SOME REFLECTIONS ON AID EFFECTIVENESS
By Ajit Chaudhuri
‘If you do not know where you are going, any road with get you there.’: Lewis Carroll
The past twenty years have seen many changes in the development sector. Where once the government was the critical agent of change, the baton has passed to NGOs, the private sector and, more recently, back to the state and to government-owned NGOs and panchayati raj institutions. Where once there was a comparatively equal relationship between the providers of resources and the implementers of interventions (or at least a semblance of a dialogue), funding agencies now exercise absolute power. Where ‘primary education’ was once seen as the critical sector, whose benefits lead and direct change in other sectors relating to development, ‘governance’ and ‘livelihoods’ have usurped that role. And finally, the positive relationship between development aid and development, that was once taken for granted, now has to be proved beyond doubt. It is this, the increased importance of aid effectiveness in the development discourse, that is the subject of this paper.
Aid effectiveness is defined as the extent to which an intervention has attained, or is expected to attain, its major relevant objectives efficiently, in a sustainable fashion, and with a positive institutional development impact (as per the Glossary of Key Terms in Evaluation and Results Based Management of the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD). Put simply, it is a measure of (or judgement about) the merit or worth of an intervention, and it addresses the question of whether one’s resources and efforts have brought or are bringing about desired change (or showing results). Put complicatedly, it is about whether an intervention is relevant, efficient, sustainable, and with impact. And the development sector has seen the burgeoning of an ancillary industry in the field of monitoring and evaluation to address these questions.
The need for monitoring and evaluation is aptly described in the following statements –
• If you do not measure results, you cannot tell success from failure.
• If you cannot see success, you cannot reward it.
• If you cannot reward success, you are probably rewarding failure.
• If you cannot see success, you cannot learn from it.
• If you cannot recognize failure, you cannot correct it.
• If you can demonstrate results, you can win support.
This is all very well, and this author hesitates to dispute the need for addressing questions around aid effectiveness, or for setting up monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems to accomplish this. This paper does, however, look to question the hugely increased, and rapidly increasing, role of M&E within development, especially in proportion to the tasks of actually managing and administering development programmes. It does so by highlighting gaps between rhetoric and reality in the field of M&E. It suggests that, beyond a point, this is a ‘socially useless activity’ driven primarily by the needs of its proponents, and it distorts development aid by directing funds towards interventions wherein results are easily quantified and quickly discerned.
The first set of difficulties relating to aid effectiveness applies to evaluators.
An M&E system requires the outlining of objectives, inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, targets and indicators for a development intervention, and the setting up of systems to collect, collate and analyze data around these and to disseminate information to different levels in a timely manner. At issue is the assumption that objectives are known, clear and consistent; this is at variance with all experience – they are usually multiple, conflicting, vague and occasionally repugnant, mirroring the complexity and ambivalence of human social behaviour. Choosing the objectives against which to monitor and evaluate invariably has little to do with an intervention’s actual purpose and a lot to do with ease of computation. Also at issue is the difference between outputs (defined as ‘the products, capital goods and services that result from an intervention) and outcomes (defined as ‘the short or medium term effects of an intervention’s outputs’), which serves to discern whether an intervention is merely ‘doing the work’ or actually ‘achieving results’. On the theoretical drawing board, the difference is like night and day; in the field, the chances of getting unanimity on an intervention’s outputs and outcomes is less than those of getting Afghan warlords to agree upon a peace plan.
Another matter is that of impact! By definition, impact happens in the medium to long term – often well after an intervention has ended – and it is rarely attributable to a particular intervention. The resources for an impact assessment are, however, available as a part of the intervention – either towards its end, or in its immediate aftermath, but never five (or whatever) years after the intervention when it is somewhat assessable. And the debate around attribution is circumvented by the attempt to show ‘contribution’ towards broad change, with nobody knowing quite what ‘contribution’ is.
And finally, can an evaluator actually trash a bad intervention or wholeheartedly praise an excellent one? The politics around M&E make this difficult, especially as people’s (including the evaluator’s) livelihoods are at stake. The latter leads to accusations of delivering a ‘snow job’, and therefore the need to throw in a few perfunctory negatives. The former leads to competing explanations about an intervention’s failure, and therefore whether it should be abandoned (the ‘theory of change’ underlying the intervention is weak), continued as it is (it has had insufficient time to achieve its objectives), continued with changes (its implementation is weak) or enhanced (it has insufficient resources to achieve its objectives) – and the directions set are invariable based upon political judgement rather than analytical integrity.
