Educating and training American GIs

GI Joe and GI Jane

How should we educate and train GI Joe and GI Jane so that they fit into the new global environment of terrorism on the one hand and multiculturalism on the other?

HOW MARKET-DRIVEN SELF-INDULGENCE COARSENS LIFE

Killing field of American popular culture

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Movies, television programmes and popular music do not always spur viewers to spontaneous immediate action, but their delayed, cumulative effects are immense. Television commercials, for instance, impact viewers and keep the market economy thriving.

If commercials make people buy, buy and buy, repeated violent programmes too could incite some viewers, especially those who are mentally disturbed, to kill people. A few years ago, Queen Latifa, the rap star, featured in Set It Off, an R-rated movie about four desperately seeking women who go on a binge, shooting and robbing banks. The movie was linked with several copycat fatal shootings, including that of an eight-year old girl, Tynisha Gathers of Bridgeport, Connecticut, who watched a bootlegged copy of the movie along with three other girls.

And later while replaying a scene from the movie, Tynisha was shot in the head, as it was shown on the tape, with a .380 caliber semiautomatic handgun lying in the house. Imitation and role-playing, no doubt, excite all children. Tynisha’s 10-year old sister was held in custody and charged with manslaughter, while gun-dealers and movie-makers hid behind their constitutional rights to bear arms and exercise unfettered free expression, of course, only to make money in the free marketplace.

Unlike constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights, there are no fundamental obligations, except to pay taxes.The courts have been very reluctant to award damages in cases of personal injuries caused by the media, unless there is a definitive showing of “clear and present danger,” amounting to direct incitement of violence. Punishing the media for mere negligence, the courts have said in several media related personal injury cases, would chill free expression and lead to self-censorship, thus negating the purpose of the First Amendment.

Gun industry lobbyists repeat ad nauseam: Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. But this has not been a comforting thought to parents of children brought up in an environment of toy-guns (which look indistinguishable from the real ones) and senseless media violence. Every year hundreds of children either become victims of gun violence through media imitation or cause injuries to others.

The 1981 case of Olivia N v National Broadcasting Company, concerning the broadcast of the film Born Innocent, which dramatised effects of an orphanage on an adolescent girl, was a crying tale of horror. As recounted in the court records: a young girl is shown in a community bathroom peeling off her clothes and taking a shower. The water suddenly stops and she faces four other girls, who wrestle her to the ground, force her legs apart, and one of the assailants plunges a plumber’s helper into the girl, with a to-and-fro sex-act thrusting motion.

Four days after the film was broadcast, a nine-year old girl was attacked by some adolescents on a beach and “artificially” raped with a bottle. The attackers had done this after they had seen the movie Born Innocent and discussed the bathroom scene. The lawsuit alleged that NBC was negligent, in spite of several authoritative studies concerning media violence and its effect upon children. The California Court of Appeals ruled that if the television networks were subjected to “negligence liability,” the effect would be “self-censorship which would dampen the vigor and limit the variety of public debate.”

To win damages, the court ruled, the plaintiff would have to show that the movie incited rape. In another case, a 13-year old boy, who had watched and tried to imitate a stunt performed on the Tonight Show by the late comedian Johnny Carson, was found dead, hanging from a noose, facing a TV set which was still on. But when action was brought against the network, the court held that NBC was not liable because the plaintiff had failed to show “advocacy of violence” or “incitement to violence” leading to immediate action.

Ozzy Osbourne, notorious for lyrics such as Suicide Solution, that conveyed the message that “suicide is not only acceptable, but desirable” as a method of avoiding pain and despair, was not held liable by courts for death by suicide of several disturbed youths in 1980s.But what kind of enlightened public debate is generated by destructive free expressions such as in Born Innocent, Set It Off, or rap lyrics? Has the quality of life for orphans and women improved? Has artistic expression been enriched?

There has been growing concern about the coarsening of life in America, and many people blame the media, especially television, for widespread depredations of civic virtues.

Is it possible that the abuses of Abu Ghraib prison in which Iraqi prisoners were physically and sexually humiliated by patriotic US soldiers might have been the consequences of long exposure to senseless violence in popular culture?

How could such normal, decent people behave in this inhumane sadomasochistic way? Their subconscious minds must have been fed by brutal images, while growing up.

How ironic, to paraphrase an old fart, that as civilisation advances, civility declines. I believe it is the culture of self-restraint, not of advertisement and market-driven self-indulgence, which creates civility, social refinement.

CORPORATE GLOBAL DIPLOMACY

Power of persuasion
By ND Batra
From The Statesman

In its bid to take over Arcelor, Mittal Steel needs a better communication strategy and more effective global corporate diplomacy to persuade Europeans that the Mittals are no stealers and come as friends. As corporate India expands globally, it must communicate well. Excellent communication is the key to effective corporate public affairs and global diplomacy. Without a comprehensive communications strategy that takes into account significant stakeholders who interact with the company and form its business environment, global corporate diplomacy cannot be effective. The recent failure of Dubai Ports World in its attempt to take over the management of US ports is a case in point.

In this age of global transparency of the 24-hour news cycle and the Internet, and of reporting standards established by global watchdogs like the Global Reporting Initiative, companies can neither run nor hide. Companies just cannot afford not to communicate about a problem that concerns stakeholders in their business environment. And since they have to communicate, they must do it efficiently. At the heart of communication is persuasion, even when a company is just trying to inform stakeholders. Power to persuade is the soft power that companies exercise to win the hearts and minds of people. But to do so in a multi-channel environment over which they do not have much control, needs diplomatic finesse, especially when a company has to operate in a foreign environment.

Consider how the following factors affect the global corporate communication environment:

(a) Companies have become de-localised (Mittal Steel, IBM, for example). They are no longer woven into the fabric of local communities as they used to be in the pre-digital age. Company employees do their work in a virtual environment and their mobility makes them less concerned with what is happening in their neighbourhood. In an environment like this, it would take extraordinary efforts for global companies to communicate and present their position in a persuasive manner. China’s CNOOC did not know how to talk to Americ when it tried to take over Unocal.
(b) Perception is reality and many people perceive global companies as more powerful than the government, which draws enhanced critical scrutiny from the media and NGOs. The image of power that global companies project raises expectations as well as fear in the minds of the people. Growing expectations of corporate responsibility create unusual challenges for corporate communications and diplomacy.
(c) Because of the recent corporate scandals in the USA that has put many top corporate executives in jail, the American people expect greater openness and transparency from companies. This may not be true of some rapidly developing countries in Asia, where companies may get away with behavior that may not be acceptable in the USA, Japan or Europe. Since expectation of corporate behaviour differs from country to country, corporate communications strategies must take such variables into account.
(d) Effective communication takes place in a cultural context. Understanding the host country’s political culture is very important for corporate communication and diplomacy to be effective, a lesson corporate India must learn quickly. Political culture includes the legal system, and the rules and regulations which must not be violated in the host country. Although good corporate behaviour is not rewarded, bad behaviour is not only punished but also sullies the reputation of the company. Companies should be problem solvers and should not become part of the problem.
(e) Each country has abiding cultural symbols and icons which make global corporate communication quite a challenge. What is culturally and politically correct in one country may not be so in another country. Not understanding national cultural differences can create a nightmare for companies doing business abroad. While these general observations about the global communication context are important, in order to be effective, global corporate communication must be aimed at specific groups or audiences that are especially relevant to the company. Such groups are: customers, financial analysts, government authorities, and non-business stakeholders such as NGOs.

