Some more quotes o John Kenneth Galbraith

1.    We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect. 

2.    The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself. 

3.    Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

4.    If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

5.    It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought.

6.    Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.

7.    Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.

8.    Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

9.    Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

10.Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.

11.You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too.

12.There is nothing that unfettered chief executives will not do to feather their own nests.

13. "Some things were never meant to be recycled.'" -- John Kenneth Galbraith (his bumper sticker with a picture of George Bush. )

Will Manmohan Singh be forced to quit? - MD Nalapat in epaper: Pakistan Observer

Will Manmohan Singh be forced to quit? - MD Nalapat in epaper: Pakistan Observer

Will Manmohan Singh be forced to quit?

Geopolitical notes from India

M D Nalapat

Since the 1960s for over three decades, probably the most influential non-official individual resident in India was Ottavio Quatrocchi, an Italian who had the blunt demeanour of an Australian rather than the charm that the people of that ancient civilisation are justly known for. Nearly 70 key projects were sanctioned during this long period to companies that “Mr Q” was considered to favor, especially Snam-Progetti. Those officials who dared to sanction contracts to companies other than the few favored by Quatrocchi found their careers in India ended, including Cabinet Secretary P K Kaul, who was shunted off to Washington before completing his term in office, after a contract was won by another company instead of Snam. The then Petroleum Secretary, A S Gill, who was in line to be Cabinet Secretary found his career at an end after this decision was taken,and the minister concerned was swiftly removed from his post, as were others who dared take decisions other than those believed to have the backing of “Mr Q” What the source of the power of this Italian fixer is remains obscure.

However, none of his political allies could save his career in India once his name was outed in the scandal involving the purchase of Bofors guns in 1986. A year later, Swedish radio claimed that about $65 million had been paid as bribes to get the contract (peanuts in this day and age), and the Swiss authorities established that “Mr Q” was one of the beneficiaries. The Central Bureau of Investigation asked that his passport be impounded. Instead, on the recommendation of the minister looking after the CBI, Quatrocchi was allowed to fly out of India on 29 July 1993 to the safety of Kuala Lumpur. Since then, he has depended on his family members to ensure that contact be retained with influential individuals in India, a task that they have done so well that even today, he is among the few who can “get almost anything done” through the Government of India, including ensuring the return of the money that the investigating authorities say was a bribe paid to secure the Bofors contract. While other governments seek to confiscate the money stashed illegally away by the powerful, the Manmohan Singh government returned it to “Mr Q” a few years ago.

Ottavio Quatrocchi was never questioned - much less prosecuted – by the Indian authorities about his shenanigans. He escaped from the country in 1993 because of a morally questionable decision taken by then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, who thought he would buy peace with “Mr Q”’s friends in the Congress Party by enabling his escape. Instead, within brief months after that fateful decision, Rao began to be subjected to a barrage of attacks from Quatrocchi’s friends in the Congress Party ,acting through senior leaders in the government. Narasimha Rao never recovered from that stain, for from then onwards, despite the fact that he liberalised the economy, brought some stability to Kashmir by fending off Bill Clinton’s repeated efforts to get India to relax its hold on the state, and established an economics-centered diplomacy in place of the Nehru construct that was based on pious platitudes. By 1994,Rao was under daily fire for the perception of corruption, with all kinds of suspicious characters coming out of obscurity to make against him. After he was forced to resign as Prime Minister because of an election defeat allegations aused by a rebellion led by followers of influential politicians known to be close to “Mr Q”, Narasimha Rao was in perpetual risk of going to jail, getting freed of this Damocles Sword (in the shape of criminal cases against him) only in the final year of his life. Those who knew him well saw for themselves the fear in his eyes at the prospect of jail, a fear that paralysed him in the final decade of his life. 

The Commonwealth Games scandal is Manmohan Singh’s Quatrocchi moment. Will he follow the example of his old boss Rao and allow the VVIPs responsible for a scam that has been estimated to cost the taxpayer more than $4 billion in bribes to escape? If he does so, then Manmohan Singh will be finished as a credible Prime Minister. From the time that he allows the guilty of the Commonwealth Ganes to escape – should he do so - he will become the butt of ridicule and scandal the way Narasimha Rao was. After such public bludgeoning and umiliation, it is very likely that Congress President Sonia Gandhi will request the PM to resign, and replace him with someone known to be honest, such as Defense Minister A K Antony. Although Sonia’s first choice is Home Minister P Chidambaram - because of his total loyalty to her wishes - yet in an atmosphere where the Congress Party gets pushed back to the 1987-89 period when it was clouded in corruption charges, she may have no choice but to appoint the man known as “Saint Antony” for his financial integrity. Perhaps this would be followed by appointing Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee as President of India, after the present incumbent’s term concludes in two years time.

