The fight against illiberalism

Illiberalism of one kind is not fought by illiberalism of the opposite kind. It only validates the notion of illiberalism.

It can only be fought by liberalism.

Liberalism does not mean preaching to the society what is 'right' or 'wrong'. It means giving individuals and the society the liberty to figure it out itself through open and free flowing exchange of ideas without any fear.

The failure of Rajya Sabha

The on-going session of the Indian Parliament has been a washout on all counts. The opposition has been stalling the Parliament one way or the other, and causing loss of exchequer to the people of the country for every day wasted without any business conducted. The problem has been more pronounced in the Upper House of the Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, where the members of political parties opposing the ruling party in Government are in a majority. Such is the difficulty in getting any business done in Rajya Sabha due to incessant stalling by the Opposition that the Finance Minister, who is also the Leader of the Upper House, was forced to call it the ‘arrogance of numbers’.

It is interesting to note that the Government which enjoys a simple majority in the Lower House has in the Upper House been at the mercy of a party that has failed to win even ten percent of the seats in the Lower House.

This would not have been unusual or abnormal if Rajya Sabha that was conceptualized as a representation of States in the Parliament were actually representing the interest of the States. Given the current state of affairs, it is perhaps time for us to relook at the composition and structure of the Rajya Sabha for better functioning of democracy.

Rajya Sabha is designed to maintain the balance of power between the States the Union Government, and maintain the federal character of the country. It is important for us to analyze if Rajya Sabha is failing in fulfilling this purpose.

There are three dimensions to this purpose of Rajya Sabha which need close scrutiny:

1. Representation of State (Chapter II, clause 80, sub-clause 4)
2. Representative of States (Chapter II, clause 80, sub-clause 2)
3. Balance of power between interest of States and interests of the Union Government and maintain the federal character of the country

Let us look at the first dimension and analyze whether Rajya Sabha reflects the true representation of States. Take the example of the states of Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, and Telangana – all large states with a total contribution of 58 seats to Rajya Sabha. In all these states the Congress Party has been wiped out with a total of only 10.4% all legislative assembly seats available across all these states. Yet, the Congress party currently sits on a whopping 37% of all Rajya Sabha seats available from these states.

From Andhra Pradesh, where the party has zero members in the legislative assembly, the Party occupies 6 Rajya Sabha seats out of a total of 11 available. If Rajya Sabha was a true representation of the aspirations the States, then clearly Congress Party that has fallen out of favour in all these states should not be representing them in Rajya Sabha in such large numbers. It is only a travesty that the people of the State continue to be represented in the Parliament by a Party they do not trust anymore. Not a good representation of the aspiration of the States by any stretch of imagination.

Let us now see if the members representing a State in Rajya Sabha are truly the representatives of their respective States. Consider the example of three prominent MPs of the ruling Party in Rajya Sabha. Suresh Prabhu is from the State of Maharashtra. Manohar Parrikar built his political career in Goa. M. J. Akbar is a Delhi-based journalist. Yet, all of them are elected to Rajya Sabha from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand respectively. These people are anything but the representatives of the states they are elected from. Our ex-prime Minister, Shri Manmohan Singh is a Rajya Sabha member from Assam. It is claimed that he never lived in Assam. One must wonder how he represents the wishes of the people of Assam.

If members have no linkages to the States they represent, and if their political careers are delinked from the States they are representing, there is no reason to believe that their actions and words in the parliament will be driven by the interests of the States they represent. In fact, it is much more possible for them to work towards fulfilling their own political interests than the interests of States.

This brings us to the third dimension of the balance of power and maintenance of the federal character of the country. Building on the aforementioned two arguments, if the Rajya Sabha is filled with with members who neither belong to the state nor reflect the political reality of the people, it is conceivable that the interests of the States are heavily compromised. A glaring example of this is the discussion on amendments to ‘Land Bill’ being undertaken in the parliament these days. Although governments of most, if not all, States are in favour of a toned-down version of the Land Bill of 2013, Rajya Sabha, which is filled with non-representatives of States, has been vehemently opposing the amendments.

