World Economic Forum (Davos) - revisited

Next week, once again, the elites of the exclusive club called the World Economic Forum will meet in Davos for a week or so. It has a membership of 1007 corporate organisations, and while the total attendance in this year's forum will be around 2500, the others - including the head of states, academics, social entrepreneurs, etc. - are only "invitees".

Two years back (WEF, Jan 21-25, 2004), Simon Zadek, chief executive of the NGO AccountAbility had penned down a day-to-day account of his experiences of attending this annual carnival of global leaders.

His descrption of his own role ("And me: how do I fit into this picture? Well, I am one of the Shakespearean “fools”, invited to amuse, surprise and, within moderation, attack, the gathered throng: an insider-outsider with attitude - yet reasonable manners...") resonates with John Ralston Saul's description of WEF:

"Just as classic play with kings, virgins, love and betrayalmust have their fools, so Globalisation had Davos."

Some excerpts from Zadek's diary/blog on OpenDemocracy site:

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As I edge towards the world’s most elite event, the annual World Economic Forum in Davos , I am in low spirits.

...Truth be told, the cause of my depression is the memory of my time at Davos last year listening to the innermost thoughts of the world’s most powerful business people and politicians.

No insult is intended to my conference colleagues. Some of the characters at Davos are amazing; they have achieved incredible things on the back of innovation, energy and vision. The rest? Well, they are in the main average, god-fearing family types who got where they are by being in the right place with the right face - or else by being media- and market-friendly. Almost none of them have horns.

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Wandering off-campus, beyond the ring of steel and firepower surrounding Davos, I joined the alternative People’s Summit in time to hear some of its speakers, as well as debate between feisty social activists and organisations. I confess that it felt much like a throwback to the very early days of The Other Economic Summit (TOES http://www.ee.upenn.edu/~rabii/toes/ToesHistory.html ), the antecedent of many of today’s alternative events. Good spirits, centred ethics, and vibrant energy, combined with testimonies from grassroots activists and the more orderly policy-wonkers.

The fact of the World Social Forum had somewhat taken the edge from this dissident event, but in other ways made its local aspects all the more enjoyable...

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...But in the end, my real downer from last year was to do with substance. Attending several sessions on terrorism and security, it quickly became clear that the days of the “liberal mind” were seen as being numbered. “We are here to help You, since You cannot cope with the emerging situation” was the line of the day. Fifty years of liberal democracy had neutralised the citizenry’s ability to think, it seemed...

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...My session was entitled, believe it or not, “Do grassroots organisations need to be ring-fenced?” I had hoped that the American Enterprise Institute http://www.ngowatch.org/ might show, and spice up the evening with a gentle rant about how NGOs were stripping us all of our basic right to commercialise. But it was not to be. We were a very moderate crowd... We joined in bemoaning the civil accountability gap, and found common cause in wanting to make sure that NGOs did the right thing for the right reasons, before they were made to do it for the wrong ones....

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From another session:

....Solutions come thick and thin, but all look remarkably similar – get competitive and enter the global markets. But the political challenge does eventually hit the table, as an instant participant voting system signals that political reform is the heart of the issue. After all, challenges one questioner from the floor, what about democratic reform and the gender rights deficit? The suited, all-male panel is unanimous and unambiguous in stating its commitment to political reform....

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....Lunch is a private event about water, or more specifically the conditions under which privatisation of water management can and should proceed across the world. A code has been drafted under the auspices of the World Economic Forum, and a distinguished group has been assembled to comment.

‘Seems somewhat market-focused’, I suggest politely, pointing to the code’s focus on a decent financial return to investment, and an explicit rejection of subsidies linked to a statement that ‘consumers need to understand the real cost of water’.

‘What about a rights-based approach’, I proffer as an innocent alternative, pointing out how this can be consistent with reasonable economic returns. The cat is out of the bag....

