Communal Violence and Politics in India

The discussion about communalism has come to the centre stage in national discourse once again. The allegedly beef-related lynching in Dadri, followed by the protest by writers, has raised fears of a saffron - induced surged in communal incidents. The fact that communal riots are driven by political considerations is well - understood. However, there is a large number of bbooks about what increases the probability of communal riots. The book 'Votes and Violence' by Wilkinson was one such book that I happened to read. It is a painstakingly put together econometric analysis of communal incidents in India since independence. The results, while reinforcing certain widely-held beliefs, also discredits other notions that we have.

While researching for my article on Islam for The Indian Opinion, my focus was very much on the question of law and order. Wilkinson's book helped me think through many such issues. Some facts were validated - for example, that communal incidents saw a major spike in the 1990s (coincident with the rapid rise of the BJP). Wilkinson set up several different specifications of his basic model with the probability of riots as the dependent variable. In each such specification, whether there were elections in the next 6 months was a statistically significant independent variable. Using instrumental variables, Wilkinson also argued that economic competition between Hindus and Muslims does not impact communal incidents at all. Evidently, the premiss for a communal conflagration has to be conjured up from nothingness. Hence the freak incidents of the kind we saw in Dadri are either engineered or exploited to create communal tension.

What is interesting, however, is the role of caste - based politics in containing communal riots. When Lalu Prasad talks about 'mandal' (caste) versus 'kamandal' (communal) politics, he is (intentionally or unintentionally) making a very valid point. Communal riots are seen to be more likely in bi-polar states, where political consolidation between two parties reduces the importance of the muslim vote. Caste politics, by fragmenting the Hindu vote, makes the muslim voters more important at the margin, and therefore reduces the likelihood of communal incidents. Law and order is a state subject, but communal riots are no less likely to happen in Congress-ruled states than in other states. There are many other such findings that Wilkinson presents; I would therefore strongly recommend the book to anyone interested in this topic.

Question of technology

Modi's visit to the facebook headquarters generated much debate in India regarding net neutrality in general and facebook's intentions behind the tricoloured display pictures in particular. This subsequently spilled over into an access vs. neutrality debate, and a few branches of the debate reached the technology vs. basic services debate. It is the last one that I seek to talk about in this post.

The trouble with evaluating the impact of most technology - based products is that the major impact happens through externalities. Therefore, if we try to measure the outcomes by the impact on individual households, we will always underestimate the impact of such products. There are also other issues. For example, increased attendance in couchsurfing gatherings has been observed to be positively related to a sense of belonging to the community; and hosting a guest shown to have a positive relationship with trust. However, in case the causal relationship runs in the opposite direction, could products like couchsurfing be making society worse off by segregating between two sections? Ignoring questions about negative consequences, let us focus on the more positive aspects. For example, independent media has often been shown to lead to many positive societal outcomes. However, the impact on the life of the marginal consumer would be quite low due to the externality problem. To add to that, because the consumer may not fully internalise the long - term benefits of these products, making fair comparisons inherently a difficult task.

If we narrow down to products which have immediate returns to consumers, we run into many that impact the middle segments of the population - ones who are significantly more prosperous than the BOP populations, but not wealthy enough to be excluded from other things. Take credit, for instance. Due to asymmetric information (and general risk aversion on the part of lenders), markets left to themselves lead to under-provisioning of credit. Technology, therefore, turns out to be an excellent tool to remove informational barriers. One might argue that access to facebook doesn't have any benefits (thought many will disagree). However, when social media activity becomes a gateway to credit access, facebook can turn into a tool for social empowerment. Companies such as Lenddo are creating a new industry where big data can be unsed to create the next wave of financial inclusion. Removal of informational barriers can also lead to benefits in more traditional goods markets. This is especially true for small producers and traders, for whom access to information (and storage) can often be prohibility expensive. For example, the introduction of mobile phones in the early 2000s was seen to lead to an increase of 8% in the profits of fishermen in Kerala[1]. There were also more wide - ranging benefits, including a 4% reduction in the average price of fish in these areas.