Customers are the most important constituency for a company. They are the reason for doing business and a very important source of a company’s strength. In a competitive environment, where one product may not be qualitatively much different from the other, keeping the customer coming back to the company requires communication at multiple levels — product, price, image, trust and most of all, reputation, the company. How a company presents itself publicly, through signs, symbols and slogans, and how customers perceive it would determine its place in the marketplace. Trust and reputation are the basis of communication with customers.

The US transparency law (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002), for example, was enacted in the aftermath of Enron’s collapse and other scandals. Communicating effectively with market analysts and financial journalists is very important because it is through them that a company manages its image of financial strength and growth. Raising false expectations for short-term benefits can destroy a company’s reputation. Sometimes, when analysts and financial journalists, instead of being impartial and objective, become reporters and critics, they become part of the vicious conveyer belt, destroy public trust and provoke harsher regulations.

Corporate behaviour is regulated by rules and regulations, which are framed in the public interest and in consultation with the industry. But once the rules are in place, not only authorities but also public interest groups, many of which have established a global network to monitor compliance, closely watch companies’ errant behaviour.

Microsoft’s ordeal in the USA and Europe for anti-trust violation is a case in point. Worldwide, there are thousands of NGOs who have made it their business to scrutinise the behaviour of local, regional and multinational companies to protect the public and environment from exploitation. With clear and well-defined demands, global NGOs that have a huge and broad-based financial and legal support system can swing into campaign mode against a corporation and even a country, very quickly and very efficiently.

Think how Greenpeace International stopped asbestos-laden French carrier Clemenceau from coming to Gujara (India). Cooperating and communicating with international NGOs requires special diplomatic efforts.

Why I love Japan

Buddhism has made Japan a beautiful country.

Innovate or perish

N.D. Batra

Be creative and grow rich

A recent IBM ad, a company that has been trying to re-invent itself as the foremost global solution company, talks of “houses that make doctor calls,” sensitive cars that enable you drive safely, “power grids that fix themselves” and “silos that talk to each other,” and much more.

I am still waiting for some solution company, Bangalore, Inc. or something, to make a bold statement, Hey, we know how to predict where the next terrorist attack after Varanasi would occur. It should be that simple: If computers can predict precisely where a tornado would hit, they should be able to predict where the next terrorist attack would occur. I am sure India’s scientist president Dr. APJ Kalam and the young IIT geniuses would agree with me: For every problem, human or technological, there must be a software solution. Be creative or thou shall perish.
In any case, this is an age of smart ideas. Ideas are potential assets. Creativity matters and would set India apart.

Just think what businesses are doing to stay in business. There’s a new frenzy for reaching customers through newer modes of communications, including product placement in television programs.
The busiest shopping season in the United States has always been Thanksgiving through Christmas, but for businesses it is too risky to depend solely upon the holiday season for profitability, market share or even survival. Which has led advertising and marketing agencies to find creative ways of persuading buyers to open their wallets.
A decline of even 1 percent in holiday sales ripples through every trailer park and leaves many people shivering in the cold. So shoppers are being offered unprecedented discounts on sales of all kinds of goods from cars to carpets to offset a bad holiday season, if it were to occur.

Any idea that brings the shopper to the mall and persuades her to fill up the shopping cart is an invaluable asset. The United States desperate seeks ideas that can make things happen, whether it is to catch Al Qaeda operatives; or to persuade the shopper to take out the credit card and spend whether she has the money or not in the bank.

But how do you turn an idea into an innovation and bring it to the marketplace? “I am your idea,” said an Accenture blurb sometime ago. “One day you’ll look for me and I’ll be gone.” Ideas are ephemeral unless you grab them and make them do something. Make ideas work by sharing with people who know how to turn them into innovations and tangible goods.

Occasionally in social gatherings, someone would buttonhole me and say: India has some of the world’s brightest economists, why can’t their ideas be turned into something that would speed up economic growth in India? At such moments I nod in wonderment. India is full of bright minds, indeed! And they would be returning to India especially with the introduction of dual citizenship, a brilliant idea that would generate unprecedented opportunities for investment in India.

Besides, every time there is some discussion about India’s economic growth, naturally China’s sustained economic growth of 8-10 percent during the last two decades comes up for comparison. Two decades ago both the countries were struggling at the same level of poverty. But one day the Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping had a bright idea. Capitalism is good, he mumbled after returning from a visit to the United States. Make money, not revolution. And the floodgates of entrepreneurial spirit opened up in China, even without political freedom.

Keith Bradsher of The New York Times wrote sometime ago that China, “by quickly converting much of its economy to an unfettered and even rapacious version of capitalism, has surged far ahead…. China has high-speed freeways, modern airports and highly efficient ports that are helping it dominate a growing number of manufacturing industries.” In a matter of years, China has become a manufacturing hub of the world, sucking most foreign direct investments. Once all roads led to Rome. Now all sea-lanes lead to China.

China’s miracle is not based on any grandiose economic theory, but on a few simple ideas: Excellent law and order conditions; good transportation and communications facilities; and the courage to let the people make money. In short, the Marwari and Gujarati spirit.
Ideas have no boundaries. You can take them from one field and make them work in another, for example, from the battlefield to the marketplace.

Americans are good at this; for example, American advertisers are using Jean Piaget’s theory of child development, sensory experiences and visual stimulation to sell EZ Squirt Ketchup to grownups. Said Alissa Quart in Wired, “Piaget is only the beginning. Just as the pharmaceutical industry steers medical research, marketing and advertising are beginning to guide the way scholars investigate brain functions, perception, and language.”

Consider, for example, cognitive science, a multidisciplinary area that includes psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and computer science. At the highest level, it is associated with the study of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, but at market level its ideas are being increasingly used to study ”the psychology of acquisition and the science of material desire,” for better marketing and placement of products, anything from toys and cereals to jeans. That’s creativity.

Many of us do have qualms about turning the academia into a handmaid of the marketplace but in the United States various fields of intellectual endeavor are not sealed shut from each other. Ideas flow from one field to another and flourish wherever they find the best applications, whether it is the shopping cart or fighting terrorism.

It is all about the psychology of desire that transforms an idea into an asset; turns driving a car into love and adventure; turns zeros and ones into an outsourcing industry. And the same psychology of desire could also read the desires of terrorists before they hit again.

Digital world emerging

Scanning Digital Horizons
Digitally Seamless
Sensate Surroundings
Building Virtual Environment
Cyberspace-time Continuum
Potholes on the digital highway
Temptation Island in Cyberspace
The Mouse Says, Just Do It
Digital Mythmaking
Digit al Interdependency
Limits of Interdependency
Digital Synergy
Reinventing the Internet through synergy
Rise of digital intelligence

MAYBE HARVARD CAN'T HANDLE TRUTH

Mistaking trees for a forest?
By ND Batra
From The Statesman

Harvard faculty, finally, got rid of their inconvenient president, Mr Lawrence Summers, who has a wonderful habit of calling a spade more than a spade. All that Mr Summers wanted to do was to improve undergraduate education, especially in science and mathematics, so that the so-called Net Generation (N-Gen) could compete in a world where countries like China and India would have a dominant presence.

