And what does “work very closely” mean? All these questions are strictly with reference to banking because the relationship between IT and Finance is industry and to a lesser extent size, specific. This is what we will find out in the next part.

The Value of Sustainability to Business

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:16:32 EDT

I firmly believe in the virtues of sustainable development. Forget about the green open-toed sandal brigade, it simply makes economic sense. Resources are limited and if you are not being optimal with your resources now and for the future, what kind of a manager would that make you? Looking around the world, one observes some enlightened global businesses heavily involved in sustainability in their business processes,

Who would like to pay more for electricity usage, or for recruitment costs, or waste an opportunity to be with loved ones rather than struggle through Heathrow, that gateway to hell? Who would actually want to be on the front pages of the tabloids as someone who committed unethical behaviour? There are economic upsides on the revenue side (you can sell more to this emerging sustainable consumer, taxpayer, citizen and shareholder) and on the cost side (your costs are reduced on the manpower, capital, materials, machines etc). But many firms and managers still think of sustainability as "green stuff" which is a shame. One way to remove this doubt is to define sustainability.

At a business dinner with the great and good of the British and the international industry, we were discussing the issue of sustainability. An interesting survey was presented by EIU and BT on this issue. The most prominent sustainability activities carried out in the company are environmental guidelines, PR matters, engagement in community investment projects, corporate charitable donations, employee volunteering, ethical trading and sourcing, supplier code of conduct, etc. Quite interesting, aren't they? A very wide range of activities and all they think of is that "green stuff", but when asked about what sustainability should contain in the context of their organisation, a totally different picture appears:

It should contain environmental impacts, ethical corporate behaviour and corporate values, carbon footprint, long term financial health / competitiveness of an organisation, product responsibility, regulatory compliance, social impact, good governance, community relations, workforce diversity and inclusion.

Can you see any difference from what the C-Suite people said about what sustainability should contain and normal business practice? I don’t. So while you might seriously consider it to be a fad, but work with people's Luddite behaviour. Do not say it is to do with sustainability. Say that it is simply normal business practice. For example, I was briefed by our brilliant sustainability chaps on how we can deploy a simple piece of code on the network which will automatically put monitors on standby after 10-20 minutes and switch it off after 30-60 minutes. When you come back, just move the mouse or hit the monitor on/off button. Guess what that will do to the power consumption of that particular monitor? It will reduce the yearly wattage consumption by over three times. Now you tell me, why on earth will you say no to saving two-thirds of your power costs? If you do, then I have a nice bridge to sell to you.

There is much more to this. Think about ethical behaviour. It is vital for people to behave ethically and it is not really that complicated either. You might spend millions on consultants to come up with ethical rules, but actually it is much simpler. Remember what your mother and father taught you? Be good, be nice, don’t do bad things to people, don’t steal, don't lie, don't bribe, don't break laws, and so on and so forth. I do not really care much about exclusions and lawyerly behaviour. And if you are going to argue with me about ethical behaviour, then let me ask you something. Is this what you will do to your child? Will you teach him/her to look at rules of behaviour and think they are to be broken and give them no moral compass? Then why on earth would you do the same in the office? Please don't come into the office drunk. Please do not steal from the company. Please do not be violent towards the staff, do not swear or abuse people. See what I mean? I was told once in a class of reputational risk management, "Don’t do anything that you would not like to read about in the tabloids tomorrow morning". Pretty simple, isn’t it? Because if you do, then your stock price will take a hit (if you aren't fired, that is) and you can’t have a more compelling economic argument than that. Remember, pulling up the stock price is much harder than pulling it down.

Think about diversity. It simply makes sense, more so in this day and age of tight resources (check out some of the industry turnover figures, it can go up as high as 20-25%). Secondly, it takes about six months to a year to really make an employee effective. Now why on earth would you not put in policies to keep your resources happy and with you? If you have to spend 25% of your time annually in dealing with resignations, hiring, negotiations, etc, then you are a masochist. That is such a waste of time! One could be using that time to develop more business and earn more money. So make an extra effort to manage your workforce smartly, get your employees’ daughters and sons into work to see what their parents do. Nothing like increasing loyalty than to have family in the same firm. Pull in more LGBT people. Make sure there are more women engaged in the firm. Make sure that people find working in the firm a good experience. Not only will you not keep your attrition rate low, you will attract better candidates. Who on earth wants to go and work in a firm which is full of Neanderthals? Well, only another Neanderthal, but then, if that is the case, you wouldn't be reading this essay anyway!