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...we run into some characters who have come from an NGO-WEF advisory group where the hot topic has been WEF’s decision not to invite Oxfam to Davos this year. ‘A matter of rotation’, claims WEF, pointing to the bulging sessions and the town’s over-patronised, over-priced hotels. ‘A political decision’, retort some, with Oxfam excluded ‘because of their hard-arse anti-corporate campaigning tactics’.

‘What is to be done?’, I inquire casually, squinting out... at the small group of assembled NGO-ites. A bit of this and a bit of that, I eventually gather, from the assorted responses - but essentially not much at all. Civil solidarity is a solitary beast. I wonder who will be excluded next year?

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, we are told. I suspect that Groucho Marx might have responded that if only the opposite were equally true, that the road to heaven was paved with bad intentions, the world would be a far better place.

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‘Does corporate responsibility pay?’ is the title of a session that I am opening today. ‘Maybe, sometimes, but not enough to make a real difference’, I begin - before edging my way cautiously from a celebration of leadership of progressive companies towards the need for public policy interventions to ensure that markets reward business for doing good.

An editor from the Economist wades in, reiterating the publication's long-standing editorial position that corporate responsibility is either a misnomer for good management; a case of mistaken identity; or rank irresponsibility on the part of managers - essentially vanity-spend of someone else’s money.

Curiously, business leaders at the session were at one in resisting what one alluded to dismissively as ‘old-style, classical economics’. There was a time when the Economist led the march from the right. Today, it is a weird (although still highly profitable) anachronism, campaigning for a style of business that makes neither money nor sense.

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The bottom line

What did I do at the World Economic Forum in Davos this year? After spending a week with the world’s most powerful people... what is so astonishing about Davos is that it brought together the best brains and hearts of the world’s business, political and spiritual leaders, covered every conceivable topic under the sun - and yet managed to avoid serious, open debate about what is really happening in the world.

There was no real debate about how today’s American Dream has established an essentially colonial and destructive attitude towards the rest of us; no real debate about the extraordinary loss of civil rights that comes with this new discipline; and no real debate about the utterly cynical behaviour of many business leaders towards their shareholders, let alone workers and communities.

There was, moreover, no real debate about how our leaders show neither remorse nor shame as they defy their citizens and the laws of the land in taking for themselves, and leading their countries (against the clearly-voiced interests of their citizens) to war against others, and ultimately against themselves.

...There is only one big difference between last year’s and this year’s Davos. In 2003, people were so shocked with world events that they couldn’t help but show their concerns, their anger towards the US, and their fury towards the corruption within their midst. A year later, the facial muscles and itchy voice-boxes are back under control. The assembled are largely mute, polite, accepting. Even edgy questions are ritualised in how they are asked, and are assured of mildly irrelevant responses. Corridor conversations illuminate the fact that this silence is not born out of lack of information, thoughtfulness, or ethics. But these more noble traits are swept tidily behind masks of pragmatism. Worse still, they are submerged by people’s passivity towards what they know is morally unacceptable and ultimately destructive behaviour from within their ranks...

...But civil society, in truth, remains largely absent from the conversation in Davos. NGOs are at the table, but seem to have been put into specialised roles, dealing the ‘minor keys’ that do make a difference but in no way challenge the underlying game-plan...

Silence of the Media Lambs

Last month, on Dec 7th, Harold Pinter, the British Playwright received the Nobel Prize for literature.

While the media reported this ceremony - as it would - it remained curiously silent on what Harold Pinter said in his acceptance speech. It was reminiscent of US Vice President Henry Wallace's 60-year old article on The Danger of American Fascism (New York Times, April 9, 1944)

[Full Speech of Harold Pinter is accessible over here]

Excerpts:

...Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed....

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now....

...Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued – or beaten to death – the same thing – and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer....

...The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant....

...How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought.... But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines....

...I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity – the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons – is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

Somewhere earlier in the speech, Pinter said:

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead?... This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them?

Media did not even report this speech!

Will the Real Adam Smith Stand Up, Please!!