However, we are still talking in the realm of the middle class. What has technology got for the people at the bottom of the pyramid? Can technology reasonably impact the lives of those struggling for food, energy and shelter? Once again, technology as a medium for spreading information can help address some of the very basic issues of survival for large swathes of the population. The Chhattisgarh PDS turnaround was aided by technology, albeit alongside other systemic changes. Something as simple as sending SMS notification to villagers when the PDS truck leaves for the fair price shop can reduce pilferage and increase foodgrain availability to the poor. Having reduced wastage and pilferage from 40-50% to less than 10% in a short span of time, Chhattisgarh has shown that technology can help address the needs of the poor.

In conclusion, if one views technology as an end in itself, the impact may be too diffused and long - term to care about, especially for a country like India with more pressing concerns. However, if one looks at technology as an enabler, and as a disruptor of non - tech sectors, then one can start seeing some of the benefits of technology vis-a-vis other more traditional interventions. At the end of the day, few interventions - including technology - would be effective in a vacuum. It needs to be supported by government will and space for innovation.

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1 - The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance and Welfare in South Indian Fisheries Sector - Robert Jensen (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 122, No. 3 - Aug 2007)

A year in the UK

Poorva yesterday pointed out that it has been exactly a year since I left India to start a new chapter of my life in the UK. I am trying to remember how I felt. At the time of applying for the scholarship, I was just very unsure - I thought that I would be immensely unhappy in a foreign land, and therefore doing a degree abroad was simply not worth it. Then I got the scholarship, decided to pursue it, and continued with life at McKinsey. After spending a few months on a project in Amsterdam, I started feeling more confident. As I got closer to leaving, I was almost defiant. I had been told things about life in the UK, and I was determined to continue life as it is.

One year down the line, I feel like I have completely yielded while maintaining the pretense that I haven't yielded at all. Many things have changed. Many more have remained the same. I coped up much, much better than I had expected. In fact, it was something I realised about myself - that I am designed to cope well with solitary life. It goes back to my childhood when I could keep myself entertained for long hours. It's quite wonderful how these idiosyncracies of the childhood can become great strengths (or weaknesses) when grown up. But that's a tangential point. I want to write about my most significant learnings this past year.

My biggest learning is that, willingly or unwillingly, we become ambassadors for communities we come from. Despite not being overtly 'Indian' in what I talked about or what I wore or how I behaved, just my familiarity with all things Indian made me some sort of representative of India. I then felt a burden of trying to be a good representative of my country - positive and neutral at the same time. Many of my ruminations this past year have been about India, about its victories and its contradictions. Some of my thoughts are captured in the blog post I wrote earlier this year.

The second learning has been about how valuable discipline is in the western world. Being lazy can be very costly here, just because the entire burden of one's world is on one's own shoulders. Unlike India, we do not have cheap labour to help us discharge the mundane activities of daily life. It's not even necessarily the maid (or servants), but even the ubiquitous families that set up an ironing shop in every housing complex. Which makes me wonder how this world is essentially a treadmill - we earn more, drive up prices so much that the standard of living may be the same, or even lower. Of course, that doesn't justify not correcting the historical injustices of the cheap labour that we silently exploit. However, it also calls for discussion on where we as humankind are heading. Keeping social or cultural aspects away - even economically, do we want India to become like the UK? Or do we want to create a different society? If yes, what will that society look like? And are we heading in the right direction, then?

Travelling has been one of the highlights of my time in the UK. Europe has been a frequent hunting ground just because of physical proximity. Travelling has given me some new perspectives in life, and as I look ahead to a long time of no travel (except to India), I have the consolation of having travelled very frequently recently. I have made friends from across the global, and some of the conversations I have had have been very encouraging. It has also been most exciting to compare and contrast those with India. All in all, I am glad that I made the decision to come here - it has added to me in very significant ways. Staying in India and working there would also have surely added to me, and I am in no position to compare whether I would have been better off or worse. I can also look at my present contentment, and justify that decision.

Good night.