If you have a powerful sustainability policy and execution, then you protect your reputational risk. You get to be proud of your firm, when (not if, be prepared for some things happening which are going to impact your reputation), some bad event happens, then you can say: "look, we are good corporate citizens, we are sustainable folks, and mistakes were made, we apologise, we will make sure it does not happen again", and move on. If you do not show evidence that you are consistently sustainable, then nobody will believe you and your share price will tank, but otherwise, you can protect your job, bonus and stock price!

One final thing, keep a beady eye out on what governments are doing. Normally, I would have said that governments impact about 30-40% of your business via laws, rules and regulations. It is my belief that sustainable regulations will jump massively and we will end up with almost 60-70% of our business being driven or influenced in some way by government regulations. Now government regulations are usually meant for protection or guidance. So just pre-empt the guidance and protection as far as possible, but not too much. No point in putting in scrubbers on your chimneys when the rest of your industry has not, as that will simply drive you out of business. However you can surf this regulatory wave by pushing for industry wide scrubber regulations, trying to get cheap scrubbers, use the fact that you have scrubbers to differentiate your products from your competitors, reduce environmental penalty costs by installing scrubbers, and so on and so forth. It just needs intelligence and smartness to surf and manage the regulatory tsunami which is bearing down on us. And no point in moaning about red-tape, it will remain. Well, do moan, it’s good for the soul!

Overall, while there are many more exclusions and issues, I firmly believe that better management of resources is simply better management. Those who get it will make more money, those who don't, will pay for the first lot. Which lot are you with?

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Technorati Tags: Management, Sustainability

Book Review: Who Speaks For Islam?

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 07:08:47 EDT

Since 9/11, there is a desire from all ends of the world to know what Muslims think? And who speaks for Islam. And as it so happened, I came across a book, Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, by John L. Esposito and Dalia Mogahed which claimed to report on a 6-year study of what hundreds and thousands of Muslims said and a research paper on what a few Canadian Muslims said and think. Here are my thoughts about the book and paper and my thoughts about the questions itself.

Let me get one thing out straight. This book by Esposito and Mogahed is one of the most useless pieces of analysis that I have ever seen. To top it all, a whole host of other luminaries have praised the book and findings. This worries me. For reasons which I will explain, the two authors made such basic mistakes in analysis that I am frankly bewildered. Could have been written by some zonked out undergraduates and these two senior academicians must have been busy or something, and the book went to print. Also, all these various senior people like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Deepak Chopra, Karen Armstrong, Vali Nasr, Jessica Stern, Robert Pape, and Ambassador Edward P. Djerejian etc. seem to have had their press people give a statement on their behalf without reading the book.

This book was so bad that I gave up after page 139 and the ironic part is the book starts with a premise that it is scientific and based on data. But still, there are some good and interesting points and in all fairness I should mention those first.

They do mention most Muslims live in Asia and Africa and the Muslims are wonderfully diverse in terms of language, ethnicity, customs, dress, location, nationality, and what have you. So lumping all Muslims into one bloc is as appropriate as to lump all Christians into one or all the “west” into one lump (mind you, while saying that, they go on to make the same mistake, for example in page 97)
Page 47 talks about how significant majorities in all Muslim countries have pushed for freedom of speech. This is a good thing indeed, although sits uneasily with the cartoon demonstrations seen across the world.
A 2006 Gallup poll talked about how most of Americans want the Bible as a source of legislation. This was not surprising to me, but if they add in the West and all countries which have a liberal democratic framework such as Japan, India and others, the results will be different. But the numbers from Iran are similar to that of the USA. Curious, no?
Countries like Iran and Indonesia do not seem to like Sharia in their legal systems, but countries such as Egypt and Jordan want it. Curious, no? Is this because the latter two countries are Arab?
Page 66 talks about a reasonably good point, the USA does not know what the enemy wanted or thought about. Presumably the reference is to the Al Qaeda chaps. Well, from the perspective of intelligence agents, yes, the Americans knew what Al Qaeda wanted. OBL’s sermons and speeches are well-known. And as I have also found out, I am not sure if that knowledge would have helped anyway.
Interference by America and other countries in the business of Muslim (and frankly many other countries) is not something that I condone, they poke their noses into far too many places and is a classic example of imperial overstretch. So yes, good point that USA is interventionist and it should stop it.
A good Chapter 4 on women, nice coverage of women’s issues, how they work and behave, what they wish for and what their current situation is. While the data and issues mentioned were useful, it is a bit of a confused chapter which does not draw out the basic issues facing Muslim women. How to reconcile their religion with modern life. Unfortunately, when one looks to religious books for women related issue resolution, remember that others will do the same. So while one might argue using Sharia that women should be liberated such as in page 118, remember that using the same Sharia, female genital mutilation is allowable (it is debatable, but there is a case for it, which is against what they say in page 117).