Sometime in the last century, Adam Smith was hijacked, gagged, and new words were forced into his mouth!

The hijacking of the 300-year old dead Scotish economist happened, when in 1948, I believe (or so I read somewhere), he got misquoted in Paul Samuelson's Textbook of Economics. That perhaps, was the first time the theory of "invisible hand" of the free-market got articulated. The so-called "quote" from Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), reads:

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

Every individual endeavours to employ his capital so that its produce may be of the greatest value. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own security, only his own gain. And he is in this led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than he really intends to promote it."

This (mis)quotation from Adam Smith, which has been so often repeated (by politicians, media, adademics, policy-planners) that it has become an underlying - a dogma/ ideology - of our present flavour-of-the-day global economic system. It helps justifying the unregulated "free-market" ideology, globalisation, the doctrine of "self-interest"/limitless-greed, and the irrelevance of state/government in promoting public good.

The only problem is that this is not exactly what Adam Smith had ever said!!!

What Did Adam Smith Say?
The Book IV/Chapter 2/Para 10/Line 2 of Wealth of Nations gives the full quote:

"As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it."
http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b4-c2.htm

It is, indeed, perhaps more than a coincidence that the popular version of Smith's (mis)quote, completely misses out his views about the individual employing his capital "in the support of domestic industry" or preferring "the support of domestic to that of foreign industry."...

According to the full quotation, Adam Smith was actually saying that investment in domestic industry and its produce - i.e., localisation not globalisation - promotes the "public good"... He was, actually, promoting a sort of economic nationalism!!!

What Else Did Adam Smith Say?

There are many other things that Adam Smith wrote, which are also never mentioned or highlighted. Some of his other observations, that are carefully never mentioned:

On "State vs. Business" Issue: Lesser of the Two Evils!

"The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers... the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind..."
http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b4-c3-pt-2.htm

On Industry/Trade Associations/Forums

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary."
http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b1-c10-pt-2.htm

On Nature of Sustainable Nature of Wealth:

"The unstable and perishable nature of stock and credit, however, render them unfit to be trusted to as the principal funds of that sure, steady, and permanent revenue which can alone give security and dignity to government. The government of no great nation that was advanced beyond the shepherd state seems ever to have derived the greater part of its public revenue from such sources"
http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b5-c2-pt-1.htm

On Corporation & Corporate Governance

"The pretence that corporations are necessary for the better government of the trade is without any foundation. The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is not that of his corporation, but that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence. An exclusive corporation necessarily weakens the force of this discipline."
http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b1-c10-pt-2.htm

On "Export-Led" Economies

"According to the natural course of things, therefore, the greater part of the capital of every growing society is, first, directed to agriculture, afterwards to manufactures, and last of all to foreign commerce... Some of their lands must have been cultivated before any considerable towns could be established, and some sort of coarse industry of the manufacturing kind must have been carried on in those towns, before they could well think of employing themselves in foreign commerce. "
http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b3-c1.htm

On Bilateral Trade Agreements

"WHEN a nation binds itself by treaty either to permit the entry of certain goods from one foreign country which it prohibits from all others, or to exempt the goods of one country from duties to which it subjects those of all others, the country, or at least the merchants and manufacturers of the country, whose commerce is so favoured, must necessarily derive great advantage from the treaty.... Such treaties, however, though they may be advantageous to the merchants and manufacturers of the favoured, are necessarily disadvantageous to those of the favouring country."
http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b4-c6.htm

etc. etc.

To be sure, Adam Smith was not against free-market. However, his definition of "free-market" was quite different (in many ways, opposite) than what is attibuted to him nowadays.

A couple of years back, I had made a posting on this blog entitled: Capitalism contradicts Free Market!!! I am reproducing it again:

We normally use the term capitalism and free-market in the same breath -- in fact, often interchangeably.

If one really thinks about it, the "Free Market Capitalism" (or "Capitalistic Free Market") is a contradiction in terms. Capitalism is based on an economic doctrine which concentrates the power to a few., while Free Market is based on assumption of equal distribution of power across markets.