Should the PM-directed enquiry into the scams carried out during the Commonwealth Games preparation period fail to bring those actually guilty to justice, the reputation of Manmohan Singh for integrity would be affected. After such a lapse,even should he somehow manage to hang on to the Office of the Prime Minister, each month would bring personal attacks on him. After his eventual retirement, there is no doubt that he would follow Narasimha Rao in also having multiple criminal charges filed against him, which he would have to fight all his life to stay clear of arrest and imprisonment. All this while the VVIPs actually responsible for siphoning off huge amounts of money get away. The officers close to him would also face criminal charges for being accessories or being negligent in safeguarding the public interest. It all looks like going the Narasimha Rao way of scandal and disgrace for a team that in fact is honest and sincere.

There is no doubt that the huge expenditure ( of around $ 9 billion) spent on the Games has been a platinum opportunity for many. An example is a pedestrian overbridge that was built at a cost of $2 million, which collapsed. The Indian army was asked by the PM to build a substitute, which it did at a cost of just $175,000. A list of the prices for items bought or hired by the organizers of the Games shows that in several instances, there was a 4000% markup over the prices charged to other customers by the companies involved. A week ago, a friend mentioned that to his knowledge, six container loads of currency had been smuggled across the Indian border so as to be sent onwards to Switzerland, and that this is just a “small” part of what a particular ruling party leader made from the Games.

These days, Delhi is filled with stories about how “Manmohan Singh is conducting an eyewash” in promising to investigate the scandal. Many are angry that the PM did nothing while this flood of public money was being spent, moving into action only after the media could ignore the rot no longer. Once reports began to appear in the foreign press about the many deficiencies in the organizing of the Commonwealth Games, Indian media outlets that are known to be nervous about annoying VVIPs began to focus attention on a few organizers, notably Suresh Kalmadi, the Congress Party bigwig who is the Indian Olympic Committee chief. Kalmadi is known to follow the military discipline of his youth in always checking his decisions with higher authority, but if the media are to be believed, he acted on his own in the spending of the Games cash. This is about as believable as saying that Dr A Q Khan ran his entire network without the participation of any state player, or what General Pervez Musharraf wanted the world to believe when he placed the hero of the Pakistan nuclear bomb under house arrest.

Thus far, no criminal cases have been filed against those responsible for the many tainted decisions taken during the runup to the Games. And because none of the records was taken into safekeeping for two months after the scandal first broke in the international and then national media, those in the know say that records have been erased, while others have been replaced with different versions. Computer disks have been cleaned up and the mainframes destroyed. All in all, the stately pace of Manmohan Singh’s investigation - carried out by a well-meaning but seemingly clueless Kashmiri septuagenarian - may mean that the guilty escape, which means that the full tumult of public opinion will fall on the head of the Prime Minister, who allowed the loot to go on for six years before waking up to its ramifications. Exactly as 1992-96 Prime Minister Narasimha Rao became damaged goods after allowing Ottavio Quatrocchi to escape from India on July 29,1993, so will Manmohan Singh be crippled after his enquiry turns out to be a farce. The way several VVIPs want it to be. On the other hand, if the guilty get punished, Manmohan Singh will enter the history books for fighting the corruption that has been a facet of life in India since the impecunious Robert Clive made a fortune from Bengal in two centuries and a half ago.

As things stand, the betting in Delhi is that the PM will be ineffective in conducting a probe, and will therefore be made to quit after becoming the butt of criminal charges. Should an honest man like Manmohan Singh pay such a high price - the loss of his reputation and his career - it would be a sad day for justice. Those eager for probity hope that the PM will ensure that the guilty get punished, if only just this once in a country where corruption is costing the economy more than 5% extra growth each year.

—The writer is Vice-Chair, Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair & Professor of Geopolitics, Manipal University, Haryana State, India.

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=58180

A column about humorous quotes

A column about humorous quotes 

Some of my humorous quotes that have gotten me in trouble 

Changing my mind because  i was wrong

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.      John Kenneth Galbraith :  

Most people do not see the humor and the bathos  in the above statement. But  i see one of the many vanities we carry around with us is the vanity  that we are never wrong . If you ask  me it is totally a case of unnecessary  baggage. because we are fooling nobody. nobody would believe us if  we go around saying we are never wrong. i for one make no bones about it . i am hardly ever right but that is not surprising because the universe of things i know something about is far smaller than the one i dont know something about. 