The serious mistakes that this book makes are legion. This book is not scientific, it is not based on what one would understand as standard social science data, the analysis is horrible and the report is written by a drunk undergraduate. It is clear that this book, the Gallup research and the analysis is written not for the American populace but for the international non-American populace in a polemical, biased and ignorant manner. What is curious is why these other people got all excited about it and admired something like this?

How come they ignored India as a source of Muslim thought? curious and a big lacunae in the study as I would posit that those results would have made a substantial contribution to this study.
Why call Francis Fukuyama as a former neoconservative theorist in page 29? There is no reference to political theories before or after, no reference to realism or conservatism or liberalism. But mention it they did, and this started to turn me off because it was obviously meant as a personal slur.
And from page 32 onwards, this book shows up one of its biggest flaws. The severe and seriously ignorance confusion between Arabs and Muslims. After spending the first chapter talking about the fact that only about 20% Arabs make up the overall Muslims, and the fact that Arabs are Christians, Druze and many other types of people, the authors promptly forget it. Being an Arab is to be part of a linguistic group, not a religious group. And because of this basic mistake, every conclusion and recommendation they draw is miserably wrong.
The authors also confuse the terms west, USA, the Iraqi coalition, the neoconservative movement and the like. This confusion means the authors often rely on references to “some”, “they”, as the strawman (for example pg 95 and 99). So the authors pick up one comment by a right-wing commentator, extrapolate it variously to the entire West, USA, United Kingdom, the Western Press, you name it, and then try to answer it based on a vague formula.
On Page 36, the authors talk about there being no difference between Islamic Law and human rights. I found it curious that they did not mention the fact the Islamic world pushed for their own declaration of human rights when they said the universal declaration of human rights was not “appropriate”.
The authors also seem to be confused about what Democracy means. Democracy not only means that governments are elected by the people and sovereignty rests with the people, but also the people draw up the laws and they can change it. When laws emerge from a religious book helped by religious people, it is called as a theocracy, not democracy. So when people say that they love democracy but want Sharia as a source of laws and legislation, there is a certain inconsistency which has not been explored fully.
Their basic problem with Arabs and Muslims shows up in the next section and then continuously onwards, why is democracy absent in so much of the Muslim world. And despite pointing to South Asia, the authors forget that India, Pakistan, Bangladesh were all beset by imperialism equally. But India, Nepal and Sri Lanka have managed to hold on to democratic standards while Pakistan and Bangladesh have not. So just pointing to Imperialism as the main reason for democracy not holding ground in Muslim countries is far too simplistic which blows their arguments to bits.
Page 41 shows another fascinating confusion in the minds of the authors. This time its the conflating of the “west” and “secularism”. Secularism as an idea has a long history and it is not just from the West. I am not sure the authors have understood what secularism means and the philosophy behind it. It is the only way to handle heterogeneous populations.
While talking about imperialism, there are some big problems with that argument. The authors did not mention the Ottoman, Mughal or other Muslim imperialistic empires. They do not mention the fact that imperialism with respect to Muslim countries has been mainly European rather than American, but let us not confuse matters there. How about the fact that Japanese imperialism overran many Muslim countries as well in the east, but let us not go there either.
While saying that Sharia should be a source of law and then saying that they do not want religious figures to influence laws or the constitution. Erm, who will be the people who will be working on Sharia? Non-religious people? And how will that work? And then on page 93, a theoretical construct is made up about how Sharia protects citizens from the depredations of rulers. Well, it has never worked before in a millennium, has it? So what makes one think that it will ever? And why would the mullah’s be advisors to the rulers? See the confusion?