Also Adam Smith's Free Market Theory was based on some assumptions:

(1) player are not large enough to influence the market dynamics
(2) there are no "information assymetries" (or trade secrets)
(3) trade across nations/ regions is balanced
(4) sellers are also producers, etc.

Clearly, none of these holds in the present day real world: World's largest 200 corporations earn sales revenues which are greater than the combined GDPs of 48LDCs; IPR regime blocks free flow of information; trade barriers and subsidies by richer nations do not allow balanced trade across regions, and sellers are often out-sourcers... etc.

So one can either support capitalism or support free market!!!

Setting the Terms of Debate - Part II (Volcker Report)

This is the promised continuation of the last post, which ended with the statement:

For that matter, the Volcker Report itself is a good example of "setting the terms of debate".

...Set-up to investigate the corruption in the UN-sanctioned Oil-For-Food program, Paul Volcker's agenda clearely (and cleverly) skirted any investigation in the historical background of the Oil-For-Food Program (and the illegal, criminal activities that led to the necessity of having such a program)

...so here is a brief reminder of the historical background:

1. In August 1990, UN Security Council, led/convinced by the US, imposed trade santions against Iraq, as a punishment for its invasion of Kuwait.

2. Why did Iraq invaded Kuwait? Iraq suspected and blamed Kuwait of "slant" mining into Iraqi territory... As this story points out, apparently, it was "set up" to create a justification for US to invade...
See:
Was Gulf War A Setup For Iraq?

3. To build up support for military action against Iraq, in October 1990, "Nurse Nayirah", an alleged refugee from Iraq, told the US Congress how she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers dumping Kuwaiti infants out of their incubators "on[to] the cold floor to die," and then leaving with the machines.

This testimony was organised by the PR company, Hill & Knowlton, who were hired by the exiled Kuwaiti government, to create support for the US counterstike. The company also got the tearful performance filmed and circulated it to more than 300 news-channels...

The 15-year old "Nurse Nayirah" later turned out to be the daughter of Kuwaiti ambassador to the US, and two maternity nurses in that ward later said that they had never seen Nayirah there and that the baby-dumping had never happened).

But by that time, the US Congress had already approved the invasion of Iraq (leading to Gulf War I)...

...Hill & Knowlton got paid US $14 million by the US government for its help in promoting the Gulf War.
See:
Nurse Nayirah (Wikipedia)
Lies, Damn Lies and War (Daily Mirror)

4. During the Gulf War of 1991, US forces intentionally - and in contravention to Article 54 of Geneva Convention - bombed Iraq's civilian infrastructure (the Iraqi electrical grids that powered its 1,410 water-treatment plants). This was a calculated move. To quote the scenario predicted in one of US Defense Intelligence Agency document (Jan 1991, titled "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities"):

"SUBJECT: Effects of Bombing on Disease Occurrence in Baghdad
Food- and waterborne diseases have the greatest potential for outbreaks in the civilian and military population over the next 30 to 60 days.... Increased incidence of diseases will be attributable to degradation of normal preventive medicine, waste disposal, water purification/distribution, electricity, and decreased ability to control disease outbreaks. Any urban are in Iraq that has received infrastructure damage will have similar problems."
See:
How the US Deliberately Destroyed Iraq's Water

5.Not surprising that by mid-90s, the Iraqi population was devastated.

Iraq was dependent on its oil exports for its food imports. Combined with the use of later UN sanctions - embargo on export of Iraqi oil, which reduced its legal foreign trade by 90% - to prevent Iraq from getting the equipment and chemicals necessary for water purification (and food), this was a perfect recipe for an UN-mandated genocide:

The World Health Organization (WHO) observed in March 1996 that, due to the sanctions, there was a six-fold increase in the mortality rate for children under five and the majority of the country's population was on a semi-starvation diet.