There is another element to the notion of ‘balance’: comparative balance of power among States. In the present system, larger states get larger number of seats in the Rajya Sabha, and therefore are able to prevail over the smaller states with lower number of representative members. A grand total of 14 members represent the interest of eight states of India in the North-east, while a single state of West Bengal is represented by 16 members. Even within the north-eastern States, Assam alone is represented by seven members. Therefore, any discussion that concerns the eastern part of India is likely to be dominated by the State of West Bengal, or at the very least, by the State of Assam. The voices of the people of the other States is likely to drown unnoticed. Only seven States out of a total of 31 states and UT account for more the half the number of seats in Rajya Sabha tilting the balance heavily in their favour in any discussion being conducted in the House.

Surely the Indian constitution does not imply in any way that the interests of one State are more important than the interests of another State. Or, that smaller States must carry disadvantages vis-à-vis larger States. If the idea was to give States a representation in parliament in proportion to the population of the State then this objective is fulfilled by the Lower House of the Parliament, Lok Sabha.

In the truest sense of giving every State of the Union an equal voice, ideally, every State must send the same number of representatives to Rajya Sabha. This model is not unheard of, and the Upper House of US Parliament is modelled exactly like this. Secondly, to ensure that these representatives are accountable to the people of the States they are representing, they could be drawn from the representatives elected to the State Assembly. These candidates can be selected by the State Legislative Assemblies through proportional representation. This way, each party in the legislative assembly not only has a chance of getting its member elected to the Rajya Sabha, but also by letting people choose their representatives, the accountability of these members to the people of their States is firmly established. Thirdly, the tenure of Rajya Sabha membership should be fixed for the representatives of a State, and not for the specific individual members who occupy those State slots. Once a State elects a new legislative assembly, the composition of the Rajya Sabha members occupying the State seats in Rajya Sabha can change and new members be brought in.

It is time we seriously looked into these issues and brought about a well-thought out change to the structure and composition of Rajya Sabha to ensure preservation of the true interests of all the States, of the federal character of the country, and of the democratic structure of India.

Edit: There is another positive side-effect to giving equal representation to all states in Rajya Sabha. Political parties, and especially the national parties, will now be forced to take every state assembly election seriously and try to 'win' it. A political party cannot just focus on a few 'large' states with the confidence that its numbers in both houses of the Parliament will be sufficient. This will bring some of the remote small states into the national political mainstream, and will, in my opinion, naturally reduce insurgency in these areas.

Why Dowry doesn't make sense in a patrilineal society

It is unfortunate, if you ask me. Illogical even. In fact, so absurd this seems that it is a wonder how such an imperfect system even managed to survive in society.

Consider a society that traces its lineage only along the male progeny, and where women are considered to be an instrument in furthering the male line forward. Now a family in such a society would theoretically do everything within its ability to take the male line further. In fact, such a family would be in dire need of women to procreate with its males to propagate the male gene through male children. So fixated on the male children such a family would be that any woman who is not able to produce them will likely be given an inferior treatment t0 the one who is. It goes without saying that in such a society, it is the woman who would have to take the family name of her husband, and would have to move from the house of her birth to the house of her husband.

At this point, many people, especially those in my home country, India, are likely to nod their heads and find similarities of such a society with the societies they live in. Let us take the example forward.

As a corollary, another family within the same society that has no young male members will have to accept the inevitability of the termination of their lineage. Not only that, the family will also stand to lose any additional income that may have come by way of its male members' earnings.