Occasionally, he publicly expressed his prickly thoughts about the research some of the most celebrated Harvard faculty members were doing. Some felt less valued and left. Others waited and gathered strength until they could strike the blow that felled a mighty man. Summers made no attempt to comfort anyone. Last year, for example, Summers said that women might be temperamentally and intellectually different when it comes to doing things. He supported his claim with anecdotal evidence of his twin daughters who, as little girls, used to call a small toy truck baby truck and the bigger one daddy truck. A boy would have made the two trucks crash headlong in a "battle scene."

At that time Mr Summers got into big trouble with his faculty, researchers, special interest groups and the media. Yet, his question has not been answered: Why can't women engage themselves profoundly with black holes and galaxies despite the affirmative action and equal opportunity and gender balancing and what not? Why does a woman feel more comfortable in the kitchen than in the lab? Is it cultural or genetic?

When I was on the faculty of Morehead State University, I asked a class, mostly of girls, what they planned to do after they graduated. Almost unanimously, the girls said they wanted to have good paying jobs, and then to find a husband who they could hopefully keep up with, and to have children. No further ambition? No, they said, keeping a family together was most important. Even those who were studying science did not want to spend their time in labs. Real life relations, associations and networking interested them more than abstract mathematical relations. Harvard and MIT girls are no different from the southern girls I had encountered, are they?

A few years ago, I was introduced to a good-looking young woman attorney working for an insurance company, who eventually became a close family friend. I used to imagine her climbing up step-by-step and one day breaking the proverbial glass ceiling. It was not only her acute analytical legal mind that impressed me but also her ability to connect with others. Nonetheless, she was a single woman desperately looking for the right man, and this made her just like any other well-educated woman trying to have a career as well as a family. And she did find one, a wonderful man whom she married and eventually had a son. But then she gave up her job, saying her little boy was more important to her than doing 80 hours of cerebral work a week. A brilliant mind baby-sitting, when she could have applied her intellect to solving tough problems!

You would say my anecdotal evidence is as fallacious as that offered by Mr Summers. Last year, Mr W Michael Cox and Mr Richard Alm of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas wrote in The New York Times that unlike musicians and athletes, "Scientists are made, not born." And they presented statistical evidence and graphics to prove that the "feminisation" of science professions has been taking place "one degree at a time." But they mistook trees for a forest. They still didn't answer Mr Summers' question: Why are there so few female Nobel winners in sciences, so few starry-eyed, mad, mad female scientists?

Imagine Mr Summers' audacity as he summed up his ideas before a conference at the National Bureau of Economic Research last year that made him most unwanted at Harvard: "So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are, in fact, lesser factors involving socialisation and continuing discrimination."

The most controversial factor that got Mr Summers into trouble was the focus on "overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability" in which the woman population, according to him, might be falling short. If you look at the Bell Curve, Mr Summers seemed to be saying, you would find fewer women on the extreme right, the genius portion of the curve. Even those few women who have an extreme high IQ don't apply their minds with intensity because scientific research requires "that the mind is always working on the problems that are in the job, even when the job is not taking place."

A woman might be bright but she would rather develop social networking and expand her relational universe than bother about what is happening at the far-out end of the universe. Heavens could wait until her children grow up. Mr Summers did not understand that in dealing with Harvard faculty, he needed a kind of corporate diplomacy that some CEOs of global corporations are learning to do today in order to handle the complexity of stakeholders.

Mr Warren Bennis, a former professor at Harvard Business School and currently chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California, writing in Business Week, made a telling comment about the campus community that surrounds a university president. He said: "While campuses aren't exactly parliamentary democracies, they do have often-strident faculties (with tenure) who have a redoubtable habit of speaking out and up. They are also often extraordinarily talented, self-absorbed "abdicrats" who don't want to lead and don't want to be led."

Bush ushers new era of India-US friendship

Cyber Age From The Statesman

Partnership based on principle & pragmatism
ND Batra

Last week Ronen Sen, India’s ambassador to the United States, lamented that the American non-proliferation high priesthood and Indian go-it-alone self-reliant nuclear brotherhood have highjacked the debate and clouded the real issue: whether it is possible for two open societies to trust each other and work together.

By offering India “full civil nuclear energy cooperation,” President Bush made an extraordinary gesture of friendship and a bold move in establishing long-term strategic and economic relations with a country that most sensible US experts perceive as a reliable global partner. Nuclear partnership with India is another facet of globalisation.

Thinking outside the box, as they say, Bush did not let the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty stand in the way of his new global vision, where an economically strong democratic India would play a stabilising role in world affairs, especially in Asia. The strategic partnership to see India grow and “become a major power in the twenty-first century” is not about containing any other rising power, rather to let India develop as an alternative model of economic growth which preserves fundamental freedoms.

Rapid economic growth of India, 8-9 percent a year for the next few decades, would lift millions of Indians out of abject poverty, without diminishing personal and political freedoms. Besides, an economically dynamic India would spill economic growth all around and would make the military containment of China by the USA or another power absolutely unnecessary.

The Asian theatre needs more than one economic and political power in order to reduce the possibility of a single hegemonic power rising and dominating the continent. Asia needs dynamic multipolarity. The nuclear agreement would remove hurdles in India’s search for alternative energy sources to fuel its growing economy. And to set the tone of mutual trust Bush has acknowledged India “as a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology.”

Recognising India as an exception to the rule, and accepting the fact that India should “acquire the same benefits and advantages as other such states” is a bold diplomatic move on the part of Bush. Only a courageous American President could have taken such a step. In spite of the recent silly diplomatic blunder over visa for the three Indian scientists, on the whole India is being increasingly admired in the USA. Eventually the US Congress would approve the nuclear deal. India would be able to buy nuclear fuel for its existing nuclear power plants and shop for building new ones.

The recent visit of French President Jacques Chirac to India and the agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation has already raised India’s international profile. And in the course of time as trust in partnership increases and diplomatic relations improve further, a whole new world of sophisticated American and European technology would be open to India, enabling it to leapfrog decades of sluggish economic growth. In return India would do what other nuclear powers have been doing under the nonproliferation treaty, that’s, open its civilian nuclear power plants to International Atomic Energy Agency and continue the moratorium on nuclear testing. Its nuclear military arsenal remains off limit.

Global transparency is necessary to stop non-state nuclear carpetbaggers like AQ Khan from trading nuclear weapons. Critics in India fear that the deal would create dependency relations with the USA but they need to consider how South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and China have benefited from strong economic partnership with the USA, without compromising their sovereignty. India is too big and too complex to be dictated by any outside power.

India must go beyond the present information technology outsourcing, must go up the value chain and penetrate deeply into corporate USA to learn from its spirit of constant innovation in technology and business methods. It is surprising that the Indian elite is more interested in UN Security Council permanent membership than the lifting of nuclear sanctions. India alone cannot solve its energy and infrastructural problems.

Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline is in the realm of a distant possibility but even if it becomes operational, it may not be enough to meet India’s gargantuan need for energy.
It may not be a very secure means of procuring energy looking at the political situation in Balochistan. Even Saudi oil facilities, as the recent failed suicide-bombing shows, may not be very reliable.