UNICEF reported in October 1996, that about 4,500 children under the age of 5 were dying every month in Iraq due to hunger or disease.

UN figures showed that by 1995-96, more than 1.7 million Iraqi civilians had died as a result of the sanctions. ...etc.
See:
Bleeding The Gulf
UNICEF Says Thousands of Iraqi Children Are Dying

6. In May 1996, Madeleine Albright, the then US ambassador to the UN (and later made the US Secretary of State), when asked about the death of half a million Iraqi children due to sanctions, made the (in)famous statement: "I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it."
See:
Iraqi Sanctions: Were They Worth It?

7. After a major public outcry, the Oil-for-Food program was established in 1996 through a UN resolution... after much resistance by Saddam Hussain.

Reasons for the reluctance/resistance were many:

The price fixed for sale of oil was much below the global market price.

Proceeds from such oil sales were banked in New York. 34% of that was disbursed to outside parties with claims on Iraq, e.g., the Kuwaitis, UN, etc. Another 13% went to meet the needs of the Kurdish autonomous area in the north.

The rub was that US could anytime deny the import of any equipment - which it did, e.g., when it allowed the purchase a sewage treatment plant, but blocked Iraq from buying the generator necessary to run it!!! ...etc.

8. Meanwhile, the US-UK coalition enforced "no-fly" zones over north and south Iraq (they were illegal, since not mandated by UN... Surprisingly, they were also not objected-to by UN either!), and kept on bombing Iraq for 12 years... The so-called "international community" - an oft-used term these days - sat on the fence and watched a nation being decimated...
See:
Iraq Was Being Bombed During 12 Years of Sanctions
Squeezed to death

9. Since then, we all know that US re-invaded Iraq on the pretext of the alleged WMDs (Weapons-that-Mysteriously-Disappeared...

...etc. etc.

Predictably, Paul Volcker's report on Oil-for-Food program does not go into this histry of deceptions/ crimes/ payoffs, etc...

It starts with the innocent premise that the Oil-for-Food program was "legal" (thus, justifying the sequence of actions that led to - and followed - it as "legal")....

After all, if Genocide is taken as legally sanctioned by the "rule of law"... Then any action - for whatever reasons - that violates the intention to kill becomes "illegal"...

This is setting the term of debate!!!

Setting the Terms of Debate - Part I

An old adage of public deception - to paraphrase Thomas Pynchon - is:

"If you get them to ask wrong questions, you will never have to give the right answers."

This is a good description of what is often termed as "setting the terms of debate" - he who sets the ground rule, is bound to win.

A good example of this phenomenon is the response of Indian main-stream media and politicians to the Volcker Report. The report mentioned 129 Indian companies and one politician (Natwar Singh) as the "non-contractual beneficiary" of the kickbacks.

Predictably, there are numerous questions raised in the parliament, cover-page articles, first-page headlines, etc., about Natwar Singh's role (or its refutal).

Surprisingly (or perhaps not really so), there is hardly any coverage, questions or comments about the alleged role of the Indian companies mentioned in the report (that include some big names like Reliance Industries, Tata international, India Oil, Godrej Boyce, Kirloskar Brothers, Alembic Chemicals, Ajanta Pharma, State Trading Corp, etc.).

And that is how, the terms of "public debate" are set...

... for that matter, the Volcker Report itself is a good example of "setting the terms of debate".... (so wait for Part II of this posting)...

Organisations as Phrog Farms

I had read this article, by Jerry Harvey, when it was published in Organizational Dynamics journal, I think, in 1977. Recently, I discovered it once again (as a chapter in his book Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management)...

...It is a depressingly insightful and hilariously zany look at the contemporary organisations - that sadly remains as much relevant now, as it was then.

Some excerpts:

All organizations have two essential purposes. One is to produce widgets, glops, and fillips. The other is to turn people into phrogs. In many organizations, the latter purpose takes precedence over the former. For example, in many organizations, it is more important to follow the chain of command than to behave sensibly.