The second set of difficulties relating to aid effectiveness applies to the implementers of development interventions. Operations people are notoriously uninterested in data collection – their task is to make things happen, not to fill forms so that M&E personnel can later make suspect use of the information (including making M&E people look good and operations people look bad). M&E systems typically create rules and reporting requirements for implementers that divert them from their actual work and create perverse incentives towards a focus on short-term results and a stifling of innovation. A standard grouse in most implementing organizations in the field of development today is the amount of time spent, at all levels, dealing with compliance issues that have little relation to or bearing on their work.
A paper by Andrew Natsios of USAID entitled ‘The Clash of the Counter-Bureaucracy and Development’ in 2010 (available at www.cgdev.org) identifies two basic causes for this dysfunctional state of affairs. The first is the rise of a group of people he calls the counter-bureaucracy, who deal with issues of accountability and oversight and who pressure for increased scrutiny of aid effectiveness and for clearer demonstration of value for money. The second is what he terms ‘obsessive measurement disorder’ or the belief that the more an activity can be quantified, the better the policy choices and management of it will be. The two combine to cause ‘goal displacement’ – increasing the importance of formalistic goals over the substantive goals of an intervention and creating a situation wherein donor goals (that are largely set by the counter-bureaucracy) do not reflect the goals of the recipients of aid. Natsios says that it is a great pity that support for development interventions that can be transformative, but whose results are harder to measure and often do not emerge for years, is diminishing. He also makes some suggestions for issues around the effectiveness of aid. These include –
1. Devising a new measurement system for results that acknowledges that short-term quantitative indicators are not appropriate for all interventions.
2. Adopting different M&E methods for interventions in service delivery, institution building and policy reform.
3. Researching the effect of the counter-bureaucracy on aid effectiveness with a view to reducing the compliance and reporting burden.
4. Overtly recognizing foreign policy as an objective of some interventions, and judging these against political rather than development objectives.
5. Ending the use of disbursement rates as a performance measure.
6. Devolving programming and decision making to the lowest possible level.
Most development practitioners would find connection with Natsios’ views. This author, with 20 years in development behind him, would like to add that many issues around aid effectiveness stem from the fact that a critical mass of people in positions of power within the development sector have never actually managed an intervention at a level at which they have to interface with a ‘beneficiary’ community (a result of recruitment policies that parachute bright young people into the headquarters). To such people, as a wag remarked ‘poverty is like Bihar – never been there, but don’t like it anyway’. There is a conflict between their own belief that implementation is a grubby chaotic thing best left to the foot soldiers, and the knowledge that it is the basis for a development agency’s existence. The resultant insecurity sets aid effectiveness up as an instrument of power and control, rather than as a tool for the better delivery of development services. It is time for a re-think!
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Monday, February 11, 2013
Sex and Central Banking
SEX AND CENTRAL BANKING
Ajit Chaudhuri, February 2013
'The only useful banking innovation was the invention of the ATM': Paul Volcker
Allow me to meander through three unconnected events before getting to Paul Volcker, inflation and bank regulation, which this paper is actually about.
One of the events that a fellowship at the London School of Economics (LSE) entitled you to gatecrash back in 2001 was the annual meeting of the UK-Germany Economic and Commercial Cooperation Society (or some such thing). I had imbibed too much wine with my lunch while there, and was therefore not prepared for what followed – a long and excruciatingly detailed talk on macro-economic policy by the then President of the Bundesbank, Ernst Welteke. When the torture finally ended, I mentioned to the others on my table that there should be a ban on central bankers speaking after lunch. They concurred, but also said that there was something comforting about Herr Welteke’s boringness – that the very qualities suitable for a person charged with the monetary policy of a nation were those that made for dull oratory. It seems a natural law that central bankers have the effect of chloroform on others. At a subsequent seminar at LSE, another speaker was discussing the cultural barriers to European integration and gave the example of Germany and Italy. To Germans, he said, Italy is a place one only goes to on holiday. And to Germans, all Italian men are gigolos – because that is their experience while they are on holiday. Germans, therefore, cannot conjure up an image of an Italian central banker – a huge barrier to discussions on formation of a European central bank with shared responsibilities and rotating leadership.
On a rare TV-watching foray away from sports channels, I came across a discussion on the slowing Indian economy and possible courses of action. The speakers, purporting to speak in the public interest, were castigating the government for being held hostage by the RBI’s (India’s central bank) refusal to lower interest rates. It was unusual to observe such unanimity on TV!