Clean coal technology, nuclear energy and solar energy are practical alternatives for which the USA has opened its doors to India. India needs hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign direct investment in building power plants and world-class infrastructure to increase its manufacturing base in order to create employment opportunities. Nuclear energy would reduce excessive dependency upon West Asian oil.

Strategic partnership was one of the important themes of Prime Minster Manmohan Singh’s well-received address to the joint US Congress session last July. India and the USA, as Dr Singh said, are natural partners because both are open societies and share similar values. “There are partnerships based on principle, and partnership based on pragmatism. I believe we are at a juncture where we can embark on partnership that we can draw both on principle as well as pragmatism.”

Democracy, multiethnic diversity, and human rights are some of the values that bring the two countries together, but equally important is the fact that India and the USA need each other for fighting global terrorism. Bush’s no-holds-barred campaign against militant Islamic Jihad and Al-Qaida terrorism has changed the perception in the Pakistani ruling elite as well as the masses that negotiations are the only way to resolve long standing issues, especially Kashmir. Bush’s policies have helped India fight its own terrorism.

India’s global diplomacy should have one primary goal: accelerated economic growth that reaches the bottom of the barrel, India’s huddled masses. The partnership with the USA would certainly help India hasten the pace of economic growth and serve India’s global interests.

Yo Americans, go to India and prosper

CLYDE PRESTOWITZ, author of Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East, says "if you are a short-term investor, China is probably where you should put your money. But if you are in it for the long haul, you might want to bet on India. That certainly seems to be what George Bush is doing as he heads out this week to make nice with his newest international friend." Read more

Also read this wonderful article.

China Rising

China Rising, truly

"Dreams that the country’s economic liberalization will someday lead to political reform remain distant. Indeed, if current trends continue, China’s political system is more likely to experience decay than democracy," says Minxin Pei, a China scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for Internatioanl Peace. Read more...

Islam and free speech

Cartooning is not the way to change minds

From The Statesman

By ND Batra

The Danish cartoons and their subsequent recrudescence in several newspapers, television, and the Internet about Prophet Mohammad might have been a fundamental right to exercise freedom of speech; but they have turned out to be a premeditated insult to the religious sensibilities of global Muslims. Most Muslims have taken the cartoons as a deliberate assault on their collective psyche, a crude attempt to deconstruct their culture and destruct their sacred narrative. Humans live by their stories. Some would die for them.

In many ways we see ourselves and know the physical world through our stories. Our nervous system and our personal and historical memories define our ability, our sense and sensibility, to describe and capture reality. Millions of words, for instance, have been written about Islamic jihad and yet it’s doubtful if the truth about this notoriously complex concept, evil to some and yet sacred to others, has been completely captured.

If somehow we could know a way of tuning up and enhancing the nervous system to a higher level, the linguistic description and hence the reality would change. Pardon the digression but think of the time when zero was discovered, presumably by the ancient Hindus; and the subsequent development of decimal system; and how that must have changed the perception of reality by subjecting physical phenomena to measurement. Measurement is a form of description of reality; so is cartooning, lampooning and parodying.

But as TS Eliot said, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” When Galileo’s telescope was latched to the human nervous system, the linguistic description of the firmament changed and the earth, as it were, ceased to be a stationary planet, though the Church refused to accept it.Or consider some modern political events. Had satellite pictures not revealed the existence of the Soviet’s missiles in Cuba in the 1960s, Americans and the rest of the world would not have perceived the seriousness of the threat to the United States.

If the remote-sensing technology could pick up sights and sounds of human sufferings, it would become possible to know how the Chinese have been decimating the Tibetans and their culture. The Tibetan genocide, like the Holocaust, would find full linguistic description. Description either leads to action or generates guilt. Guilt too motivates action. Through communications technology, the human nervous system extends itself and gives a better or a fuller account of reality, and a feeling of liberation from the constraints of earlier description of reality. New reality demands new laws, ethics and social relations, and creates new life styles, as one can see happening in the burgeoning economy of China, where communism is dead as the dodo.

Communications technology—television antennas, faxes, tape recorders, the Internet—which made free flow of information possible, has killed communism. Was this the assumption of the European media that free flow of information in the form of crude satirical cartoons might debase and eventually dissipate Islamic religious fundamentalism?

History teaches a lesson that it is through the control of linguistic descriptions, narratives and stories that the powerful, the ruling classes, exercise their hegemony. I have always wondered how Britain ruled so successfully over India for about two hundred years. To a great extent the British succeeded in the exercise of their soft cultural power by supplanting the native stories and narrative descriptions with their own literature and legends, so that appreciating Chaucer was deemed more civilized than discovering the beauty of Kalidasa.

China has begun to transplant its stories and historical descriptions upon the young Tibetans, and by the time they grow up into adulthood, their reality will clash with the truth held by their parents—unless modern communications technology, including wireless Internet, short-wave radio and miniature antenna dishes, keeps them alive as Tibetans. By denying them the Tibetan language and access to communications technology, that’s, by controlling their collective nervous system, China might do worse damage than Hitler did to the Jews.

There is something remarkable about the Jewish people, in the sense that from the Old Testament through Steven Spielberg, they have been natural born storytellers. Because of the faithful anecdotal and photographic accounts of the concentration camps, and documentaries and movies like “Shoah” and “Schindler’s List,” it is impossible to deny the truth of the Holocaust, in spite of what Iran’s President Ahmedinijad might have said recently. Most of us feel guilty for not having stopped the Holocaust. The Tibetans have no great filmmakers, no storytellers, and no access to communications technology. They don’t believe in Jihad. They might perish in the silence of the Himalayas. Storytelling is a form of Darwinian survival.

If the recipe for cultural domination and power is through the control of narrative and communications technology, which are in essence the collective nervous system of a society, then it becomes important to find ways of creating resistance movement within threatened cultures. We must “understand, and expose the dynamics of myth-making in society,” said Professor Herbert Schiller, a distinguished scholar of information, and “discover what happens when that process touches the lives of millions of people.” When mythmakers of today have the reach of satellite technology and the Internet, consequences for ancient cultures and human rights can be devastating.

The violent reaction against the Prophet Mohammad cartoons is in reality a form of cultural resistance against global homogenization, cultural hegemony masquerading as free speech.

America is in perpetutal motion

US work culture: in perpetual motion
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From The Statesman
ND Batra

Business Week reported recently that the US economy is much stronger than what the doomsayers have been telling us. The reason is simple: the old statistical system used by the Bureau of Economic Analysis is not good enough to capture the economic reality, the reality of the knowledge economy of the digital age.

Not everyone shares Business Week’s optimism. Knowledge economy is certainly adding to the intangible growth of the economy, which shows up as overall growth in GDP, but why is it not adding up to people’s feelings of well-being? On the contrary, many Americans have a feeling of diffused and widespread anxiety about their future. Pensions have been disappearing. Healthcare benefits are being reduced. Not many people feel confident about retiring.

Sometime ago a local newspaper editorialised, “Too many people juggle multiple jobs but still can’t afford the basics of shelter, food and healthcare... The dignity and purpose of work are undermined when a person who gives a full effort cannot afford life’s necessities.” Americans with cell phones, mobile computing, multiple jobs and multiple shifts have begun to mimic what some chain restaurants tout: We are open for 24 hours a day.

