Global Free-Market Capitalism, Aged 30, Died on March 14. America Killed It.

David Berreby said (International Herald Tribune March 14, 2008):

“For years, the ideology of free markets bestrode the world, bending politics as well as economics to its core assumption: market forces produce the best solution to any problem.

But these days, even Bill Gates says capitalism's work is "unsatisfactory" for one-third of humanity, and not even Hillary Clinton supports Bill Clinton's 1990s trade pacts.

Another sign that times are changing is "Predictably Irrational," a book that both exemplifies and explains this shift in the cultural winds. Here, Dan Ariely, an economist at M.I.T., tells us that "life with fewer market norms and more social norms would be more satisfying, creative, fulfilling and fun…"

Martin Wolf said (FT March 25, 2008):

“Remember Friday March 14 2008: it was the day the dream of global free- market capitalism died. For three decades we have moved towards market-driven financial systems. By its decision to rescue Bear Stearns, the Federal Reserve, the institution responsible for monetary policy in the US, chief protagonist of free-market capitalism, declared this era over…

… If the US itself has passed the high water mark of financial deregulation, this will have wide global implications. Until recently, it was possible to tell the Chinese, the Indians or those who suffered significant financial crises in the past two decades that there existed a financial system both free and robust. That is the case no longer. It will be hard, indeed, to persuade such countries that the market failures revealed in the US and other high-income countries are not a dire warning. If the US, with its vast experience and resources, was unable to avoid these traps, why, they will ask, should we expect to do better?…”


Artist: James Stevenson The New Yorker 30 January 1971

Has L K Advani Written A B Vajpayee’s Book?

BJP honcho L K Advani has written a book- “My Country, My Life” and is busy promoting it. Hard copy edition is priced at Rs. 595/-. Looks like Prime-Minister-in-waiting doesn’t wish too many average Indians like me to read it yet!

India Today March 24, 2008 has published excerpts. I found them boring.

I have yet to read a single good review of the book.

I have always found Advani is like Sancho Panza to Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Don Quixote.

Very practical, worldly and most times boring. But Sancho’s of the world have a utility. They are a way to get to the heart of enigmatic eternal hero Don Quixote.

And that’s what I conclude the book’s worth is.

R K Laxman has put it so well in arguably one of the best cartoons of the year 2008.


Artist: R K Laxman Times of India March 27, 2008

Avoiding Plastic Bags at the Mall will not Offset Your Car’s Emissions

In middle-class India, environmentalism has become as fashionable as it is in the West. It is in schoolbooks, on TV, in after-dinner discussions.

I hope those Indians who could not stand what Michael Crichton said in his book “State of Fear” 2004, will read JOHN TIERNEY in NYT March 25, 2008:

“…Installing a solar-powered hot-water heater or a windmill at your place in the country is not going to erase the carbon footprint of maintaining and traveling to a second home. Recycling glass bottles and avoiding plastic bags at the grocery store will not offset your car’s emissions.

Switching to a Prius will not undo the effects of frequent air travel. A couple of international trips can be worse for your carbon footprint than driving a Hummer for a year. If the delegates to future conferences on climate change are expected to wear illuminated symbols of their energy consumption, they won’t be visiting any more spots like Bali…”

This comes on top of what Jared Diamond said in NYT on January 2, 2008:

“…The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world…

A real problem for the world is that each of us 300 million Americans consumes as much as 32 Kenyans…

The only approach that China and other developing countries will accept is to aim to make consumption rates and living standards more equal around the world…

Other aspects of our consumption are wasteful, too…The world has serious consumption problems, but we can solve them if we choose to do so.”

“Consumption Factor” related problems are not just between nations but also within an individual country.

Economic & Political Weeky March 15-21 2008 said:

“Despite rapid economic growth, more than 75% of Indians are poor and vulnerable with a level of consumption not more than twice the official poverty line…

There is evidence to suggest that inequality is widening between the common people and the better-off sections of society.”

With great effort and luck, if you swim to an island, unlike in the past, a windmill and not a tree is likely to greet you!


The Spectator

Alfred Nobel…What Were You Smoking?

In his new book “Human Smoke”, Nicholson Baker writes (NYT Books Update March 21, 2008):

“…It was August 1892.
"Perhaps my factories will put an end to war even sooner than your congresses," Alfred Nobel said. "On the day when two army corps may mutually annihilate each other in a second, probably all civilized nations will recoil with horror and disband their troops." “

Mr. Nobel, From the days of Mahabharat, two army corps have mutually annihilated each other in a second but arms manufacturers from "civilized" nation such as yours have invented newer reasons to create deadlier weapons.


