Suman Palit

The April issue of Reason just came in. It should get to their online edition soon, so check it out then. Two great articles by Michael Lynch caught my attention: Finance on the Fringe, and Legal Loan sharking or Essential Service. I never thought of check cashing services as sitting on the fringe of the banking service. Evidently there is a legion of policywonks in Washington who live and breathe for the opportunity to constantly regulate and re-regulate this politically incorrect sector of banking serivces.

The steel bars and Plexiglass that cover the teller windows at check cashing outlets may not be pretty. They may offend bourgeois sensibilities and notions of what's just. But they also undeniably provide a unique and valuable service. Contrary to the opinions of critics who would regualte or legislate "fringe banking" out of business, the booming check cashing industry represents a market success worthy of celebration, not a market failure that demands more regulation.

For cutting edge commentary on free markets and capitalism, REASON should be regular reading, and no, they didn't pay me for this (free) plug. Does that make me a failed capitalist? I wonder...!

Mark Byron makes this blog worth its byte..

I've been reading Palit for "too long"; the spelling Kolkata, rather than Calcutta, seems normal now.

Anthony Swenson says feral peacocks are in his backyard, and they are tasty! Wyoming, here I come..


My college dorm in Kanpur (U.P. India) would be overrun with randy peacocks and peahens at the start of every monsoon. They are pretty wiley, I could never get near one, no matter how many hooch bottles were consumed prior to the ritual stalk..! Of course, the fact is that they are the most protected species in India - it's a felony to even collect shed peacock feathers without a license. It would lend any hunting of them here in North America a touch of blasphemous irony..

In a perverse tribute to Large American Penis and the Unablogger, as well as our very own Vodkapundit, who cannot seem to get enough of delicous cheesecake, the Kolkata Libertarian is proud to present:



Khlav Kalash #1:





UPDATE:

FYI, none of the fine Khlav Kalash you will see on tKL will be of me, just in case anyone was wondering..

"Kill Marc Herold Afghan casualties meme by Googlebombing it. For the uninitiated, "Googlebombing" takes advantage of the fact that Google gives a high ranking to regularly updated sites; this means that if a lot of bloggers link to, say, Iain Murray's take-down of the Herold Afghan casualties study, using relevant search terms like Afghanistan civilian casualties and Herold collateral damage and Marc Herold Afghanistan study, we can move Iain's article to the top of Google's search results."

Jim Bennett, who popularized the term Anglosphere and is bullish on India on the fringe of Anglosphere civil society, was kind enough to notice the Anglosphere vs. Englishsphere debate Richard (no relation) Bennett and I had a while ago. He emails me this:

I have been enjoying your discussion with Richard No-Relation Bennett
about India and the Anglosphere. I think, in short, you understand what
I mean, and Richard does not. Perhaps if Richard actually read a little
more of my work he would understand, too, but then maybe not. Richard
is right, of course, in that the English-speaking bureaucratic class who
imported the prevaling statist ideas from 1930s England and retained
them in India after Independence (and kept them long after they were
discarded in England itself) have done no favor to India, and in that
sense the Anglosphere had failed India in that iteration of the link.
Your characterization of Anglosphere vs. Englishsphere is exactly right;
the Anglosphere involves more than English-language competence. The
Englishsphere of India seems to be pretty much what many call the
chattering classes or chatteratti in the rest of the Anglosphere.



But my point is that, having made the many links (far beyond the
upper-class links he discusses) between India and the Anglosphere, they
started a process that nobody can now control, least of all them. I
have no better idea of where it will ultimately lead than anybody else,
but I suspect that the key will be the Indian diaspora in the
Anglosphere and particularly the network of high-tech people between
India and the diaspora. If we are lucky it will create an interesting
and positive fusion of the Indian cultures and the basic Anglosphere
values of individualism, the strong civil society that individualism
creates, and the advanced market economy and constitutional government
that strong civil society enables. If we are unlucky we will have a
fascist nuclear-armed Hindu nationalist state.

The interest the Indian diaspora and those in the high-tech community is not unwarranted. There's a not very well publicized cultural event(?) occurring in India right now. Large US and European companies are moving their call-centers en-masse to the IT hubs of India, like Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad. To put it simply, you have a situation where large numbers of young Indians are immersing themselves in American and European languages, culture, idioms and use of metaphors:- all in the name of commerce. The trickle-down potential of this phenomenon is important. After all, Indians who can speak French and English flawlessly, as well as effortlessly swap Bart Simpson jokes with customers would help bring the Anglosphere (or would it be the Francosphere..) to India and also help diffuse Indian culture and thought within it. Long term survivability of uniquely Indian cultural memes may depend on this healthy synergy.