Now, here is the absurd part. If continuation of the male line is of such great importance to a family in this society, then it is the family with young male members that must pay a premium to get women to procreate with. The family with only young female members has no incentive to marry their daughters off because no matter what their lineage terminates with that generation. In fact, by delaying marriage of their daughters, they have a chance to bring additional income to the family by way of their daughters' earnings. In fact, such a family has a great incentive to invest in their daughters' education so that they earn more money for the family. However, the family with a chance to further the male line will desperately need to get women for procreation. If they don't, then there is a chance of their male line too perishing with the next generation.

This leaves us with a situation where the family with male members needs women while the family with female members has no incentive to marry them off, and instead has every incentive to keep them within the family.

In a typical market scenario, such a situation will lead to the former offering incentives to the latter to let their female members go. This could very well be in the form of money, property, precious metals etc.

However, in reality, it is the other way round. It is the family with female members - the one who have every incentive to keep them within the family - offering incentives to the family with male members - the one who have great disincentives to not get women - to marry the former's daughters. The incentive called Dowry. Absurd, isn't it?

While demanding dowry is illegal in India, this article is in no way in endorsement of the practice. It in fact tries to highlight the fallacy in the logic of Dowry in the hope that the society sees it and stops the practice immediately, especially in the patrilineal society that we live in.

It is also interesting to note that the concept of man offering a woman's family money and other incentives to be able to marry her is not unheard of and is practiced in several communities around the world, including a few in India. This is typically called 'bride money'.

Activists, especially those moulded in the Western philosophical framework, view this practice as a sale-purchase of 'brides'. This is highly unfortunate. If anything, it is an extremely logical system that has encouraged many patrilineal societies to maintain healthy gender ratios and fair property rights for centuries.

The neutrality of Net

Two things:

1. I am going to keep this very brief
2. I am going to avoid using analogies that you may have read elsewhere already.

There are three dimensions to neutrality, and depending on which dimension one is focussing on, one can be either arguing for Net Neutrality or against it.

The three dimensions are:

1. Cost
2. Access
3. Speed

The cost neutrality of Internet is expecting that access to all content on the Internet comes at the same cost, i.e. whether a customer consumes 100MB of data on a shopping site, or a streaming video site, the cost to the customer for those 100MB will remain the same.

Access neutrality of Internet is expecting that access to all content on the Internet is equal for customers, i.e. whether a customer wants to access a shopping site, or a streaming video site, the customer can freely do so without any restrictions.

Speed neutrality of Internet is expecting that access to all content on the Internet comes at the same speed, i.e. whether a customer chooses to visit a shopping site, or a streaming video site, the bandwidth and speed available to the customer is the same.

Let us now consider scenarios in which these aforementioned conditions of neutrality may be violated. 

A Government decides to subsidize all e-governance websites for its citizens so that citizens visiting these sites will not be charged any money by the ISP for the data they consume on these sites. A shopping site may do the same for its customers who visit their site. On the other hand, an ISP may decide to charge more money for the data consumed on a video streaming website. These are examples of cost neutrality violation.

A government decides to ban access to pornographic websites, so that customers wanting to visit these websites will not have access to them. An ISP may decide to ban access to torrent websites. These are examples of access neutrality violation.

An ISP offers higher speeds to customers who visit a certain shopping website, while offering lower speeds to customers who visit rival shopping websites. This is an example of speed neutrality violation.

If the ISP allows customers to access rival shopping websites at higher speeds, provided they pay a premium for it, then this would violate both cost neutrality and speed neutrality.

While discussing the merits or demerits of Net Neutrality, we need to keep in mind these three dimensions and ensure that we treat each of these neutrality conditions in different ways.

Cost neutrality violation, especially in the form of subsidy offered by the 'destination' websites, and not offered by the ISP, may be acceptable in some cases. However, such violations initiated by the ISPs on an arbitrary basis may cause great heart-burn.

Access neutrality violations are typically determined by the laws and regulations of the country of the customers and ISPs. Violations that are a result of such local laws and only such local laws may be acceptable. A Government may have many reasons to impose restrictions, and some of them may be justified. Such violations, however, if initiated by the ISPs arbitrarily, can seldom be justified.