I recently read a biography of Steve Jobs (‘Steve Jobs’ by Walter Isaacson, Simon and Schuster, 2011), and this had me thinking about the concept of ‘greatness’ again. Is it the preserve of the rich and charismatic, of those who have built something from nothing, who have changed the way we do things, who have seen something others did not, or who have fought and won wars? What is the scope for those who have lived rather more ordinary lives, who have preserved and prevented rather than created or destroyed, who have not wowed the world with products and thoughts? Are only the former worthy of our awe? Or can the dull post-lunch speakers too aspire to greatness?
The financial collapse of 2008 soiled many reputations – within the financial industry, and among those entrusted to keep it in check. It also enhanced a few, and a man called Paul Volcker’s was one of these. This note attempts to make a case for Volcker to be considered ‘great’ – despite him being gawky in appearance (he’s over 2 meters tall), only comfortably well off (rather than obscenely rich) and, yawn, yawn, a central banker to the core.
Volcker’s achievements can be described through three episodes.
The first was his time in the Treasury Department (1969-1974), when he oversaw the abandonment of the post-1945 Bretton Woods arrangements that pegged the value of the dollar to gold, and of other currencies to the dollar at fixed exchange rates. As the Vietnam War escalated, demand in the US grew without accompanying increases in productivity, resulting in rising prices and, because of the inability to devalue the currency, uncompetitive exports. As investors began fleeing to other currencies, the US decided in August 1971 to end the dollar’s peg to gold and to usher in an era of flexible exchange rates. Volcker was entrusted with ensuring an orderly transition. Thanks to a combination of negotiation and coordination, the Bretton Woods arrangements were dismantled without sparking off a full-blown financial crisis. The relevance of this episode is still significant in the light of the Euro-zone’s struggles to cope with the havoc of maintaining fixed exchange rates.
The second was his war on inflation as Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank (or the Fed, the US’s central bank). In the 1970s, inflation was the bane of the US’s economy (12 percent in August 1979, a month after Volcker took over). Inflationary expectations had deeply set in, and had set off a ‘wage-price spiral’ – in plain English, wage negotiations that assumed 5-7 percent inflation and resulted in 7-9 percent wage increases, in turn causing prices to rise still further. Volcker designed a new Fed policy of explicitly slowing growth of money supply (rather than a central bank’s normal method of raising interest rates directly), forcing the US economy to slip into recession and its associated problem of unemployment (which peaked at 10.8 percent in late 1982). He stuck to his guns despite withering criticism from the US Congress and industry, and stayed the course until inflation climbed down. He then cut interest rates and made it easier to borrow money. Unemployment fell rapidly, and conservative economists (including Milton Friedman) warned of overheating and an imminent return to inflation. But Volcker saw the Fed’s worst failure as one of waiting too long to tighten monetary policy during the expansion, not of loosening too much during recession. History proved him right – a record breaking expansion followed, and inflation never returned.
The third was his championing of a ban on proprietary lending (when a firm trades financial instruments with its own money, rather than its customers’ money, so as to make a profit for itself) by commercial banks – now called the ‘Volcker Rule’. His reasoning was that commercial banks (where citizens keep their savings) are backed by deposit insurance and can borrow money from the Fed at a discount in a crisis, and this enables their access to cheap capital. Proprietary lending therefore involves using a state subsidy to make risky investments that leave the taxpayer on the hook if they fail – a sort of ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ situation. It also invariably puts banks in direct conflict with their clients. Volcker’s critics contend that the rule is untenable because commercial banks have to compete with entities (hedge funds, money market funds, international banks, etc.) that are not subject to these restrictions. There was furious lobbying to remove it – yet each time the rule looked in jeopardy some development would validate Volcker’s logic, such as news of Goldman Sachs knowingly shorting investments it was selling to its clients, or JP Morgan Chase losing billions on a single proprietary investment.
Indians have another cause to remember Volcker – he investigated the UN’s oil for food racket in Iraq that brought down our then foreign minister, Natwar Singh. Interestingly, our politician-bureaucracy mafia didn’t resort to their usual shenanigans in the report’s aftermath; gang-up, counter-accuse the investigator of racist bias, obfuscate by questioning the motivation, basis, methodology or numbers, etc. (the stunts being pulled on the Comptroller and Auditor General today). Volcker’s reputation and methodological rigour were impeccable and irreproachable – the @##&@# simply
shut up and resigned.
Great careers offer lessons to others, and Volcker’s is no exception.