Around page 56-57, the authors talk about Islam and democracy in a confused sense. And this is another example of their total ignorance of what Secularism means. They give the example of France and state funding of churches, but do not talk about the concept of “lacite’”. Plus this debate is strange. In Islam, sovereignty is with God, the Quran (plus sunnah, hadith, etc.) is the constitution and Sharia is a sort of the / part of the legal system. How on earth are they even trying to draw any equivalence here?
Huge clangers of mistakes are made in the analysis of political radicals starting from page 67. Very confusing. They refer to many experts without actually giving any references. The authors assume things, such as terrorism is because of poverty and unemployment, a theory that I have rarely read from any expert. And after talking about a badly and wrongly drafted expert opinion, they slip into another badly drafted argument based on media reports. No consistency and very badly framed strawman arguments. And then in page 70, they compound the mistake by devoting a full section to this type of strawman argument which might be fine in polemics and emails but not in what is purportedly a serious book.
For example, while they spent much time talking about how the 9/11 attackers were not religious Muslims, they do not talk about the obvious next step. So what DID bring these attackers together? I am not going to talk about the obvious answer but the fact the authors did not even understand the next step is symptomatic of the poor analysis in this book.
In the next section, they went out and gathered few comments from some far right commentators and build up a huge counter argument based on those foamy arguments. This sounded childish to me and disjointedly argued.
In page 77, the old chestnut of the Pape’s Suicide Terrorism is dug up. Well, I do not have to say this again but trying to give me references to that silly study does not fill me with confidence that this particular study is any good either. But they go on to make more mistakes like trying to say the Tamil Tigers appeal to Hindu links to the Indian Tamils.
Page 81 throws up more issues. While the authors talk about anti-Americanism and talk about radicals. But hey, here’s the issue. You don’t hear about antiGermanism or AntiSpanishism, but they both have terrorism issues. So is that antiwesternism? The authors refer to far right commentators but do not mention George Bush has clearly said the war on terror is not against Islam. But then, that does not fit in neatly with the author’s biases.
Again in page 85, there is confusion between Muslim states and Arab states. And yet again ignore the glaring counter-example of Pakistan and Bangladesh compared to India as Muslim states. Frankly, a poor argument.
Page 87, “the war against Islam and Muslims” is nothing new, that slogan has been raised since time immemorial I am afraid. For example, one of the big things that Mughal Aurangzeb or any of the Ottoman pashas did when faced with challenges was to raise this same slogan or words to the effect. And guess what? The open-ended question of what do you resent most about the west, the answers were “sexual and cultural promiscuity”, “ethical and moral corruption” and “hatred of Muslims”. undefined, no? and no further analysis of it either.
Outright inconsistencies emerge, for example in page 92. Yes, I agree with the fact that Western countries should stop interfering in the Muslim countries, while saying that, I did not notice any mention of Lebanon where Muslim countries interfere with both hands and legs. And this is where the issue comes up, because if you don’t have the clear idea that you will always find countries interfering with others, you are living in cloud cookoo land.
Also, curiously, they continuously confuse Sharia with Fiqh. This is not the place to go into it but for them not to make that distinction (such as in pages 92-93) is worrying. Because of this, they tend to make some basic mistakes. For example, saying that what restricted Muslim rulers from acting like tyrants was Sharia. Erm, that is wrong on both formulation as well as knowledge of history. Its fiqh and secondly, Sharia never stopped Muslim rulers from being tyrants. This also leads to a massive confusion around what the mullah’s can do about government and legal society. Are they the rulers? Advisers? Lawyers? Senior House of parliament? What? And the authors do not address this point and just leave it dangling at “advisers”.