Humilty

I have recently been in a long-drawn unpleasant experience. For weeks, I tried to be extremely understanding. My patience was tested, and at times I experienced my body giving me very evident signs of stress that I tried to hide. Finally, one fine day, I let it out as verbal aggression towards another person. Things have improved since then, and I find this individual's behaviour towards me having become much better. I have since then returned to my old peaceful ways.

I have been thinking lately about humility, and found my dilemma analogous to this situation. Till what point do I try to be humble, and at what point do I crack the whip and use arrogance (or at least high-self esteem) as a tool to discipline my world? Humility, in my experinece, is one of the most valued traits people want to see. The esteem in which humble and successful people are held is amazing. I have sometimes craved for that kind of adulation, creating a perverse incentive within me to display humility that I don't really feel within. As I find my feet in the world, that tendency has thankfully been going away.

But my initial dilemma remains. I like to differentiate between public and private humility. Private humility is what one experiences in the conversation one has to have with oneself. To me, this aspect of humility is absolutely necessary. I have found that arrogance breeds a tendency for self-preservation; and therefore stagnation. Arrogance is status quo-ist. Humility, by keeping me on my toes, makes me look for avenues to grow. Very important, also, is humility towards one's past. I have seen around me people who show condescension towards how they were in the past - the way they looked, talked, behaved, etc. However, I find this pointless, and perhaps a bit damaging. At the end of the day, it is the hard work of that "past I" that brought me here; that "past I" has achieved more than the present I has, and therefore deserves respect. Internally, I find peace in reminding myself that I am only a reflection of the "past I"'s, which itself is a reflection of other people - friends, families, peers, teachers, situations etc. The more I think about it, the more I realise how much my inner values are shaped by my parents, especially my father. I realise how much my external relations are shaped by my mother's relation with me, and my friends' unflinching love for me. From the Sanskrit teacher in Grade 8 who talked about the benefits of breathing through the nose to the English teacher in Grade 5 whose pronunciation of my name I have now retained - it is only over time that someone's influence becomes clearer. It is disarming, and comforting, to know that very little of who I am has anything to do with me.

Humility externally is the bigger struggle. Arrogance is often useful to establish presence or to demand respect. However, the more I think about it, the more I find 'success' to be found not in being a leader, but in either being a follower or finding followers. Teams, and not people, are what create success. And for this purpose, humility is what helps forge teams. A willingness to acknowledge mistakes, and to go the extra mile to make teams work. And then, external and internal humilty creates harmony in life that'll probably make you happier. At times in life, I have found myself so split between internal humility and external arrogance - and that is something I'd rather avoid. Of course, given the stage of life I am at, I know very little about what works and what doesn't. Some day, hopefully, when I will be genuinely successful, I will have a more developed point of view about this.

Till then, if you're reading this and have an opinion you feelI could benefit from, feel free to email, WhatsApp, message, whatver. 

On love. And companionship.

It has been a quiet summer, away from the hustle and bustle of regular life. I have had some time to absorb the new experiences of the past year, and reflect on what I have learnt and where I have come. The transformations within myself have been natural and building up over the last year, but now was a good time to reflect.

One of the major learnings I have had is my new way of dealing with this thing called love. I belonged to the school of fanatic, all - encompassing love. I loved intensely, and at several points in the past found myself on the verge of falling apart, but picked myself up, achieved something professionally and then glossed over the injuries festering within. Working for two years had numbed me to an extent, but when I came to Oxford and was pulled into the cacophony of new relationships, I found that my healing process hadn't been completed. I found myself drawn once again into the cycle of attachment - expectation - disappointment - disillusionment. Once again, my response was a strong professional comeback. I exercised. Did yoga. Did a bunch of extra - curricular stuff. That created a distance between my mind and my experiences, and have since then helped me weave myself away from that to new beginnings. To companionship.

Companionship, to me, is love on slowburn. The flames of passion are subdued, and the bond of duty is what guides the ship towards a destination. Companionship enables. It holds your hand gently and walks with you. It helps you grow. It is there for you to talk to. It is there to admonish you gently, and yet come to your rescue whenever you're in trouble.