But people go about merrily pretending they are never wrong , and arguing about the strangest  things(about which they know didly squat), not  realizing what  fools they are making of themselves.

While investigating non-linear systems in  my thesis i wrote that dividing the world into linear  and non linear systems makes as much sense as dividing the world into bananas and non -bananas , because it tells us next to nothing about the world of non bananas. but yet people make these strange classifications, assuming it gets them closer to the truth. for example, people automatically assume i am a fundamentalist because i object to a loudly broadcast wake up namaz at 5:30 am in the morning  and one equally disturbing one made in the midst of the day when one cant hear the person one is talking to . First of all, i think it is rude of anybody to impose their private ruminations with their God on others.  But the really sad part of these remarks, is that people are pigeonholed into bananas and non bananas,  into leftwing and right wing , socialist and capitalist, Hindutva and Secular in spite  of the  fact that deep in our hearts we know that the human spirit is far larger in its dimensionality than these crass generalizations will admit.  so let us stop making  these 

generalizations and stereotyping of people and if you have to make a judgement about a person  ,  for instance a person who you wish to vote for , do so on the basis of age old verities. is he or she decent person, can he or she be trusted to keep their word even in adverse circumstances. is the person honest in his daily dealings, and more importantly is he being intellectually dishonest

 Bertrand Russell’s[i] admonition; the method of simply assuming results, once one is persuaded that they are true, rather than trying to prove them,( as in the case of Greek priority over the Indics), has all the (accoutrements and )advantages of thievery over honest toil.words in parenthesis added by me

(work in progress)

---

[i] Russell Bertrand, Introduction to  Mathematical Philosophy,  New York and London, 1919, p.71

x

Dear All, 1456 lakh crores 1456000000000000 yes that  is 1456 followed by 12 zeros or 1456 trillion INR or  pretty close to 30 trillion US$ or twice the US Annual GDP

--

Venugopal K. Menon.

I do not know who the author for this piece is, but it was sent to me by Yvette Rosser, who seems to have gotten this from Vinod Saigal.

The world seems immune to such terrorism , especially when such acts are mm by committed by the authoritarian regimes, and when the regime has superpower ambitiions 

SELF-IMMOLATION OF MONKS IN TIBET AND THE NATURE OF INTERNATIONAL INFIRMITY

In the unending calamities that have befallen Tibet since its military occupation by Chinese forces in 1950 the latest one to traumatise the Tibetans is the series of recent self-immolations by Tibetan monks and nuns. From time to time one hears of self-immolation by individuals in other countries as a final act of  desperation. In the present case the numbers tell a tale of suppression, incarcerations, brutality and humiliation on the collectivity of Tibetan people way beyond those inflicted by totalitarian regimes in other countries. Stalin's gulags disappeared after thirty  years or so once the Russian people and the world realised the extent of the horrors to which the regime's victims were being subjected. Hitler's atrocities did not last for more than seven years. In no other country in the world of the 20th or 21st centuries has extreme oppression on subjects lasted more than 20 or 30 years. In the case of China the oppression of Tibetans and Uighurs has been an unending nightmare for the suppressed minorities for three generations with no hope of relief. So horrendous has been the victimization of Tibetan people that it would be impossible to describe it in a few pages. After each protest the figures of Tibetan deaths at the hands of the Chinese occupation forces far exceed those officially conceded to by the authorities, remaining far lower than independent estimates. The actual figures after each repressive wave could be a multiple factor of three, four or five. The reason is that the Chinese forces seal off the monasteries where the unrest started for weeks and months disallowing medical aid for the wounded and other essentials of life for several weeks, some time months. These increase the fatalities several times over. No outside visitors are allowed to visit the monasteries for long periods of time. In addition to the physical decimation of the population and demographic swamping by an influx of Han Chinese, cultural genocide to eventually eradicate a millennium-and-a-half of the old culture continues apace.

    Over two-and-a-half millennia before Mahatma Gandhi it was the Buddha who first enunciated  the dharma of  ahimsa. contemporaneously with the Jain Digambars. China and the majority of the countries contiguous to Chinain the east and south still hold on to the Buddhist faith. How are the Chinese leadership going to explain away to their own people and the world the inhuman suffering that they continue to visit on the Tibetan people even after sixty years. The Chinese government's blanket suppression of the truth is well known. But what has happened to the rest of the world, the so-called liberal democracies. If not their leaders who seemingly worship Mammon more than God and king, what about the freedom loving people of the Western democracies who have been in the forefront of affirming their faith in human rights. What is the nature of the infirmity that has overtaken the collective conscience of several billion people that they are unable to bring their governments to hold China accountable; or does it take a few hundred billion dollars of  purchase of their treasury receipts and bonds to make them close their eyes and seal their lips. Evidently that is the case.