I am now tired of listing the flaws of this book. It is useless and frankly a waste of time and money. No basic data is presented nor is the analysis rigorous. As I said, what were worrying are the legions of congratulatory messages on this book. I do not think any of the so-called great and good have read the book and if they have, they have not understood it. More curiously, why on earth are these two so-called respected academics writing such drivel? Shame on Gallup, a respected organisation for producing pap like this. So in the end, this book does not tell me what Muslims really think. Or who speaks for Islam. And the fault lies solely with the authors, not with the people who they interviewed. (Here’s something which I wrote earlier on who actually speaks for Islam and who influences Muslims) The biggest problem with the book is the underlying theme that every American who reads the book is an idiot and has this patronising theme running through it. As a public policy book, this is pathetic and I am deeply disappointed with the authors. These authors have contributed more to the civilisational schism than trying to help cover it.

Which brings me to the other paper. It was published in a peer reviewed journal called as Government Information Quarterly in 2008, written by Nadia Caidi and Susan MacDonald of the University of Toronto. The paper is entitled, Information practises of Canadian Muslims post 9/11. Now this is what research looks like. A scientifically rigorous treatment of how Muslims think and do. While the area of investigation is different (and equally important and interesting), the methods that these researchers use, the analysis they come up with, all are fascinating and much more believable than the pap that Esposito and Mogahed have come up with.

It was a good sensitive study, asking intelligent literate Canadian Muslims, about their information practices, use of information sources, attitudes and opinions about information rights in a post 9/11 world. What the authors find is the Canadian Muslims hold a deep mistrust of the media, but they think that knowledge of media and information literacy is important. They also feel there is a need for far greater introspection within Muslim societies.

But fascinating public policy recommendations drop out, about how multiculturalism can help or hinder. Some issues with the study related to the fact that they did not consider another society, United Kingdom, which has seen home-grown Muslim terrorism in 7/7. Also, they did not consider Canadian Sikh immigrant terrorism either. Both of which would have provided a much richer analysis of this factor of multiculturalism and nationalism, but that can well be done in another piece of research. Immigration was another factor but not so much. What about the information media sources in themselves? Would it help to have public advisory councils which will help improve these fellow citizens’s trust in the media? What can be done?

Both pieces of work are interesting from many perspectives. The first one is for knowing how not to do research and put across public policy recommendations on such politically and religiously sensitive issues. The second is how to utilise information and information practices for Muslims who are definitely facing Islamophobia and a feeling of being targeted. Very thought-provoking indeed and much needs to be done to address these issues (but please, not how Esposito and Mogahed do). So while we do not know what the billion Muslims think, we can do something about making sure that the information channels are better managed and transparently dealt with in order for us to draw the poison of Islamophobia and support for terrorism.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Children - We Can Make a Difference

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 12:42:12 EDT

Anybody who has been on railway platforms in a reasonably big Indian city might have noticed a surprisingly large number of unaccompanied children. They are the children who have been abandoned, have run away from abusive homes, were orphaned or simply got lost. And as it is when children fall through the cracks, these kids have become drug addicts, are abused, sexually or otherwise. They have no future and simply have become the jetsam and flotsam of modern society, condemned to be on the garbage heap. Unknown, and uncared for, they sink to the bottom and simply fade away. But not for a tiny institution in Bhopal, which has given the most valuable of all things to them. It gave them hope.

I have noticed one thing common between refugees, orphans, drug addicts and prostitutes. Their eyes are dead. They do not sparkle anymore, are dead to the world, incurious, and they do not shine with life. They might be alive, but frankly, for all practical purposes, their souls are dead. And I think it’s primarily because of the fact that they have lost all hope. What is there to put sparkles in your eyes if there is no longer any hope?

One of the everlasting regrets of my life is that I was not able to adopt an orphan. A combination of government apathy and obstruction, plus other circumstances made it impossible for me to adopt and fulfil the pledge and promise I made to myself all those years ago when I visited the Missionaries of Charity home in Indore, India. The eyes of those orphans would light up when visitors came and I wanted to do something about it. But in the absence of that, I was trying to do my little bit for these unfortunate children just to give them a bit of hope and to put some sparkle back into their eyes.