Artist: Alan Dunn The New Yorker 30 October 1948

Without this Fag there was Almost No Marathi cinema

On March 23, 2008, I watched Mel Brook’s “To Be or Not To Be” (1983).

While watching James Haake as Sasha, I remembered brilliance of Ganpat Patil गणपत पाटील.

Next day Mr. Patil came visiting, on the front page of morning newspaper. He passed way on March 23, 2008 at Kolhapur कोल्हापूर.

Master Vinayak मास्टर विनायक onwards, Marathi cinema has given India some of the finest comic actors. Mr. Patil was one of the very best. He was a unique gift to Marathi cinema because Hindi cinema never had such a talented fag.

Ganpat Patil turned some of the most mundane scenes into the most hilarious ones by a gesture here and a dialogue there.

Leading men of Marathi cinema must be petrified by Mr. Patil's on-screen ability to make fun of any of them with so little effort.

I always envied his easy access to leading ladies of Marathi cinema. On screen, he slept next to them or slipped under the pallu of their sari without making anyone feel awkward! I thought it was all very sexy without being vulgar.

Mel Brooks says in “To Be or Not To Be”: “Without Jews, fags, and gypsies, there is no theater.”

Although in real life he was no fag, without Ganpat Patil it was as if there was no Marathi cinema.


(Picture courtesy- Pudhari पुढारी March 24, 2008)

I wish Painting is All Winston Churchill Did

The Asian Age March 21, 2008 reported:

“UK kids say Churchill was 1st man on moon!:
…Nearly three quarters of children between 4 to 10 years cannot even identify the moon in the night sky, let alone any stars or planets…(and say) Sir Winston Churchill, the UK Prime Minister during the second world war, was the first man to walk on the moon…”

I don’t see Churchill on moon but surely see him in hell.

Amartya Sen wrote in Economic & Political Weekly February 16-22, 2008:

“…Winston Churchill’s famous remark that the Bengal famine of 1943 was caused by the tendency of people there to breed like rabbits belongs to this general tradition of blaming the colonial victim. This had a profound effect in crucially delaying famine relief in that disastrous and easily preventable famine. The demands of cultural nationalism merge well with the asymmetry of power and can have quite devastating effects…”

(India was hardly alone. Sample cruelty of Britain towards Ireland:

"Charles Edward Trevelyan, the head of the treasury in London during the famines, who had a huge role in the making of public policy in Ireland, even took the liberty of speculating: “There is scarcely a woman of the peasant class in the West of Ireland whose culinary art exceeds the boiling of a potato”. There, it seems, we see the birth of a putatively great explanation of a famine – people starved because the Irish peasant woman could not cook beyond boiling a potato!"

It is estimated that between 500,000 and 1.5 million people died as a result of the famine.

"The famines of the 1840s also changed the nature of Ireland in a decisive way. It led to a level of emigration – even under the most terrible conditions of voyage – that has hardly been seen anywhere else in the world. The Irish population even today is very substantially smaller than it was more than 160 years ago, in 1845, when the famine began.")

Although Churchill once said: “One of our great aims is the delivery on German towns of the largest possible quantity of bombs per night”, he still had some concern left for Germans as exemplified in para below.

“…Even Churchill came to regret the extent of the bombing, in March 1945 writing to the RAF’s head saying that ”the terror bombing must stop” and remonstrating over the destruction of Dresden…”

But for Indians, he only had scorn. “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.”

Considering that he also said: ”I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes.”, Bengalis should be considered lucky that they were killed by famine and not by Agent Yellow!

I really wish Churchill indeed did only paintings….


Artist: Charles E. Martin 6 February 1954

Not Just Graffiti but Reality?

Unless this is a prank, this picture would make most people numb.

Outlook March 24, 2008 “Saving Vidarbha”



Banner written in Marathi reads “With houses, cattle and entire fields, this village is for sale” at Dorli village in Wardha, Maharashtra

How Democracies Can Elect Hitler and Defeat Mahatma Phule महात्मा फुले

Indians are proud of their democracy. They feel it facilitates social mobility in a caste ridden society and is the least flawed of all forms of governance.

I agree with this assessment.

Ian Kershaw wrote on February 3, 2008:

“How democracy produced a monster: Could something like it happen again? That is invariably the first question that comes to mind when recalling that Hitler was given power in Germany 75 years ago last week.

With the world now facing such great instability, the question seems more obvious than ever.