My recent life had only been an attempt to be a magnanimous and generous lover, but now I see how short - sighted I had been. Relationships, like much of life, need much investment. Good relations probably have lots of patience. When one wraps love in these layers, that is where it starts becoming companionship for me. My thoughts on this subject are still evolving, and I'll post next when I've matured my thoughts a bit further.

A bit of giving

Two weeks back, my Nico and I were dining at a Syrian restaurant in London. When the bill came, he being American wanted to tip 10%. For me, however, tipping was always a bit of an elite game - an act of charity for people who weren't as well of. Coming from India, I have probably been exposed to far more of those who would be called 'Bottom of the Pyramid.' I argued, therefore, that I couldn't tip waiters in London while I know there are people in much worse conditions in India who could probably make much better use of that money. Nico, unfortunately, isn't one to give in so easily. He refused to see the link between the money I saved by not tipping and the money I would give other 'more needy' people. My 'trickle - down' arguments failed to cut much ice either.

After over an hour of arguing over this, Nico proposed a solution - he would pay the entire tip whenever we ate out, and I would have to contribute 50% of that amount to charity at the end of his stay in London. So, from Oxford to Copenhagen, we kept the 'tip tracker' ticking, and by the end of it I owed £14.5 to those in need. Over the last one month of working at an Impact Investing fund, I came across several Kiva - like models, and decided that I was most comfortable and content lending to such a place. So, I decided to contribute a small sum to a group on the website Milaap. The amount will help fund a loan for a group of women in Aizawl, Mizoram, who are seeking to expand their business.

This experiment has forced me to think more actively about transitioning from the world of thoughts and ideas to the world of action. I see three types of giving back to society - money, time and intellect. Money has ranked lowest in my priority because I have always doubted its efficacy at low scale. But then, its a great starting point, and a good way to put your money where your heart (or mouth) is. It's been a great half - year of learning and thinking about social change. Here's hoping I'd be able to do more as the year progresses.

Being Average

In a great scene in an otherwise forgettable Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, Kareena Kapoor explains to Imran Khan the advantages of being 'average.' Average, she says, is calm; average is predictable; average is easy to live with. I have the advantage that I was once a very mediocre student; I used to work quite hard but didn't perform that well. Am I happier today than I was then? Professional and academic successes have pushed me to new shores, but are these shores that I am happier on? It is difficult to find an answer, of course, because my 'average' years also coincided with my childhood and, ceteris paribus, childhood is a happier period of one's life. Maybe I can turn around the question and locate the sources of unhappiness in my present situation and link it to the lack of 'averageness.'

I dislike the fact that I have no 'home' to return to; that my 'home' is a room that only I live in. I miss coming back to a family; a place where doors didn't divide the home into personal fiefdoms. I miss having a balcony overlooking the locality, where I could sit and ruminate. I miss the chatter of daily existence; the boisterous kids playing cricket, the older people taking evening walks. It is, unfortunately, the lack of 'above-average' jobs in Kolkata that now prevent me from being at that place I can call home. I had to stay back in Delhi when my parents moved so I could get a better education, then had to stay in Delhi during college because that's where the best economics colleges are; had to work in Delhi because McKinsey has no Kolkata office, and then transplanted to Oxford because that's where 'upward and onward' got me.

I miss my friends. I still form friendships (maybe more numerous) but I'm not sure if I'd be able to fall and have one of those friends catch me in free fall and make me stand up. One of my biggest fears now is that I'll never be in the same city as my good ol' friends ever again - that life will become a continuous cycle of moving on and forming new friendships. A big part of 'above-averageness' in today's world is probably in moving to bigger and better places. The benefits are obvious and immediate. The costs are often more long term, and more subtle. Am I sure that my latent loneliness isn't chipping away at whatever made me click? I don't know.

Don't get me wrong. I have the greatest appreciation for whatever opportunities I have had the fortune of having. The only thing I want to warn myself is to not get carried away in this wave of, and race for, success. I want to keep reminding myself that success is not happiness. That all costs are not internalised immediately. I want to make professional sacrifices for personal happiness; even as I sacrifice personal happiness for professional success. I want to find that spot in this world where I am at my happiest. Where I have a home, however imperfect, to return to. Where I have friends, however annoying, to engage with me. Every day.