Archive for January, 2009

By Kollengode  S  Venkataraman   (Published in January 2009)

Several months back, I attended an arangetram of Sravya Vishnubhatla in which her maternal grandfather, retired Indian Air Force’s Wing Commander K. C. Varma, who had come from India, spoke briefly. Instead of praising his grandchild for all her efforts on her arangetram and the teacher who worked with his granddaughter, he dwelled on teaching itself. “Teachers in India are very strict with their students,” he said. He further elaborated by quoting a 2-line verse (called doha) of Kabir Das (17th century in the Mughal time), using the poet-philosopher’s vivid imagery on what teachers does to their students:

Supporting from inside the green clay pot

[He] hits the pot from out!

Kabir’s imagery is brilliant. People only see the potter hitting the “green” pot from outside, similar to what parents see in Indian teachers being strict, and never satisfied with their kids no matter how hard they try. 

The potter first removes the stones from the clay, making it good enough for his use. He then works the clay into a “green” pot on his wheel, and let the pot lose its moisture a little bit.

Then, he hits the pot from outside using a mallet. But at the very spot where he is hitting from outside, he supports the pot from inside that others don’t see to make sure that the pot gets the shape and strength he has in his mind. 

Similarly teachers appear to parents superficially, to be mean to their children. But from inside their mind and heart, their seeming strictness is just to ensure that the student meets and exceeds their expectations.  Acknowledgments:  Surinderjit Singh of Monroeville for the word-by-word explanation for the doha.   — END

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By Kollengode S. Venkataraman (Published in January 2009)

Towards the end of the ‘08 campaign, the Republicans and right-wing talk shows extracted one phrase—Redistribution of Wealth– in Obama’s chance encounter with “Joe the Plumber” and berated him till the end.

Of all the GOP invectives against Obama this election season — his “funny” name, menacing middle name, his picture in a Kenyan costume, his association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers of the Vietnam Era Underground Movement… …  —  the most hypocritical was the criticism of Obama’s phrase “redistribution of wealth.”  Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin used it in every campaign stop calling Obama by the awkward phrase “Redistributionist-in-Chief.” Gov. Palin and her fellow travelers incessantly castigated Obama for being a “socialist.”

It was hypocritical because even as McCain-Palin campaign was criticizing Obama for simply saying “redistribution of wealth” casually in a chance encounter in a rally in Ohio, their Republican president George W. Bush was actually doing it, pouring billions of taxpayer dollars to bailout scandalously mismanaged companies.

Bush’s bailout of the gilded Wall Street idols would ultimately cost taxpayers, by one estimate, over two trillion dollars ($2,000 000, 000,000), and then some. The companies receiving the bailout money are the gilded American idols like Bear-Stearns, AIG, and Goldman-Sachs. Even the prestigious American Express and Citi Group are begging for the handout. The Big-3 auto companies, after receiving $25 billion, are asking for another $25 billion more.

The original $ 700 billion bailout plan and others proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the ex-CEO of the gilded Goldman-Sachs, was the biggest ‘redistribution of wealth’ in reverse.  It took money from Joe Six Pack and gave it to John Fat-Cats. Remember, these companies, till March 08 paid their executives and their sidekicks bonuses exceeding hundreds of millions of dollars for supposedly running their companies well, while they were actually running them into a ditch.

The subprime mortgage scheme perfected by the Wall Street mavens that led to the global meltdown is the biggestfraudulent multinational scheme ever invented, even though it was entirely legal and wholly unethical.

While the redistribution of wealth from the affluent to the needy is an anathema to the right-wingers, the reverse redistribution of wealth from the needy to the greedy is not only acceptable, but also was necessary. In justifying the bailout, we heard President Bush, Secretary Paulson and their sidekicks say “the stability of the global economy,” “the unfreezing of the credit market,” “millions of jobs,” “systemic instability,” and “the survival of the free-market system” are at stake.

These mavens, with MBAs and  PhDs in physics, mathematics, statistics, and IE&OR from reputable schools, without creating any real wealth, created an illusion of prosperity people saw only on the computer screens of their accounts. By the time they got their paper copy, it was gone!

Of all the GOP campaign rhetoric this election season, the one on redistribution of wealth came across absolutely hollow. In the end, both the gilded and the ragged were standing with begging bowls.

Ironically, in the true meaning of the much-derided socialism, now, the US government is a part owner of banks, like in Russia, China, and other despotic rich countries like Saudi Arabia, and Brunei.

In the last twenty-five years, GOP was taken over by unfettered market ideologues, imperial might-is-right foreign policy neocons, and social/religious conservatives. The three simply could not gel into cohesion, but came together out of unenlightened self-interest. By not accommodating dissenting views of moderates within the GOP, these ideologues greatly damaged their own party and the nation as well.

After the WW II, the world was divided into two Super Power camps: The US led the Capitalist West with western Europe, Japan, and a smattering of anti-Communist despots as allies. The Soviet Union led the Communist East with eastern European nations and anti-American despots in tow. The two camps engaged in Cold War with heavy military buildup. There was a lot of sabre rattling, but without actual wars for the most part. Only skirmishes. The wretched Third World countries that did not want to be in either camp were caught in the middle. 