It is a society in perpetual motion, waiting for a coffee break, never fully resting, though occasionally dozing on the desk like a sleepless driver on the steering wheel.Mergers and acquisitions, hanging upon us like a chronic sickness, eliminate jobs without reducing the workload, which is shared by workers lucky enough not to be fired. Experts tell us that productivity is rising. No, Americans are working longer and in multiple shifts to fight the fear of being de-skilled and laid off.

Productivity is a measure of a firm’s output in relation to the resources consumed or how much an employee produces per hour. But many employees take work home or work early and late hours, which adds to their productivity without adding to their income for the extra hours they put in. This seems to push their productivity high and also comforts the management, that has been sold on the idea that computer and telecommunications technology are pushing the profits up.

Most jobs are becoming commoditised and can be substituted and shipped abroad. Computer-assisted design and manufacturing systems do help designers visualise new products on their screens, which can be directly sent to factories in China where cheap skilled labour can do the manufacturing. Computer-integrated manufacturing requires limited human input and eliminates highly paid manufacturing jobs, thus raising productivity.

Experts say that it is possible to customise products that have been mass-produced since Henry Ford introduced the assembly line system and Frederick Taylor added scientific management to business vocabulary. Soon we would be able to customise everything: clothes, shoes, golf clubs, or whatever.

Researchers point out the cost-saving potential of computer automation by eliminating intermediary processes, for example, typesetting in printing; or the use of the Internet for document transfer, such as audio-visual scripts or tapes; and eliminating other tasks which do not directly contribute to the end product.

Teleconferencing does save money but it has also ended opportunities for many to combine their work with vacations. Now the ubiquitous cell phone is transforming vacations to working vacations and homes to working homes. Over 11 million Americans never leave home for work. They telecommute, raising the spectre of hidden electronic sweatshops that somehow escape the scrutiny of civic groups and labour unions because homebound sweatshops are invisible. In spite of the noise about rising productivity, some researchers are puzzled at the “Productivity Paradox.” Investment in information technology does not necessarily produce positive financial gains, partly because many firms invest in technology as they don’t want to be left behind in the rat race.

One reason why every firm is rushing to cyberspace to build a Website is due to the fear that someone else might grab the domain name, which should be rightfully its own. This does not necessarily add to their bottom line, so they go on re-engineering and merging and eliminating jobs, creating a spiral of greater workload for those who want to keep their jobs.

As Alvin Toffler and other futurists foresaw, the hierarchical pyramid structure of the organisation with the boss at the top protected from blue and white-collar workers by layers of middle management would be flattened. The middle management layer has begun to disappear. A new organisational model, the “core and ring” model is emerging in the cyber age. The model has a dedicated core of highly paid top level strategists and planners, who get work done either by an army of temporary workers or by outsourcing the work to virtual neighbours, be they in China, Mexico or Thailand.

Most work, including design, production, marketing and distribution, wrote Venketaraman and Henderson in a 1998 article in Sloan Management Review, can be out-sourced. Labour is not eliminated but it is turned into a commodity. It may be the final triumph of market capitalism, but it is a 24 hours-a-day work week, which keeps the USA at the core with an ever increasing ring of temporary workers spread all over the globe.

If US economy is on the rise, as Business Week wants us to believe, why don’t the American people feel good?

American culture: A culture of anxiety

Meditation on American culture

By ND Batra
From The Statesman

Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living.
T S Eliot (Notes Towards a Definition of Culture)

Lee Gomes of the Wall Street Journal wrote sometime ago, “why no one has yet run for office by campaigning against the computer. After all, you couldn’t ask for a better sin-delivery system than a PC with a fast Web connection”.

Well, you might as well call a gun a death-delivery system, but no one dares run a political campaign against guns in the USA and get elected. If you talk against guns, some gun lover would fire back, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”

If a politician runs against guns, it means that not only is he challenging the people’s right to bear arms (Second Amendment) but also getting into a crossfire with the National Rifle Association—the 500-pound gorilla who does not need a gun to kill you.

Senator John Kerry, during his campaign for the White House, eagerly flaunted his Vietnam credentials, Purple Hearts and all, as well as his love for hunting by going on a goose-hunt, which proved to be of no avail.

But Gomes had a point: “With a week or two of patient work, someone with their hands on the keyboard of such a system—no matter what his or her age — could download a Kinsey library of erotica, play videogames depicting the cruelest kind of violence, steal a studio’s worth of music and movies, and gamble away small fortune.” If politicians can’t fight against the “girlie men” and “bushwhooping women” of Hollywood, how would they fight the Internet, where no man or beast, except probably China, has much control?

Whether it was Dr Alfred Kinsey or the Playboy that liberated Americans sexually, or corrupted them, as Rev Jerry Falwell would say, nonetheless, sexual imagery, heterosexual, homosexual, omni-sexual, has been seeping into American social ecology, even into corporate brands. Is omni-sexual a new word in the American lexicon?

But consider this. A Saks Fifth Avenue ad showed two itsy-bitsy girls, one a coy blonde and the other a brash oriental with the belly-button up, pants slipping down with palms in her hip pockets, face-to-face on two opposite pages of a glossy magazine, with the tag line: “Saks loves it: both ways”. Both ways? Very naughty indeed, I thought and wondered if it were a new form of omni-sexuality.

A constant hovering anxiety in the Sex and the City used to be the question on the mind of every single woman who met a hunk: Is he gay? Of course, if he were a heterosexual, a girl could have a chance. She could steal him from his girlfriend or wife. But what can a girl do with a homo? Oh, yes! She could cry with Dame Edna in Back with Vengeance! : “Darling, this is not a shoe. This is a cry for help, my possum.” Dame Edna could get away with her conceit, “Sorry dear, I am just not feeling naughty tonight,” but what can a single girl with sex on her mind do in New York, the city of spin, spin, spin, and sin.Girls are not calendar-resistant, are they? They wrinkle. They shrivel. Boys move on.

Of course you have heard of water-resistant and wind-resistant, but what is calendar-resistant? That was Timberland’s ad for its men’s Mixed-Media Jacket, which crowed: “It is quite possible the jacket will last longer than you.” Something to leave behind to make the world a better place, when your “too, too sordid” self is gone!

You could pass on the jacket to one of your poor relatives whom you never liked or donate it to the Salvation Army. That, however, reminded me of a plumber who came to my house to replace a leaky pipe and said the new pipe had a life-long warranty. Amazed, I said: Whose life are we talking about? Yours or mine? He never felt so embarrassed. He had a triple by-pass a year before. Just like the Timberland’s jacket, the plumber’s pipe too was calendar (time)-resistant.

And that reminds me of something else that was touted as calendar-resistant. A few years ago, a 30-something brunette was shown gloating over her Seiko watch: “My husband has left me, but my Seiko is still with me.” Joy to the world! The American woman is free. Seiko is ticking and the woman is waiting for another “gentleman caller”. Would he ever come? And how long would he stay?

Talking of gentlemen and lovers, a few years ago I overheard an ambitious woman humming to herself: There are a thousand-and-one ways of getting rid of your lover. And she got rid of him, kept the sprawling house and the kids, and moved on to another city, another hunt. But that’s merciful, though she had a killer instinct and could have done more. In a red, red state in the South, where I was a professor once upon a time, the Bible Belt where there are more divorces and single moms than in the blues states, a colleague whose department work I was evaluating said to me in a loud whisper, “In my county, we don’t kill anyone unless there’s a reason.” I got the message loud and clear.