    The Tibetan sacred space is too precious an heritage of mankind to be lost to the world. Much more so for China that still has the largest population of Budhists in the world. Their leaders send erring officials on pilgrimages to ancient Buddhist temples for a parikrama several times over around the temple precincts to expiate their sins. Many leaders have also visited these sites from time to time for similar reasons. When the full realisation of the magnitude of the sins committed on the Tibetan people by those who govern China becomes known to ordinary Chinese people how many generations will have to make the parikrama of the sacred Buddhist sites to even begin to wipe out from their collective karma the sins visited on the hapless Tibetan people.

vinod saighal  

Executive Director, Eco Monitors Society

New Delhi October 24, 2011.

The pieces that follow were circulated in many parts of the world after the Tibetan uprisings of 2008.

                                                                                                            *

Cri de Coeur

The recent outburst of the Tibetans does not fall into the category of violence or non-violence in the accepted Gandhian sense of the word Ahimsa that the Dalai Lama and many others hold dear. The Tibetans living in Tibet have felt the crushing burden of the tyrant’s heel pressed on their hearts for many decades since the Chinese first occupied Tibet in 1950. Slowly but surely they have seen the destruction of their culture and Tibet ’s environment. As if that were not enough their religious freedom has been curbed and their most holy sites and cities occupied by the Hans - civilians as well as the military. In their daily lives they are obliged to suffer every humiliation visited upon their families. They see their land grabbed, their assets appropriated and their liberties eroded with increasing severity. Their kith and kin have been incarcerated under sub-human conditions by the tens of thousands; Killings of hundreds of thousands of their countrymen has gone hand in hand. In the face of such prolonged suffering to which they see no end in sight the rage in their hearts at their helplessness and their inability to prevent humiliation to their women and children had to find release at some point in time. Had they not done so they would have gone into collective depression and become like enslaved zombies fully reconciled to their fate generation after generation, century after century, as was the case with the backward classes in India . The collective depression, had it ensued, would have had more far-reaching effect on any hope for future revival than the systematic cultural genocide at the hands of the Chinese masters. The uprising was a cri de coeur – a veritable scream from the heart signifying that their suffering had crossed the threshold of human tolerance. In their own way they have tried to arouse the consciousness of the world that seemed to have abandoned them and was well on the way to forgetting them altogether. Should anyone categorize the March 2008 outburst of the Tibetans in Lhasa and other places as a form of violence in the Gandhian sense it would bespeak a lack of understanding of the essence of Ahimsa. Even Gandhi had something apt to say on this score.

March 22, 2008

©Vinod Saighal

                                                                                                                *

 Excerpt from a talk delivered on July 21, 2008 at the Annexe, IndiaInternational Centre, New Delhi to an international audience on July 21, 2008 on behalf of Eco Monitors Society

"One of the greatest manifestations of exercise of power by China relates to the hold it exercises – subliminally or sub rosa, so to say - over hundred and ninety-two countries that are part of the United Nations. China has demanded from each one of them that their leaders shall not entertain the Dalai Lama. If a referendum were to be taken across the globe the two most revered personalities today would undoubtedly be Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. In spite of that China is able to demand, across the world, that the heads of state do not interact with the Dalai Lama. What is more remarkable - and amazing – is that out of the 192 nations, full 170 or more  have bent the knee to China on this score. Isn’t it strange? What is happening in the world? Great civilizations with a culture going back several millennia in South-East Asia will not give a visa to the Dalai Lama to visit their countries. China has already started exercising hegemony on a global scale that even the superpower USA is unable to match. Were it to give a fiat on the lines of the fiat given by China in the case of the Dalai Lama not more than a handful of countries in the world would obey the dictates of USA as to whom a head of state of a sovereign country should or should not meet. Yet China is able to demandcompliance from practically the whole world and, what is more, get it. A type of infringement of national sovereignties not witnessed before in the modern world on this scale.