The Cold War ended with the socialist Superpower, the Soviet Union, imploding because of its rigid Marxist dogma. Twenty years later, the remaining unbridled capitalist “Sole-Super Power” US is seriously weakened right in front of our eyes because of hubris and greed.

The lesson? Extreme Right-Wing dogma is as damaging to society as the extreme Left-Wing dogma. An unbridled economic system based on unenlightened self-interest with no ethical compass, in the end, does more harm than good.

When the world finally recovers from this mess, new economic paradigms will evolve in many parts of the world. Each nation or region will accommodate the unique social and cultural ethos of the populace in its economic model providing protection from future implosions as this one. This global economic meltdown has shown the destructive nature of the unfettered greed-based Free-Market ideas, which was the creed in the post-Reagan America. It is not coincidental that the laissez-faire capitalism died in the US.

The economic implosion of the US will force the US government to put its own house in order. This will, by necessity, constrain America’s global political machinations and military muscle working in tandem. See the  highlights in the box on Page 6. Given the worldwide financial mess we are in, that may not be bad for the US. Or for the rest of the world.  — END

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By Kollengode S Venkataraman  (Published in January 2009)

Sen. Barack Obama’s victory over Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election is the grand finale in the long list of man-made barriers broken in the US since 1776. Consider these:

1. Legal barriers in the US prevented women from owning property and businesses in the 17th and 18th centuries. Married women didn’t have rights to execute their will. Women could not vote till 1920.

2. Branch Rickey, the general manager of Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 ended the 60-year old Color Line in major league baseball by bringing in Jackie Robinson, a multi talented black athlete. Rickey told Robinson “he would face tremendous racial animus from spectators, and insisted he should not take the bait and react angrily.”  When Robinson asked, “Do you want a player afraid to fight back?” Rickey replied, “I need a Negro player with the guts not to fight back.” Robinson agreed. Robinson went on to become a Major League Baseball Hall of Famer. (Source: Wikipedia)

3. President Harry Truman after the Second World War integrated the armed forces and ended the racial barriers in the military.

4. Till the 1965 Voting Rights Act was enacted under President Lyndon Johnson, the Poll Tax barrier prevented poor blacks from voting.

5. The other race-based barriers crumbling during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s are well known.

6. The 1954 US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. the Board of Education ended racial school segregation and broke another barrier. Incidentally, Thurgood Marshall was the black lawyer arguing the case against school segregation. His appointment later by President Johnson as a US Supreme Court justice broke another barrier. He was the first black justice in the US Supreme Court. Johnson’s imprints are deep in changing the social fabric of the US.

These barriers were removed either by law passed by mostly white elected representatives, or by edicts by individuals — Truman, Johnson, Rickey, Supreme Court Justices — of extraordinary fortitude to end blatant, socially accepted discriminations against women and blacks. 

After this, it was only a matter of time that cities with large black populations would elect black mayors: Tom Bradley (LA 1973), Maynard Jackson Jr. (Atlanta 1973), Harold Washington (Chicago, 1983), and David Dinkins (New York, 1989) are the first black mayors in these cities.

Blacks winning state-wide elections, however, would take much longer. Strangely, of all the states, it was the very “Southern” Virginia (19% black population) that elected the first black governor, Douglas Wilder, in 1989. Virginia was seat of the Confederacy power.

Coming in this tradition, Obama’s victory in the presidential election broke the ultimate barrier in US social/political history. Nationwide, only ~12% of the population is black. A majority of voters – whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, with whites forming the overwhelming majority in a nation-wide election, opted for the charismatic, sophisticated, well-educated, and articulate Barack Obama, making him the first black man to occupy the White House and the Oval Office.

The self-assured Obama had confidence in American voters. Only once did he refer to his racial identity in stump speeches, that too obliquely, when he jocularly said he doesn’t “look like the other guys on dollar bills.” His Philadelphia speech on race relations in America during the primaries is too cerebral to be called a stump speech.

Obama was helped by McCain’s lackluster campaign. In September when the stock market tanked, the McCain campaign’s bottom fell. The choice of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as running mate only made matters worse for McCain towards the end.

The challenges ahead are daunting for Obama and the nation: American credibility under Bush is at an all-time low globally; the nation is in the midst of big financial woes at every level – among individuals, in small businesses, gilded boardrooms, municipal, state and federal governments; an aging population with under-funded social programs; huge military budgets (See the box on the next page)… …

The status quo is simply unsustainable, and if continued, will certainly weaken the republic even further. To avoid further damage, ideally, every interest group will have to give in something. However, given the power of lobbies on elected officials and bureaucrats, this will not happen. The final outcome could very well be ugly. So, even if Obama delivers  only 40% of what he promised, we should be pleased.

If history is any indication, Obama’s administration will have its share of scandals. We hope they are minor and manageable not to overwhelm his big ideas or the economic mess we are in.

All that we can say for now is, Godspeed Obama!   — END

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