But that was no better than two men of God who one evening came to the beautiful Eagle Lake where the university had given me a living quarter and said that they wanted to deliver me from my sins. One of them said, “Do you go to church?”I said, no, but why? The other said: “Do you want to go to heaven or hell?” I said, “I would rather stay here.” They laughed and left me alone.

Just as the Internet and Hollywood deliver to us our daily pipedream of sins, men of God are always ready to deliver us from our daily sins. Some call it checks and balances. I call it a supply chain system of American values.

Corporate Reputation in The Digital Age

Good reputation equals good business
Cyber Age
ND Batra
From The Statesman

In the digital age, a company is nothing but its reputation and maintaining it is a big challenge.

Reputation is the foundation of trust and loyalty, which gives stakeholders confidence in dealing with the company. A company’s identity and image (along with its philanthropy) are the building blocks of its reputation.

Identity is a company’s assertion of its individuality and embodies the company’s vision, its reason for being there. It sums up its business case. The image of a company is the distinct memorable impression in the minds of the people as they interact with the company.

Together, identity and image raise the profile of a company, its reputation, its significance beyond commercialism and profit making. “A company’s identity,” says Paul Argenti of Dartmouth’s Tuck School in one of his books, “is the visual manifestation of the company’s reality as conveyed through the organization’s name, logo, motto, products, services, buildings, stationery, uniform, and all other tangible pieces of evidence created by the organization and communicated to a variety of constituencies.”

Stakeholders’ perception of the company, however, emerges from the totality of the impression, not so much from what is created by the company but in spite of it. While a company might do its utmost to build and control its identity, it cannot totally control the image, the impression and the perception, the public has about it.

A company’s identity and the image are never the same, but the closer they are, the better the reality. This is the basis of the company’s reputation. A company’s name, symbols, products, services, employees, buildings, its tangibles and intangibles, are not a cluster of facts but a dynamic system that creates specific value and meaning for stakeholders.

While it is desirable to achieve consistency in identity, McDonalds’ golden arches, for example, the perception of the company should no be expected to be the same in every country.

McDonalds’ is one of the fast food chains in the USA but in China it has the image of a classy American cuisine, desired by the young and the old, in spite of the fact that the identity of the company, its sounds and images, are quite consistent.The same identity provokes a different image in Karachi where several arsons have taken place without much public outrage.

A corporate identity must embody the company’s core values, the sum and substance of what is called its business case. Identity is the visualisation of its mission, and answers the unasked question: Who are we? What are we doing here?

Through logos, mottos, slogans and brands, a company enacts the drama of self-presentation and builds its image and perception in the mind of the public and various stakeholders. As mentioned earlier, while the identity of a company is a constant, image and perception are variables that ultimately determine the company’s reputation.

While a consistent and well-defined identity a company projects before the public helps it to build a perception of the company about what it stands for, the reputation is built over time and depends upon how the company conducts itself.

A strong reputation matters because it enhances a company’s attractiveness, muffles criticism and creates public support for a company’s activities.Customers don’t mind paying a little extra for a product when it comes from a company with a strong reputation for quality and fairness.

When a company faces conflicts, its good reputation enables corporate diplomats to conduct negotiations from a position of strength and self-confidence.

A company with a strong reputation attracts talented employees, who like to stay with the company for personal and professional growth. The likeability of the company by the employees and their day-today interaction with various stakeholders adds to the reputation of the company.

Employees become the corporeal identity of the company embodying its values and mission. But when a CEO is found with his pants down or his hand in the cookie jar, as it has happened with Enron, for example, the reputation comes crashing down. No amount of identity metamorphosis could bring the reputation back.

Apart from the integrity of corporate leadership that inspires respect and loyalty from employees and the general public, companies like Microsoft have enhanced their reputation by carrying out global philanthropic activities.

Corporate philanthropic giving at local, national and global levels should become part of a company’s business case. At the time of international catastrophes such as the Indian Ocean tsunami, Katrina hurricane in New Orleans, and earthquake in Pakistan, global companies get ample opportunities to showcase the humane side of their businesses by working with NGOs and other civic groups.

When a company is engaged in doing social good, let it be known to the public. After all, virtue is not hide in.

Some companies make use of institutional advertising to let the public know how involved they are in adding to the public good, just as Beyond Petroleum (BP), formerly British Petroleum, is doing with its corporate ads. It is informing the public about its commitment to the development of alternative sources of energy. BP looks green.

An imaginative and creative corporate advertising programme can enhance the reputation of a company and increase its likeability in the minds of various stakeholders. Likeability generates goodwill and creditability, which are precious assets for a company to attract and retain good, highly skilled employees.

Philanthropic activities of a company must be thoughtfully and tastefully publicised through corporate advertising to project the humane side of the company as Microsoft is doing through its global foundation to fight AIDS and tuberculosis.In contradistinction, what is Google doing? I want to know.

Dragon chokes Google

Good and evil in the Google Age
From The Statesman
Cyber Age
ND Batra

Today you can google-froogle anything from sushi kits to death kits, and so easily that Internet pioneers might be wondering, what have we wrought? Of course, inventors cannot control whether people would mess up with their inventions or use them to enhance the quality of life. Nor do they know what the government would do with their inventions.

In 1973, when two young computer scientists, Vinton G Cerf and Robert E Kahn, came up with the revolutionary idea of making different isolated computers talk to each other through a common language, they did not anticipate the Internet to become such a driving force for good — and evil — in our lives. E-trading, e-pornography, e-surveillance, e-death, and who knows what else is in store for us.

Welcome to the digital age, which makes networking and sharing inevitable. For example, you might wonder how a 26-year-old man Gerald Krein from Klamath Falls, Oregon, narrowly failed in enticing 32 women in chat rooms to commit a mass suicide on Valentine’s Day a year ago.“

The common theme is that these were women who were vulnerable, who were depressed. He invited them to engage in certain sexual acts with him-and they were to hang themselves naked from a beam in his house,” Klamath County sheriff Tim Evinger told the media. Had Krein succeeded, he might have used his Webcam to netcast the event to the world-32 women hanging naked by a roof beam.

Sexual asphyxiation is a most extreme form of the sexual act. In a land of extremes, of death by choice, it would have probably created a stir; and then been shrugged off as a bizarre event after the media had milked it dry for ratings.
(By the way, Oregon is the first state where the physician-assisted suicide solution for terminal patients has recently received the US Supreme Court approval.)

A Canadian woman, probably a prospect for after life, who saw the message entitled Suicide Ideology in a chatroom and learned to her horror that another chatroom woman intended to kill not only herself but her two children also, promptly informed the police.

Depressed women have been known to kill their children. At least 31 women had agreed to participate in the mass suicide, Krein told the police investigators upon his arrest. Chatroom records showed that Krein had been networking with women to solicit suicide since 2000.

Getting out of deep depression through extreme sex, consummated finally with collective suicide by hanging, if that’s a probable explanation, then one might also understand why some people blow themselves up in their zealous commitment to jihad, which without networking and sharing wouldn’t be so blindingly enticing.

Dying alone is terrible. Dying becomes easier when people die together. The Internet provides togetherness to faceless strangers.

Group suicide of strangers, mostly young people, who meet on the Internet, has not been an infrequent occurrence in Japan, a nation where hara-kiri has been an ancient ritual, a Samurai tradition.