While I was in Amsterdam, I spotted a news item in an Indian newspaper RSS feed about a small institution that has opened in Bhopal, India, which helps orphans, street children and children on the Bhopal Railway Station Platform. My sister and I decided to do a little bit to help them by giving each of them their individual lockers, a small place to call their own. My parents, being there in Bhopal, went over to the charity, asked about their space, got the lockers built and installed. This was over four months ago and it is only now that I finally managed to get to Bhopal to see for myself.

This is a story of the worst kind and at the same time the best human behaviour ladled on to the people who can least withstand it, as well as most need it. I saw three small girls , aged 1, 3 and 7 years of age. They do not seem to have any place to stay, their parents squabble, and it is unclear where they live. This one hall provides them with a temporary measure during the day when they can come in from the rain and get some education. The 7 year old girl is apparently extremely intelligent and she is testing at 3 levels above her age related education levels. There is another boy of 5 years of age, who got lost on a train. He is from south India and speaks Tamil, but he does not know where he is from, or anything else. Since they know nothing about him, he is a lost soul. A mother and father would be grieving somewhere for their lost son, but there you are.

I saw a recovering drug addict, a boy of only 10. These boys sell bits and bobs, such as tea or biscuits, on the trains which pass through the railway station. And with the little money they earn, they go purchase a bottle of whitener (the fluid used to correct typing mistakes) which is very cheap at Rupees 15. This is then poured into a cloth which they will sniff all day long. And for some reason, they would also cut themselves on the arms, thighs, chest, anywhere, deeply with a rusty razor blade to let the blood flow. Apparently, it makes them feel like flying. They are not violent, but just go into a deep somnolent daze. This particular boy had scars up and down his body. I saw another boy outside the school, about 13-14 years of age, who wanted to come in and have lunch. He was zonked out of his brains. He is my son’s age.

There are three boys that I was introduced to, who were beaten so badly by their parents and families that their bones were broken. So they ran away from home when they were 4-5 years of age. Because they do not know where they came from, (unlettered, illiterate children), now they cannot go back. My mother told me about how she saw this woman speaking to a child in the corner of a school. On inquiring, it turned out that this was his mother who had abandoned her child at the school because she could neither feed nor clothe him. But she comes back once every few months after earning some money, to bring some sweets. Mother and child get together for about 10-15 minutes.

A young lady, Ms. Deepika Suri, kicked this entire thing off. She is a high ranking police officer and she noticed these children running riot. Now we all know the challenges anybody would face to get any government to do anything out of the ordinary. But she is perhaps one of the real heroines of India. A quiet, lovely young lady, who saw a need, and swung into action. She found an abandoned building and had it fixed up to become a school cum residential hall cum orphanage for thirty odd children. She linked it with a government school to provide education, got political cover and basically got it up and running.

She did not get anything out of it. She is, by all accounts, very retiring and quiet. I have not met her and have only heard about her from the children and the teachers who think of her as a veritable goddess. And so she is. She gave these children hope. She fought against the apathy that is so endemic in society. She did not give up and she made a dream happen for these children. After it was up and running, the building fixed up, food and clothing arranged, bedding fixed, teachers and helpers in place, to get political cover, she got the chief minister of the state to inaugurate the centre called as “Disha” (a Hindi word meaning direction). And when the Chief Minister asked, what they needed, they said, can we please have lockers for the children? My father said that eight people volunteered to provide them.

As it so happened, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip and many months later, nothing happened so we decided to get those lockers for them. Why lockers, you might ask? Why not clothes, or food, or money? Well, there was a lot of thinking behind it.

These children, in my opinion, do not have anything personal and individual, no assets, no home, not even a toothbrush, nothing. It is a totally transient existence. And it is horrible, not to have anything to call your own.

But the idea was, that if they have a locker, with their own locks and keys, it becomes their little piece of home. And that is what we saw, there were thirty lockers and each had been decorated individually by their owners. The key was hung around their necks with a piece of sturdy twine, but some had put up photographs, some had arranged their clothes in pleasing manners, one even had managed to put in a tiny curtain in that locker.

The children put on a show for us, and I was very impressed by their range of abilities. Whether it was singing, dancing, poetry recital, drumming, recitation of multiplication tables or the 3 R’s, they were pretty good. One tiny dervish of a small boy was so enthusiastic, he wanted to volunteer for everything and he danced for us. Apparently, before coming to the centre, he would earn money for food by dancing for train passengers. And now he danced just for the sheer joy of it, the blooming smile on his face, the shining teeth (yes, they now have tooth brushes and tooth paste nicely kept in their lockers), well kept clothes and groomed hair all pointed to a happy boy.