Speed neutrality violations seem to find less support under all circumstances.

There is however another constraint, and that is the limited bandwidth. Bandwidth is not ever expanding, and requires massive investments to expand. Higher bandwidth causes more people to use high-quality streaming content resulting in more data usage, which can theoretically cause speeds to lower for all customers.

Equate this to availability of roads, which when expanded, attract more people to drive instead of taking up public transport, which leads to congestion and lower speeds. Or, equate it to availability of electricity, abundance of which can encourage people to use more air-conditioners and heaters for longer duration, thereby causing shortage of electricity for everyone across the board.

Of course, one could argue that Utilities can simply raise the per unit usage price to discourage customers from using more electricity, or increase the toll tax on roads to discourage people from driving their own cars. The downside of this is that the hike in prices potentially affects poorer sections of the society, and those who wanted to use these utilities for social purposes.

If hospitals had to pay more for electricity to run life-saving equipment, the cost of medical care would increase, and this would adversely affect many poor people.

The success of the much-famed Jyoti-Gram Yojana implemented by the Government of Gujarat to ensure 24 hours electricity supply throughout the state is essentially based on violation of cost neutrality and access neutrality. Electricity lines are separate for domestic and agricultural purposes and the per unit price of electricity for these two purposes are different. The benefit from such violations is for everyone to see - availability of electricity 24 hours in a day for domestic purposes for everyone in the state.

The debate on Net-neutrality is not a Black or White debate. There are nuances that one needs to consider. We see violations of cost, access, or speed neutrality in the context of other utilities and public goods very often in our lives. Some of them feel justified to us. Internet is yet another public good, much like water, electricity, and land. The laws of neutrality, though ideal, may need to be tweaked in order to ensure its reach and benefits to greater sections of people.

And about my promise of not making this big, or avoiding analogies, well...I lied!

Love, actually.

This is a picture of my daughter’s doll. My daughter calls her Sowmya, named after her little cousin who lives in Mumbai. Every day in the morning, my daughter bathes Sowmya, brushes her hair, feeds her delicious food and milk, takes her along wherever she goes, and at night puts her to sleep by her side on the bed. She even takes offence if you address Sowmya by any other name.

She loves her little cousin, Sowmya. She loves her intensely. In fact, she misses Sowmya so much that she expresses her love for her sister through her doll.

The doll is that of a Hippopotamus. My daughter knows what a Hippo is, has seen the creature in the zoo, and knows that the doll looks like one. But she doesn’t care. For her, the doll is her little sister and all her feelings and love towards her little sister are as real as the sun and the stars. For her, the doll is a medium through which her love for her sister is manifested. Not one who witnesses the daily ritual can deny the purity of her love.

One could, of course, mock her childishness or ignorance for showering so much affection on a Hippo doll. One may suggest that she at least ought to get herself a human doll. There will be others, perhaps slightly more "wise", who might claim that expressing love to even a human doll wouldn’t be right. They may suggest that my daughter must get herself a real baby, and only then her love would be true. Even this will be disputed by some who will claim that since my daughter’s love is for her little sister only, no other ‘real human baby’ can take her place, and my daughter must only create a mental image of Sowmya and express her love.

In focusing their attention on the medium through which a feeling is expressed, all the above people will ignore what is the most important thing - the feeling that is being expressed.

It does not matter to me whether my daughter chose a Hippo doll, a human doll, a dog, a piece of paper, or even a piece of stone to channelize her tenderness and fondness for her little sister. What delights me as her father is that she loves her sister so much, and that to me is invaluable.

Many of you have, or may have, children of your own. Many of you will experience your children finding their own paths to express their love for the things and people they like. Many of you will find great pleasure in witnessing such pure expressions of love from your children. And when you do, please remember this… ...it's the same with one's love for God.

Impact of Films