Jim also tends towards the view that the best future for India, Pakistan and their neighbours to attempt to direct the cultural evolution of the subcontinent towards a
south asian confederacy. He has a detailed exposition and definition of his Anglosphere, which I think manages to surgically remove the Englishsphere contaminant that I throw brickbats at every so often. Jim was kind enough to send me a preview of his new book (some free plugging here..) which explains his stand much better than I can paraphrase, so I've decided to post it here:
Anglosphere_primer.rtf. It's an excellent read, go check it out.



As for a South Asian confederacy - it may be inevitable. An expanding information infrastructure seems to almost always lead to some kind of ethnic balkanization. I can see some of it happening within the expatriate community, where the Internet has given Indians unprecedented oportunities to re-discover their ethnic identity, and build strong virtual communities around shared ethnic values. This may not be such a bad thing.. after all, a core tenet of the Anglosphere is "individual liberty" and civil society should be able to take the so-called cultural balkanization in easy stride. As long as all parties involved are willing and able to adhere to the basic tenets of civil society and democratic norms, there is a lot to gain from this benign division in terms of ensuring stability in the subcontinent. The increasing number of fully-fledged states in India over the past few years is testament to this trend.



The ethnic divisions in India are deep but not exclusionary. As a expatriate member of the Bengali community, I have no problem mingling and enjoying the company of Indians from Bangalore, or from Haryana, or from Assam, with whom I share little or no ethnicity, whether it be in language, script, food, social customs or family structure. What has always united us on a emotional level is what some call "Cultural Hinduism". The common bond that draws upon the ancient marks left by centuries of culture shaped primarily by one theological voice. What also unites us now on an intellectual level is our common commitment to the survival of South Asian civil society and the promise of the emerging free market.

Is Vajpayee and his BJP hiding behind a militant smokescreen..?

But the question is, are the contradictory signals emanating from the Sangh Parivar part of its strategy to confuse and lull into complacency those opposed to its plan? Or are sections within it seeing sense in moderation and looking for a face-saving exit?

Um.. applying Occam's razor to this mess provides us with only one answer: NO and MAYBE! Well-organized as the Sangh Parivar is, psy-ops are not their forte. On the other hand, shooting their mouths off to please their core believers is de riguer, while face-saving is part of political life. And oh.. Sangh Parivar refers to the entire Hinduvta Organization.. I could have called the Hinduvta Orgchart the "Sangh Parivar" Org chart and still been on the money.

The normally anti-biotech Indian Express wonders why Indian farmers on the bring of starvation are being denied access to Bio-tech cotton.

There has to be something very wrong with a society that strives to deny itself the benefits of technological progress — never mind if it renders its rallying cries of Jai Kisan so pathetically hollow..



Permission for farmers to sow the seeds was however withheld, with the environment ministry’s expert committee recommending yet more trials. Never mind that Punjab’s new chief minister, Amarinder Singh, estimates that 600 farmers in his state killed themselves last year after their cotton crop failed. And that farmers in Gujarat surrendered to impatience and illegally planted Bt cotton.

Wrong indeed..! The key culprit is India's very own avatar of the precautionary principle, Ms. Vandana Shiva. Her rants about GM products and the neo-colonial imperialism resonate with politicians alarmed by the power of her populism.

Biotechnology is still not an exact science and the desire for further tests is always hard to repress.

I am not aware of anything that is an exact science! Even mathematical foundations get toppled every so often. Newton's theory of gravitation is famously imprecise, but that does not stop reasonable people from running the other way when apples and asteroids start plummeting from the sky!



^**In the bloody meanwhile, PETA brings their self-flagellating pogrom to Indian streets. Oh well, I ask, what's yet another rotting compost heap of religous nuts in a society already plagued with theological obesity? PETA deserves the sanctimonious and hypocritical vegetarians and vegans of India. Maybe they'll love India so much they'll move there for good and leave us steak-chomping, sushi-swilling, chicken-tearing, ribs-pounding, venison-chewing North American carnivores in peace..!!

Our citizen of the world.. Tunku Varadarajan, makes a desperate plea for the survival of Indian secularism, and the hope it brings the world...

Secularism, in its Indian ideal, emulates some of the ways of the liberal West, which is one reason why Indian democracy--in spite of its flaws--has so many admirers in America and Europe. Religious parties are not proscribed; religiosity is not a bar to political advancement; and religious discrimination is unlawful. The framers of the Indian constitution envisaged a multireligious state whose citizens coexist, with no group enjoying advantage, nor disadvantage, by virtue of religion.