Hitler came to power in a democracy with a highly liberal constitution, and in part by using democratic freedoms to undermine and then destroy democracy itself…

…These distant events still have echoes today. In Europe, in the wake of increased immigration, most countries have experienced some revival of neo-fascist movements. Not so long ago, Serbian nationalism, inflamed by President Slobodan Milosevic, set off war and ethnic cleansing within the Continent…”

Marathi daily Pudhari पुढारी reported on March 19, 2008:

“125 years ago on March 19, 1883, two of the greatest Indians ever, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule महात्मा ज्योतिबा फुले (1827-1890) and Gopal Hari Deshmukh aka Lokhitwadi गोपाळ हरी देशमुख लोकहितवादी (1823-1892)- were trounced by conservatives in local elections.

In Vetal Peth वेताळ पेठ, Phule got zero votes and in Bhavai Peth भवानी पेठ he got just two votes, including his own vote. Keeping him company, in Shukravar Peth शुक्रवार पेठ, Lokhitwadi got zero votes.”

Pudhari claimed that today Phule would surely get elected because his agenda of social reforms is now universally accepted etc. (Btw- No such claim was made on behalf of Lokhitwadi.)

In deeply divided on caste lines of today's Maharashtra, I am not sure about Phule's electoral prospects but Lokhitwadi would surely be defeated in year 2008!


Artist: Frank Modell The New Yorker 12 January 1957

Tragedy and Comedy are NOT two Different Planets but Windows

Inspired by Anton Chekhov, Israeli author Amos Oz told Newsweek March 3, 2008:

"...I no longer believe that tragedy and comedy are two different planets. They are just two different windows from which we can view the same landscape of our lives..."

Never to know one's mother must be the only tragedy greater than never to know one's father.

G A Kulkarni जी ए कुलकर्णी wrote in 1977:
"
तीर्थरूप आबांस,
डोळे उघडून उठून बसत मी तुम्हाला नीट
पाहण्यापूर्वीच तुमची पावले उंबऱ्याबाहेर
पडली होती."

(Respected Father,
Before I opened eyes while sitting up to have a good look at you, your feet had crossed the threshold)

This moved me but I what liked more was…

Mel Brooks:

“I can’t tell you what sadness, what pain it is to me never to have known my father…If only I could look at him, touch his face, see if he had eyebrows!”


Artist: Dana Fradon The New Yorker 1 May 1965

Earth’s Love Song of Kusumagraj कुसुमाग्रज Is Prophetic

On March 11, 2008, DENNIS OVERBYE wrote for NYT “Kissing the Earth Goodbye in About 7.59 Billion Years.”

“If nature is left to its own devices, about 7.59 billion years from now Earth will be dragged from its orbit by an engorged red Sun and spiral to a rapid vaporous death…

… Earth’s basic problem is that the Sun will gradually get larger and more luminous as it goes through life, according to widely held theories of stellar evolution. In its first 4.5 billion years, according to the models, the Sun has already grown about 40 percent brighter.

Over the coming eons, life on Earth will become muggier and more uncomfortable and finally impossible...

… About a billion years from now, the Sun will be 10 percent brighter. Oceans on Earth will boil away. The Sun will run out of hydrogen fuel in its core about 5.5 billion years from now and start burning hydrogen in the surrounding layers. As a result, the core will shrink and the outer layers will rapidly expand as the Sun transforms itself into a red giant…

… As a result, the red giant version of the Sun — at its maximum — will be 256 times as big across as the star is today and 2,730 times as luminous…”

This article brought to my mind a Marathi poem.

V V Shirwadkar वि वा शिरवाडकर aka Kusumagraj कुसुमाग्रज wrote पृथ्वीचे प्रेमगीत “Earth’s Love Song” in the first half of 20th century ( विशाखा Vishakha 1942).

I had this poem to study in school (9th standard?). I liked it on the first reading.

I remember a little embarrassment of our Marathi teacher (Mr. Ligade?) reading out to the whole class carnal desires of mother earth!

One of its stanza reads as follows:

गमे की तुझ्या रुद्र रूपात जावे
मिळोनी गळा घालुनीया गळा
तुझ्या लाल ओठांतली आग प्यावी.
मिठीने तुझ्या तीव्र व्हाव्या कळा.

(“Feel like in your fierce beauty
I should merge by necking
Drink fire of your red lips.
Should feel acute pain by your embrace. “)

This is no more poet's fantasy. We think this all will happen!

The robots or cockroaches or whoever that is running the Earth in a billion years will know.


Artist: Charles Addams The New Yorker 25 July 1983