Phrog is spelled with a ph because phrogs don't like to be known as frogs, and they try to hide their phroginess from themselves and others by transparent means... For one who has been a person, it's a great come down to be a phrog.

Phrogs tend to live a solitary life in the swamp, or as one phrog said, "It's a lonely life on the lily pad." Phrogs compete with one another for insects, vie for the right to head the flicking order of the swamp, and are ultimately evaluated for what they do in their own mud flats.... Most phrogs spend more time flicking flies in the fog than draining the swamp. It seems that their behavior is circular. If they were to spend time draining the swamp, there would be no flies to flick - and no phrogs. For that reason, it's very important to phrogs to maintain the swamp as it is rather than to drain it.

In phrog farms, bullphrogs generally get to be phresident. In other words, the better a phrog can tolerate the loneliness of his lily pad,
- the more facile he becomes in flicking flies,
- the more skillful he becomes at appropriating others' lily pads, and
- the more adroit he becomes at maintaining the swamp,
the more likely he is to become phresident.

Bullphrogs are greatly revered in the swamp. In fact, other phrogs assume that bullphrogs have magical powers because of their unusual abilities to turn people into phrogs... The magic exercised by bullphrogs comes from humans' belief in it. The tyranny of bullphrogs stems not from the reality of bullphrogs' power, but from the human belief of the myth of "bullphrog power." Belief in bullphrog power prevents humans from having to take responsibility for the fog and mud and moss that make up the atmosphere of the swamp.

Bullphrogs - particularly phresidents - frequently feel very trapped in the swamp. Many of them are destroyed by it. They feel trapped because they are trapped...

...Management improvement programs generally consist of phrog kissing, which is magical, harmless, and platonic. Any activity designed to facilitate phrog kissing is cosmetic organizational development an example of ODD behavior - that is, organizational development, by deception - or organizational improvement as practiced by phrogs. Activities such as phrog style assessment, phrog chorus-building, and inter-lily-pad conflict resolution, in the absence of swamp drainage and area reclamation, are examples of phrog kissing by ODD managers...

...Occasionally, during meetings of Phrognarians, a phrog pharts in the fog. When that happens, the phrog loses some of his or her phroginess and, therefore, represents a great threat to the balance of the swamp. Phrog pharts are seldom sanctioned by Phrognarians. They are too real. They put holes in the fog and ultimately threaten the atmosphere of magic required to maintain the swamp...

...The job of most swamp managers is to maintain and enhance the swamp, not to drain it... The purpose of swamp consultants - in the eyes of swamp managers - is to help the swamp operate effectively, not to drain it.... Most management improvement literature is designed to facilitate swamp management, not area reclamation. Most managers are phrog farmers, and most management consultants and phrogfessors of marsh management are phrog farmers' helpers. The relationship is symbiotic.

Most phrog farmers and their helpers are aware that they are mired in the swamp... May God have mercy on their souls...

God does have mercy on their souls. Otherwise, God would be the greatest phrog farmer of them all.

Amen!!!

India's Most Privatised and "Invisible" Workforce

One may have used the term "Working Poor" to describe them, but, to my knowledge, this term is not much in currency in India. Instead, they are termed as part of "unorganised or informal workforce"...or more often than not, they remain nameless, faceless part of the country.

So who are they?

Of course, the "rural poor" are part of this category. But even if one lives in an Indian city/town - big or small - and moves out of the neat and clean commercial and residential area (only from which one would be able to access this blog/mail)... and one decides to notice ...well, they are actually all around!!!

- On the sidewalks which are occupied by vendors and hawkers of vegetables, fruit, meat, fish, snack-foods and a myriad of non-perishable items ranging from locks and keys, soaps and detergents, clothing, vessels to books...

- On the sidewalks and street corners, as the owners of those numerous stalls and kiosks selling various things and services... as the road-side cobblers, barbers, tailors, book-binders, cycle mechanics... as the garbage collectors, rag-pickers... construction workers...