A boy of 15 odd years posed as a radio commentator and gave a full five minutes of a radio news announcement. It was very impressive. The kids knew Sanskrit shlokas and hymns; they would worship religiously every evening. The teachers would ask each boy to think about what they did well and what they did wrong, to learn from their mistakes. The teachers and the associated NGO try to place these orphans with families.

One boy was from West Bengal and he had tuberculosis. He liked to eat fish curry and rice, which were his traditional diet, but for some reason he landed in Bhopal, many many miles away. So the NGO spent quite a lot of money and then managed to place him with a family in West Bengal where he can now get a proper diet and medical care in a good middle class family. Guess what? The boy ran away from there and came back to the centre in Bhopal, apparently he missed them so much.

I can talk so much about this, but this is a series of disjointed thoughts about a frankly tear jerker of an experience. I was telling my old friend about it and he offered to do some construction work at the institution, by building up the boundary wall (to keep the drug addict, junkies and thieves away) and refurbishing the toilets.

Small things, but that is the power of feeling and caring. Think back about Ms. Suri who kicked off the start, and now 170 children have passed through these halls of this school. It gave them direction and it gave them hope. It was a humbling experience to see this.

I end with a plea; do something for the poor children or orphans of your city. Nothing much, you rally do not have to do much. And you do not have to go far from your city. Why don’t you just purchase some cheap and cheerful dictionaries or colouring books for them? What about getting them some board games? Give them something, anything, go sing a song to them or just talk to them. Just show them that somebody cares, and that they have not been abandoned. After having faced the world that we humans have brought down on their tiny innocent heads, show them that they can have a direction to a better life, they can hope, the dead eyes can sparkle again. It can and has been done.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Technorati Tags: Charity,India,Children

Malaysia - Truly Asia But Not Fully Asia

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 8 Jun 2008 06:33:45 EDT

It was a very pleasant surprise when I was invited to speak at a conference in Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia. I have been to that neighbourhood so many times, but never to Malaysia. While I have blogged about the conference, this essay is about my impressions about the country. It is based on a very scientific and detailed analysis of reading the daily newspapers and observing the city and talking with some people. So yes, these are very facile observations on the national infrastructure, the people, history, cuisine, politics, economics and will end trying to predict the future of this extraordinary country.

Also, please remember that it was just a trip of six days in very urban setting speaking to the professional, technocratic and political class of Malaysians. To give you a comparison, it would be like trying to explain India or China based on a 5-day conference visit to Delhi or Beijing.

As you land in Kuala Lumpur airport, walk out to whiz down the highway to the city looking at the surroundings, check into your hotel and then stand on the 30th floor looking out over the twin towers, you get a sense of surprise and are impressed. The entire corridor between the airport and the city is landscaped as far as the eye can see. The neat townships, the wide highway, the tall skyscrapers, the hotels, the cars, the shops, the advertisements, nothing that you would see out of place in a European setting. And from what I understand, this infrastructure development has taken place in all the Malaysian states, by and large. So just by looking at the infrastructure, you would say this is a developed country. Extremely impressive indeed and something that my father said when I was talking to him. He visited Malaysia 40 years ago and we were comparing notes.

But what they still do not have is the developed country people, and thank God for that. By and large, the developed countries tend to end up having people who do not smile as much (how is that for a sheer generalisation?). The sheer warmth of everybody I met was astounding and simply amazing. Smiles galore, great big blooming smiles all over the place. And this is whether you are talking about your shop assistant to the driver of the coach to the chap who was watering the plants to the lady who was crossing the street. Very warm, helpful and warm people and that is what I found on every level, from the Prime Minister down to the ordinary bloke on the street. I didn’t get a chance to speak to the Sultan at the dinner but I have no doubt he would be the same. I just hope they keep this national characteristic.