In doing so, Mr V. misses the crucial point about the role of religion in Indian life. It is immersive. Indians define themselves by their religion, by the complex ritual that distinguishes the Gujrati Jain from the animist Bengali. The line between church and state blurs frequently, with most Indians none the worse for it. He asks (and answers) what can be done to keep Indian secularism within the comfortable boundaries that the West is so familiar with

One logical answer might be that religious fervor and intolerance do not necessarily decline with increased education and prosperity. Whether or not this is true, it is indisputable that a country that is still as poor--and as poorly educated--as India will always be socially combustible in the absence of civilized political leadership. This, India has not had--from any party--for a very long time, and this is what India needs so badly now.

If anything, prosperity in India is likely to bring about increased religous fervor. Prosperity leads to increased competition for scarce resources. In a country where the domestic economy is divided along historical caste and religous lines, the most natural (if abhorrent) tendency for people will be to group themselves along religous and ethnic fault lines. There is also a prevailing misconception in the air that Hinduism is somehow a tolerant religion at heart. This is quite simply untrue. Hinduism is an indifferent religion, extremely adaptive to other theologies when not under stress. Indifference + Adaptiveness only superficially equates to tolerance. What the world is watching in India today is the slow breakdown of this legendary indifference. Paradoxically, it is the liberalization of the Indian market, the growing numbers of expatriates in the West, and the slow coming of age of India's information infrastructure, that is hastening the pace of religous fervor everywhere you look.



I do agree with him that India's future cannot lie in the hands of Hindu chauvinists.. Their vision of India as the Hinduvta is flawed as it is anachronistic. But their worldview is only re-reinforced by the fears, both real and imagined, of cross-border terrorism, and an increasingly radicalized Muslim community which looks to Arabia, and not their indigenous roots, for cultural and political identity. Like the sound of one hand clapping, Indian secularism can only be saved with a two-step parallel process. Leaders of the Muslim community need to honestly assess and subdue the influence of a dislocated and large fringe element, engrossed with expanding the bloody borders of Islam. Leaders of the Hindu community need to find ways to express their Hindu identity without trampling over their neighbors. There is too much at stake to do otherwise.



^**UPDATE:

Others in the Blogsphere are coming to similar conclusions, taking different paths. Such as the ever-perceptive Letter from Gotham, as well as Little Green Footballs.

Courtesy of MommaBear, I can now commune safely with computer hardware:



Which Computer Component Are you?

Amit Asaravala pens a poignant piece about his early life in Surat.

My grandparents lived in Surat, although, for most of the time that I spent with them, I did not know them as my grandparents. I still have guilt over this. Each time I went to visit, I realized that I had lost more nouns, verbs, prepositions—I was losing the language due to misuse, to neglect. By the time I was old enough to reverse the loss, I was a teenager and would not see past my own brooding.

He got me thinking about some of my own experiences. I like to think I got the best of both worlds, a subjective and sometimes questionable thesis. From a carefree youth spent in India with an affectionate extended family, to maturity and adulthood in the US amidst new friends. Yet, as with everything, there are sacrifices. Little things that you lose, some that get quietly filed away in dusty memories while others hide behind cobwebbed shadows of your mind. So it was with me.



My first trip back to Kolkata on the eve of my sisters wedding had been preceded by years of a whirlwind, full-body-mind immersion in America. I was creating a new life, a new identity, brick by little brick, with no time for reflection. I found myself amazed by how many aspects of my earlier life I had forgotten, how new and different it all seemed. From relatives whose names I had forgotten, to nieces and nephews who appeared out of thin air. It was a guilt-wracked experience. There was discomfort, and a distinct sense of physical disconnection. Each subsequent visit only serves to stir the sadness, bit by little bit.



Such is the lot of an expatriate.. who voluntarily wrenches himself away from his roots in order to weave a new life around dreams that only the New World can provide. There is no free lunch, even if the banquet set on the table defies imagination!



Thus, I find myself writing the Kolkata Libertarian, as much for myself as for those who strive to touch the fabric of India and the minds of her people. From the banks of the Hoogly, to a treestand in Illinois... it has been a wonderful life so far. The events and people who have defined my life, expanded my horizons, capped my limits.. all of it so unique, so irreplacable. If the clock were reset thirty odd years, and the dice rolled once more, I would be hard-pressed indeed to change any of it.



Found Amit via Interesting Monstah

// posted by Suman @ Sunday, March 10, 2002