- On the road, one would also notice them as head-loaders, cart-pullers, camel/bullock/horse-cart drivers ferrying goods/passengers to other places... and of course, the rickshaw and auto rickshaw drivers... the truck drivers...

- Down the narrow crowded lanes, they work in/ own small workshops that repair bicycles and motorcycles, recycle scrap metal, make furniture and metal parts, tan leather and stitch shoes, weave, dye, and print cloth, polish diamonds and other gems, make and embroider garments, sort and sell cloth, paper, and metal waste... and more.

- Many of them remain "invisible" and produce and sell from their homes/shanties (mostly women) as garment makers, embroiderers, incense stick rollers, bidi-rollers, paper bag makers, kite makers, hair band makers, pickle and papad-makers, and others.

- Back in one's home, they work as maids, domestic servants, chauffeurs, gardners... the person who comes to wash the car, to deliver newspaper, milk...

Irrespective of their trade, however, they share a few things in common:

they work without a secure contract,

they have no or minimal worker/employment benefits, and

they have no access to social, or even legal, security.

... And they comprise of 93% of India's 370mn strong economically active workforce.

Even in the urban centers of India (Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, etc.) - which cluster most of the employment opportunities - this "unorganised workforce" accounts for about 60-67% of total employment.

...As a collective entity they are quite productive as well. These "India's most privatised citizens" contribute to:

60% of Net Domestic Product

68% of income

60% of savings

31% of agricultural exports

41% of manufactured exports

They perform one other very "useful" function in the society, which is least acknowledged:
They subsidise life-styles of their "more organised" fellow citizens!!!

One of the hopes/dreams (/fantasy/delusion/hallucination?) of the middle-class Indians is that, with the liberalisation of economy, the wealth will "trickle down", and these boats will also rise with the tide...

Somehow, this has not happened (in fact, it has not happened anywhere in the world either). In fact, if anything, - though there are more formal enterprises in India than 15 years back - the proportion of the "unorganised" in the workforce has risen from 89% in 1989 to 93% today .

...and their numbers will perhaps keep on rising... as India's formal enterprises increasingly become "leaner" and more "competitive", increase their "labour/manpower productivity", and achieve the "least-cost producer" status, etc.,....

After all, where else do all those down-sized/right-sized people disappear and become "invisible"??!!!

War is Still a (Profitable) Racket

A sort of continuation of the last posting...

Major General Smedley Darlington Butler served the US Army for more than three decades, and was the recipient of two Congressional Medals of Honor.

Perhaps better known now for his book War is a Racket, in which he described how war - any war - is but a tool in the hands of business tomake money...

The full text of book can be accessed at:
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html
[Highly recommended - a must read!!]

The following is the excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933 by him, that gives the gist of his experience as a warrior: http://www.twf.org/News/Y2001/0911-Racket.html

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. . . .

There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.

It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents...

Apparently, not much has really changed in the world since then. Here are some news items and reports:

Rebuilding Iraq Proves to Be A Gold Mine for Middlemen (Wall Street Journal, 16 June 2003)

The Privatisation of War (The Guardian, December 10, 2003)

Advocates of War Now Profit From Iraq's Reconstruction (Los Angeles Times, 14 July 2004)

The Price of Freedom in Iraq and Power in Washington by Ceara Donnelley and William D. Hartung, August 2003 (gives a detailed account of profits have zoomed up for companies such as Boeing, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Halliburton, DynCorp, etc.)