In Japanese chat rooms, bulletin boards, and suicide-related websites, people come together to share their ideas about not how best to escape from their suicidal fantasies but how to execute them; for example, sealing themselves in a coal-burning room and dying of carbon monoxide poisoning; in cars parked in remote mountain places; overdosing on camera; jumping together from high-rise buildings.

Though some suicide pacts succeed, others end up in terrible injuries and life-long miseries.Yukio Saito, a Methodist minister, who founded, and oversees, a suicide hotline, Phone of Life, made a very insightful remark to Reuters: “The idea of dying together is somehow reassuring. Dying alone is lonely and takes more courage. The way these suicides are carried out is sensational for the media, and very suggestive for people who may be thinking of taking their lives.”

Think of Jim Jones of the People’s Temple, the cult leader who led 913 followers to a mass suicide death pact in 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana. Had Rev Jones had a website, let us say, Your Guide to Death is Beautiful, with a seductive young woman giving step by step instructions and the precise time from here to thereafter, he might have attracted millions of people to an unheard of mass suicide.

You could imagine what a charismatic jihadi leader might do online when he wraps up mass suicide bombings with a noble religious cause.No wonder the US justice department has asked a federal judge to force Google to let the government peep into millions of private searches the American people have been doing using its search engine.

Google says no, but that is laughable. Google bent its knees before the Chinese government, where profits trump morality, so how long would it resist the US justice department especially when other cyber age giants, MSN, Yahoo and AOL, for example, see no evil in compliance?

National security, protecting children from pornography, and my goodness, there are a host of other reasons for the government to see where people have been going in cyberspace, in spite of the fact that the Bill of Rights says loud and clear, it is none of your business, Uncle Sam.

Would Judge Alito think for himself?

Supreme Court mirrors American values
Cyber Age: ND Batra
From The Statesman

US Supreme Court mirrors America’s conflicting values “to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity”. Thus spoke the US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor regarding the admission policy of the University of Michigan a few years ago.

Justice O’Connor, who occupied a middle-of-the road open-minded position on the US Supreme Court, is retiring. Samuel Alito, a federal appeal court judge, has gone through the Senate Judiciary Committee’s grilling whether he is “the right person” to serve on the Supreme Court, whose decisions in the long run shape American society.

Like India, the USA is an imperfect and messy democracy and the goal of inclusiveness has been a struggle for every generation. Time and time again, the US Supreme Court has played a critical role in bringing the American people back to the basics, the vision of the founding fathers of an inclusive society.

The Supreme Court is not only the ultimate authority in the interpretation of the Constitution. It is regarded as the supreme moral authority in the USA. The only way to overrule the Supreme Court is to amend the Constitution, which is a long, arduous and daunting process.

When the Supreme Court speaks, the question of what is right and what is wrong is settled until the next time when another crisis brings the nine justices together to ponder over and argue once again what the Constitution means, after all.

Its decisions are seldom unanimous and the voice of dissenting justices is never lost. Even a lone dissenting opinion might become the voice of the court majority in another time when the mode of consciousness of society changes.

That’s why there is so much partisan political struggle as to who gets appointed to the Supreme Court.

By and large the court is a reactive institution. It listens and questions. But when it does speak, everyone listens. That’s how it holds American society together whenever it seems to be coming apart, for example, in the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential election.

On 23 June, 2003, for example, the Supreme Court spoke about the affirmative action policy of the University of Michigan and its decision has impacted every private and public institution as well as businesses in their recruitment practices.

One of the decisions involved the University of Michigan Law School that had been using a holistic method of admission in which race was included as one of the factors.
The court upheld the practice thus affirming the 1978 (Bakke case) decision that allowed race to be considered a “plus” factor for admission, emphasising that diversity enriches educational environment.

The court was, however, troubled with the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science and the Arts that used a point system that automatically granted 20 points to a minority student (Blacks, Hispanics or Native Americans) toward a minimum of 100 (on a scale of 150) required for admission.

The plaintiffs had complained of reverse discrimination that disqualified otherwise qualified white students. In this case, a 6-3 majority led by the late Chief Justice Rhenquest called the numerical system not good enough to enrich diversity.

An individualised admission programme would consider the whole person, including race as a factor, among others. In the Law School case, Justice O’Connor wrote for the 5-4 majority: “Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civil life of our nation is essential if the dream of one nation, indivisible, is to be realised…. Access to legal education (and thus the legal profession) must be inclusive of talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity so that all members of our heterogeneous society may participate in the educational instructions that provide the training and education necessary to succeed in America.“

Sometimes I hear similar voices coming from the Indian Supreme Court also. Great democracies echo each other. Since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Americans have been given a legal recourse to fight against discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex or national origin.

It has opened many doors for minorities to advance in fields that were shut on them.The US military wouldn’t be what it is today without affirmative action. It is the biggest repository of the American Dream and minorities are drawn to it with the hope that service to the nation would open up opportunities for them. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a retired General, exemplified what a person could achieve once affirmative action opened the door.

American businesses too have embraced diversity as something good for them to succeed in the multi-cultural global environment.

The Supreme Court heard myriad briefs filed in support of the University of Michigan and its decision embodies their collective voice: Diversity is a compelling national interest. So is the right to reproductive freedom, as a Democrat would put it. But a conservative Republican would ask, what about the right to life and liberty of a child in the womb?

In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in the Roe vs Wade case that women have the right to abortion, a precedent that has stood the test of time. What would Judge Alito do if the Supreme Court were to face the question again? The Judiciary Committee couldn’t figure it out in spite of all the stabs inflicted on him.

Unlike the race question, the abortion question is not finally settled, at least not in the opinion of conservatives who believe that a conservative majority on the Supreme Court would overturn Roe vs Wade abortion decision.

But the most intriguing thing about a Supreme Court Justice is that once confirmed, he or she begins to listen to his or her own inner voice as reflected in the Constitution rather than to the President who appointed him or her; much as Thomas Becket did by embracing the will of God as soon as he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by his friend and patron King Henry II (1133-1189), who wanted him to do his bidding rather than listen to God.

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” Henry cried. The King’s goons murdered Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in December 1170. You can’t do that to US Supreme Court Justices. They are there for life. And they don’t retire or die that quickly.

It pays to kowtow in China

Murdoch stooped to conquor in China, as did Microsoft, Google and others. World is safe for freedom. But who needs freedom if China can do without it?
http://www.peek-a-booty.org/pbhtml/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=15

Our man in India

India has become a haven for free-wheeling spies.

Taming corporate executives

Cyber age
Corporate America’s rotten apples
ND BATRA
From The Statesman

Wal-Mart is in the news again. Its former vice-chairman Thomas Coughlin would plead guilty for misappropriating “$500,000 from Wal-Mart through fraudulent re-imbursements and improper use of gift cards,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

What goes through the thick skull of these otherwise brilliant people that they begin to think of themselves as invincible once they sit on the top floor is beyond my comprehension. Coughlin, who earned millions in compensation from the penny-pinching global retailer, was caught misusing gift cards amounting to a paltry sum of $ 5,100, the report said.

Why do powerful people throw away their reputation for a handful of silver or blonde hair? By the end of the month, the former chairman of the defunct global energy giant Enron would face trial for killing the goose he thought was laying golden eggs.