There are a few exceptions. Surprisingly, one of the few people who had the temerity to stand up to China was the Singapore Prime Minister. On first taking over his new post he wanted to visit Taiwan . China at once demanded that the new prime minister not undertake the visit. In a remarkable reply, which should win the admiration of the world, Mr. Lee (the son of the elder statesman), the prime minister of tiny Singapore reportedly said that while he had the highest admiration and respect for the People’s Republic of China, were he to bow to its dictates, he would thereby diminish the sovereignty of all the people of Singapore. Mr. Sarkozy made a somewhat similar statement recently that no country had the right to set the agenda as to whom the president of France could or could not meet. There are other examples of proud holdouts like Germany , Canada and a few others. But well over 80 per cent of nations bow their head. This is real exercise of power. One fails to grasp the nature of infirmity that makes over 170 nations around the world succumb to Chinese blandishments. One just has to look at the President of USA, Mr. George W. Bush. Remember what he said after the March 14 uprising in Lhasa. Recall the statements made by the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi and the President’s wife, Mrs. Laura Bush, as also the statement made by President George W. Bush when he gave the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama. Now the same president wants to attend the Olympic Games opening ceremony inBeijing . In Tokyo he made a statement that not attending the Olympics would be an insult to the people of China . It is a reversal of what went before. Conceivably the president’s statement could be construed as an insult to a lot of other people being oppressed by China and whom the president had been supporting earlier on. The bare fact is that Beijing ultimately had its way.

But there is something else which is deeper that is taking place. I am inviting the audience to look where China is headed. In fact, practically all countries are bowing to China , including great nations like Russia , Japan and India .

--------

-- 

Yvette C. Rosser, PhD“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. Today is a gift.  That’s why we call it 'the present'. --Eleanor Roosevelt

Monograph on  Sir Vepa Ramesam by his nephew the late D V Krishna Rao

Among other things this Monograph on late Sir Vepa Ramesam, retired Ag. Chief Justice of Madras High Court years ago contains an account of his service to the nation, mainly with reference to “Birth Control” in India (now called Family Welfare) during 1920s-30s. By all means he was a pioneer in India in this field and a visionary. His views and work have relevance today. His out standing service has special significance today when the whole country is seized of the problem of ‘population explosion’.

Useful material was obtained from his sons late Vepa Gopal and Sri Vepa P Sarathy (now in Hyderabad) and from the journals of Madras and Birth Control Bulletins started by Sri Vepa himself as part of Neo-Malthusian League which he established in Madras. I thank Sri Sarathy for furnishing the material. The booklet reveals the condition of unchecked population growth even at that time, and its serious repercussions on the future of India, her birth rate, mortality rate etc.

It is not out of place here if I mention that Sir Vepa’s enlarged photo is being put up in the Family Welfare Block constructed in the premises of Durgabhai Deshmukh Hospital, Andhra Mahila Sabha (AMS) Hyderabad so that it could be a source of inspiration to the public.

It is hoped, this monograph will be received well by literates and illiterates (indirectly) in ‘Population and Family Welfare Problem) in India and the historic background of the then India. Further it may be of immense usefulness to researchers in Family & Welfare and its development in successive stages.

I thank Prof. I V Chalapati Rao for editing this booklet. I should also thank the Literacy House, AMS for publishing the booklet in good time.

(D.V.Krishna Rao)

Hony. Adviser, F.W.

Andhra Mahila Sabha, Hyderabad.

FOREWORD

Rarely one finds in these degenerate times a man like Sri D V Krishna Rao whose adherence to the highest values and total commitment to the cause of Family Welfare have hardly any parallel in the contemporary society. Bitten by the bug of Birth Control even as a teenager, he became a relentless crusader through out his life for this worthy cause. No wonder, Durgabai Deshmukh, the founder and architect of Andhra Mahila Sabha, who had an unerring instinct for choosing the right person for the right job, appointed him as ‘Honorary Adviser, Family Welfare.

Ever since Sri Krishna Rao spent strenuous days and sleepless nights promoting the cause of Family Welfare in a variety of ways -- delivering lectures in Schools and Colleges and talks on Radio and TV programs, conducting quiz programs, donating prizes as incentives for propagating and practicing Family Planning and giving liberal donations to Durgabai Deshmukh Hospital on whose premises a Family Wel fare Block has been constructed with his money.

To commemorate the pioneering services rendered by his illustrious uncle Late Justice Vepa Ramesam, Sri Krishna Rao has prepared a highly useful monograph which contains educationally usable information along with a brief bio-data of his uncle who founded the Neo Malthusian League, a Madras based organization, per haps the first of its kind in India with the laudable objective of propagating ‘birth-control’ long before the post-Independence Government of India took this problem seriously. Thus Vepa Ramesam, the author’s uncle cut new ice and broke new ground by initiating action to

1 May 1996.