A Band of Brothers: The Rebuilding of Iraq [pdf format]

List of Articles on War Profiteering from CorpWatch

WarProfiteers.com

...On War, State and Deception

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
(~Woody Allen)

After each war there is a little less democracy to save.
(~Brooks Atkinson)

They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.
(~Eugene V. Debs, 1918)

It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.
(~Robert Houghwout Jackson, Chief Judge, War-Crimes Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945)

Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.
(~Donald Rumsfeld)

How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does it is murder. But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder.... Only get enough people to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?
(~Adin Ballou, 1845)

All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
(~Voltaire)

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.
(~Luis Bunuel)

War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
(~General Smedley Butler)

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people...
(~Leo Tolstoy)

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.
(~Herman Goering)

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.
(~General Douglas MacArthur)

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
(~Thomas Pynchon)

I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war...suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own.
(~Phillip Caputo)

It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.
(~Murray Rothbard)

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.
(~Aldous Huxley)

Almost all war making states borrow extensively, raise taxes, and seize the means of combat- including men--from reluctant citizens...
(~Charles Tilly)

All warfare is based on deception.
(~Sun Tzu)

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.
(~George W. Bush)

We have guided missiles and misguided men.
(~Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.
(~Sigmund Freud)

Peter Drucker's "Seventh Learning"

Peter Drucker - that Grand Old Man of management - died today.

Needless to say, he will be remembered as the Management Guru, a prolific thinker and writer, and a person, who often anticipated the future...

Besides his management writings, for me, one of his best pieces was an article "My Life as a Knowledge Worker" (published in Inc magazine, February 01, 1997). This was one of those few of his writing that had nothing to do with management... in which he had narrated seven of his learning experiences over his lifetime.

... And among them, the most enlightening one was the "Seventh Learning" which he gained from Joseph Schumpeter,, one of the greates economist of last century...

one of my favourites, I am reproducing it below:

THE SEVENTH EXPERIENCE
Taught by Schumpeter

One more experience, and then I am through with the story of my personal development. At Christmas 1949, when I had just begun to teach management at New York University, my father, then 73 years old, came to visit us from California. Right after New Year's, on January 3, 1950, he and I went to visit an old friend of his, the famous economist Joseph Schumpeter. My father had already retired, but Schumpeter, then 66 and world famous, was still teaching at Harvard and was very active as the president of the American Economic Association.

In 1902 my father was a very young civil servant in the Austrian Ministry of Finance, but he also did some teaching in economics at the university. Thus he had come to know Schumpeter, who was then, at age 19, the most brilliant of the young students. Two more-different people are hard to imagine: Schumpeter was flamboyant, arrogant, abrasive, and vain; my father was quiet, the soul of courtesy, and modest to the point of being self-effacing. Still, the two became fast friends and remained fast friends.

By 1949 Schumpeter had become a very different person. In his last year of teaching at Harvard, he was at the peak of his fame. The two old men had a wonderful time together, reminiscing about the old days. Suddenly, my father asked with a chuckle, "Joseph, do you still talk about what you want to be remembered for?" Schumpeter broke out in loud laughter. For Schumpeter was notorious for having said, when he was 30 or so and had published the first two of his great economics books, that what he really wanted to be remembered for was having been "Europe's greatest lover of beautiful women and Europe's greatest horseman--and perhaps also the world's greatest economist." Schumpeter said, "Yes, this question is still important to me, but I now answer it differently. I want to be remembered as having been the teacher who converted half a dozen brilliant students into first-rate economists."

He must have seen an amazed look on my father's face, because he continued, "You know, Adolph, I have now reached the age where I know that being remembered for books and theories is not enough. One does not make a difference unless it is a difference in the lives of people." One reason my father had gone to see Schumpeter was that it was known that the economist was very sick and would not live long. Schumpeter died five days after we visited him.

I have never forgotten that conversation. I learned from it three things: First, one has to ask oneself what one wants to be remembered for. Second, that should change. It should change both with one's own maturity and with changes in the world. Finally, one thing worth being remembered for is the difference one makes in the lives of people.

I am telling this long story for a simple reason. All the people I know who have managed to remain effective during a long life have learned pretty much the same things I learned. That applies to effective business executives and to scholars, to top-ranking military people and to first-rate physicians, to teachers and to artists. Whenever I work with a person, I try to find out to what the individual attributes his or her success. I am invariably told stories that are remarkably like mine.

*****

.... thanks, Peter Drucker, for sharing this insight!