The functioning of corporate America is based on authoritarianism, not on internal checks and balances. In contrast, the US political system is based on a healthy distrust of people in power. The tripartite system of government of co-equals in power, the White House, Congress and the Judiciary, and other built-in checks and balances along with a free Press have kept politicians from abusing power by exposing them to public ridicule, threatening to impeach them or put them in jail.

Think of Presidents, state governors and legislators who have been disgraced because of their abuse of power. The notorious lobbyists Jack Abramoff has agreed to name names and testify against members of Congress whom he bribed to buy favours for his business clients. Watch the unfolding American drama of political corruption. The founding fathers did not leave the functioning of the political system to the innate goodness of the people seeking power. Nor did they leave the development of good political behaviour to any kind of special education or training in ethics course work in schools or colleges; or the culture of the sports arena, for that matter.

The temptation of power trumps everything else, so transparency and accountability are indispensable to a self-renewing democracy.That unfortunately is not the case with Wall Street where most Americans are vested through their pensions and other retirement accounts. Today we live in a world where corporate power overshadows most of our activities.

The classic Marxist-Leninist class struggle, workers versus capitalists, has been replaced by public interest civic groups versus corporate global. As someone said: The beat goes on.

Corporate leaders rise to power on the promise of maximising profit, market value and economic health of their companies. Shareholders are selfish and passive. Boards of directors are morally passive; their interest is limited to increasing shareholders’ value. They worship executives who maximise their investments.

So long as an executive performs well and exceeds the expectations of Wall Street, he could get away with some excesses.Last July, former chief executive Bernard Ebbers of WorldCom (now MCI, Inc), whose $11-billion fraud dumped the telecommunications company into bankruptcy was sentenced to serve 25 years in prison.

The former financial chief officer of the company, Scott Sullivan, who pleaded guilty and testified against his former boss, told the jury that he had warned Ebbers that accounting adjustments, creative accounting or cooking books, whatever you call it, could not be justified. Ebbers told him nevertheless that the company had to “hit the numbers”, and meet the financial and revenue targets. Ebbers of course blamed his underlings for the fraud, said to be the largest in US history.

At its peak in 1999, WoldCom had a market capitalisation of $180 billion, and Ebbers was a toast of Wall Street. That was the problem: a reputation built on sand.When WorldCom real earnings could not meet the forecast, Ebbers asked the account department to “adjust the numbers”. Corporate accounting departments are notorious for “slouching towards Gomorrah”.

Wall Street analysts and financial journalists who out of fear or favour work as paid employees of big corporations rather than watchdogs of public interests went along with the web of lies woven by the WorldCom team until the whole edifice began to collapse in 2000; and the share price sank to $15 from a high of $65. Ebbers’ personal fortune, too, was linked with WorldCom’s market share price and to keep it high, he raised analysts’ expectations.

But Wall Street is a hard and cruel taskmaster. One cannot get away with lies for too long, but sometimes the price a company and eventually the public pay is too high; and the damage to the reputation is irreparable. But what can be done? Can we make corporate bosses honest? Can we instil ethics into their souls?

Robert J Schiller, a Yale professor and author of Irrational Exuberance, faults the education that US business schools impart to budding corporate executives. Writing in the New York Times, he said that instead of emphasising ethics and liberal arts, “Modern business education often encourages excessive respect for anything that can be considered a result of the free market.” Teach them ethics, he says.

No, that’s not enough. Let them write case histories of former CEOs who have been disgraced and are serving prison terms. Better still; give the business school graduates experiential knowledge by putting them into jail with common criminals.
Let them see whether greed is good.

Credit card bliss

cyber age: ND Batra

Credit card conundrum
From The Statesman


During the holiday weeks, millions of American consumers used credit cards to charge their gifts. Now that the bills have begun to pour in, many of them won’t know how to pay them. In spite of the recent legislation in the USA that makes personal bankruptcy rather more difficult, more than a million people would end up as bankrupt.

But never mind; they would do it again. Bankruptcy is no shame in the USA. It is a method of reorganising your life and business. But let’s not blame the holiday season for overspending because Americans love to use the card to make all kinds of payments: medical bills, groceries at the supermarket, college tuition bills; and even online porn. In fact, consumers are rewarded for using their charge cards.

Many card companies offer cash back, frequent flyer miles, or some other grizzly temptation every time the customer uses the card. Enter any major chain store, especially during a holiday season, a beautiful girl greets you: “If you open the credit card account now, you will get 10 per cent discount on all your sales today.” With very little background check, instant credit is issued to the customer and the spending spree begins.

Fortunately, the economy is very healthy; nonetheless, the total household debt of $1.7 trillion (2004) is a staggering sum. Without savings, how can a family balance its budget in tough times, except through more borrowing with the credit card? An average American family has several credit cards and borrowing from one to pay the other is a common practice among many delinquent debtors, until they reach the bankruptcy court.

Bankers do not feel that credit card delinquencies pose a serious threat to the American banking system because most card customers are good, so good that their business covers up not only the losses due to bankruptcies but also due to frauds.

A few years ago, there was a message on my office answering machine. An urgent female voice said: “This is not another sales pitch, but I urge you to call me back because twice last month someone charged your card in California.”

My credit card company, of which I’m a charter member (no big deal except that I don’t pay the annual fee), keeps an electronic eye on my purchasing pattern, and probably the computer shouted ‘foul’: Man lives in the East, charges card on the West Coast, how come? The Visa lady assured me that I won’t be liable for the fraud but they do want to catch the thief. I did spend my vacations in California the summer before with my family and left my electronic footprints wherever I went and someone thought it was a good time to rob me.

In any case, the cardholder liability is limited, but it is a terrible hassle to face inquiries. Every year, thousands of people become victims of card frauds. There have been several media reports, including an investigative report from the CBS “60 Minutes”, whipping the Nigerians for most of the credit card frauds in the USA.

The Nigerians or the Russians may be slick operators, but credit card thieves come in all colours and nationalities and they have the same modus operandi: access a computer terminal linked to national credit data banks maintained by one of the three nationwide credit bureaus. Once logged on, the crook can get a person’s social security, credit status, and address, and with his stolen ID he can live the other person’s life.

It seems that credit card companies are not much scared of frauds because they simply write them off as business losses or expenses, or they pass them on to their customers in the form of higher finance charges. The federal law limits to $50 the cardholder’s liability for unauthorised use.

So the usurer, the debtor and the crook, all are doing good business, but it is a continuous challenge to the American ingenuity that some foreign or homegrown variety of card thieves should outsmart one of the best systems in the world.

But imagine what would happen to India if credit cards were issued as generously (or irresponsibly) as they are done in the USA. Most Indians would be suddenly thrown into the consumer mainstream, with unforeseen consequences for the economy. Would it create an economic miracle or bubble bust? The American miracle depends on spending, not on savings. Would the American model work for India?

I am a trifle confused. I don’t know what Dante, the immortal creator of the Divine Comedy, was thinking when he placed the usurers in one of the hottest circles in Hell.Charles Lamb, the British essayist, too said in a letter: “All bankrupts, of whatever denominations, civil or religious, ought to be hanged.” The usurer and the bankrupt are doing well in America. So are credit-card crooks and con artists. So shall they flourish in India, as growing prosperity feeds the middle class hunger for consumer goods.