I noticed a general and curious lack of history. A broad based observation here, but I went trawling through two large bookstores in KL, saw the Sunday editions of the newspapers, asked the concierge of the hotel about historic sites, looked around in the admittedly limited trips, and poked my nose into the colonial buildings, but, I did not get a sense that history existed or even exists for ordinary Malaysians. This is going to be difficult to explain, but it is a strange mixture of old mouldy buildings and monuments, loads of historical books, names of houses/streets referring to ages old dead people, frequent referrals in speech to old history, and so on and so forth. Was the rush to technology and modernity accompanied by the loss of history? Picked up some books written by their first political leaders and they also refer mostly to their current and not the past. Rather surprising and curious, especially when you see countries like Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines etc. where I did not get this feeling.

But that did not stop them from having the most amazing cuisine. I was interviewing a lady and on the spur of the moment, offered to do this over lunch at the hotel itself. And the sheer range of food that was available, just blew me away. I regretted I was on appetite suppressant medication, but still managed to put away some serious amounts of food AND lost weight. The combination of Japanese, continental, Malay, Indian, Chinese, yummy, wonderful, absolutely delicious. How on earth do they manage to keep their weight under control despite this wonderful gastronomic spread? The food court in the twin towers shopping mall had 30 different shops selling different kinds of food. I went around thrice before settling on Nasi Goreng from the Malay shop. Just great.

The corruption was unfortunately fairly typical of a developing nation. Again, no direct evidence, but only from what I heard from people. For example, when the father of Modern Malaysia, Tun Dr. Mahatir Mohammad, resigned from the ruling party while I was there, I was quite certain that a whole bunch of others will follow him. But no, almost nobody did. I was puzzled and after inquiring, the common response was, who on earth would be stupid enough to get out of the patronage party? Am I surprised? No, political parties are the same all over the world.

The economy is doing well, well diversified, not that much about of concentration in any one sector, not much government interference in the economy as shown by the low 12% of public consumption in the economy compared with about 20% for the USA and 22% for the UK. Nicely galloping along at 5-6% per year GDP growth, but subsidies are a worry. These range from industrial, agricultural, fuel, service and a whole load of them. If the government is not careful, the debt servicing could be an issue. But again, nothing that worried me terribly.

The last observation before my summing-up would be to point to a far more dangerous factor which is brewing in Malaysia. And that is the race factor. The sheer casualness with which race plays a part in politics, business and normal society is shocking for a person coming in from outside. To further complicate matters, this has a religious overtone and is getting worse day by day. I see the blog site of Dr. Mahatir Mohammad and am frankly horrified to read some of his pronouncements on race and religion. And that is wrong, public policy should never be established based on religion or race, because it will simply end up with angst. Especially when you have multiple religions and races in the country. Can you imagine a Prime Minister of any other country clearly stating racist views nowadays?

Take the emotion out of the arguments, help all Malaysians, such as all poor Malays. Do impose the national language for all Malaysians. Malays are ethnically and historically a combination of Indian and Chinese ancestry but now there is a strong but still controllable difference between the Indian Tamils, Indian Punjabi/Sikhs, the Chinese, the Malays, the mainlander and islander Malaysian etc. etc. In the list of the top richest Malaysians, only one was Malay. And this is after decades of affirmative action. On the other hand, the Indian Tamils are bottom of the pile and after they saw the success of the use of religion by Malays, they have also climbed on the Hindu religion bandwagon. This can still be controlled, stop that sucking up to the OIC, think of all Malaysians independently and uniquely. Malays look to Mecca, Chinese look to China and Indians look to India. Who or where is the lookout for Malaysia? But it is not that bad, I think the political class would understand this and can stuff the racist/religious monster inside the cage.

Bottom line and by and large, I think Malaysians can be proud of what they have achieved in their country. The emphasis on information technology, the way they have had a systematic plan to drag their country into the developed country status. I am also impressed by how well joined up the government, industry and bureaucracy is to push for Malaysian interests. This bill of guarantees for foreign investors is absolutely amazing and provides evidence that Malaysia is serious. This is something that other countries can only dream about but the way this kind of national will and drive for months, years and decades is good and creditable. All political parties are on-board with respect to national development and this country will improve dramatically indeed provided it manages to take all its citizens along with this national drive. Salamat Datang (welcome guest) indeed.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!