To policy makers, the critical lessons are that of projecting confidence and credibility, and of articulating clear frameworks to resolve crises. Volcker understood that a government had to establish credibility in order to give policy makers the flexibility to act. In both the gold and inflation crises, it was the failure of authorities to make credible promises that invited speculative attacks by investors betting that the government would back down. In the 1980s, once people believed that Volcker was willing to administer the most painful medicines, and to keep at it until prices stopped ballooning, he earned the flexibility to bring inflation down to normal levels. Policy reversals undermine credibility and make rescue much more difficult – a lesson proved relevant by Europe’s chaotic response to its sovereign debt crisis. And also, serious crises cannot be tamed solely by improvised disaster control by well-intentioned officials – it takes explicit frameworks, that leave people in no doubt what the government will do when things go wrong. A benefit of a preference for frameworks over emergency meetings is, according to Milton Friedman, that it puts an end to the ‘occasional crisis – that produces frantic scurrying of high government officials from capital to capital’.
Volcker was tough on regulatory oversight. He believed that free markets are unable to govern themselves, that they can function only if people trust the system, and that conflict of interest and creative accounting are dangerous precisely because they destroy public trust. He said that bankers, like everyone else, would try to take advantage of a system that lacks oversight – and many so-called financial innovations are actually ways for firms to get around regulations or to avoid taxes, thus providing little benefit to consumers or to the economy. He articulated the need for clear and direct oversight of banks’ behaviour, saying that ‘commercial bankers understand when a bank examiner gives them a green light to lend. They also understand a red light, whether they like it or not, but most ignore the cautionary yellow.’
My own key take from Paul Volcker is his contention that honour is the most important thing a person has (he remembers that, in his earlier days in government, no banker worried more about his bonus than his reputation), and that public service is the most important thing a person can do – despite the modest pay and the considerable tribulations of government work.
To those of you still here, I would like to return to my question in page 1 of this note – can a man such as this be considered great? I am not sure I make a convincing case – there is something ‘unsexy’ about interest rates, financial regulation, and a career spent ensuring that the small guys sleep at night.
Further reading for those interested:
Goolsbee, Austan; The Volcker Way: Lessons from the Last Great Hero of Modern Finance; Foreign Affairs; January/February 2013
Silbur, William; Volcker: The Triumph of Persistence; Bloomsbury Press; 2012
Ajit Chaudhuri, February 2013
'The only useful banking innovation was the invention of the ATM': Paul Volcker
Allow me to meander through three unconnected events before getting to Paul Volcker, inflation and bank regulation, which this paper is actually about.
One of the events that a fellowship at the London School of Economics (LSE) entitled you to gatecrash back in 2001 was the annual meeting of the UK-Germany Economic and Commercial Cooperation Society (or some such thing). I had imbibed too much wine with my lunch while there, and was therefore not prepared for what followed – a long and excruciatingly detailed talk on macro-economic policy by the then President of the Bundesbank, Ernst Welteke. When the torture finally ended, I mentioned to the others on my table that there should be a ban on central bankers speaking after lunch. They concurred, but also said that there was something comforting about Herr Welteke’s boringness – that the very qualities suitable for a person charged with the monetary policy of a nation were those that made for dull oratory. It seems a natural law that central bankers have the effect of chloroform on others. At a subsequent seminar at LSE, another speaker was discussing the cultural barriers to European integration and gave the example of Germany and Italy. To Germans, he said, Italy is a place one only goes to on holiday. And to Germans, all Italian men are gigolos – because that is their experience while they are on holiday. Germans, therefore, cannot conjure up an image of an Italian central banker – a huge barrier to discussions on formation of a European central bank with shared responsibilities and rotating leadership.
On a rare TV-watching foray away from sports channels, I came across a discussion on the slowing Indian economy and possible courses of action. The speakers, purporting to speak in the public interest, were castigating the government for being held hostage by the RBI’s (India’s central bank) refusal to lower interest rates. It was unusual to observe such unanimity on TV!
I recently read a biography of Steve Jobs (‘Steve Jobs’ by Walter Isaacson, Simon and Schuster, 2011), and this had me thinking about the concept of ‘greatness’ again. Is it the preserve of the rich and charismatic, of those who have built something from nothing, who have changed the way we do things, who have seen something others did not, or who have fought and won wars? What is the scope for those who have lived rather more ordinary lives, who have preserved and prevented rather than created or destroyed, who have not wowed the world with products and thoughts? Are only the former worthy of our awe? Or can the dull post-lunch speakers too aspire to greatness?
The financial collapse of 2008 soiled many reputations – within the financial industry, and among those entrusted to keep it in check. It also enhanced a few, and a man called Paul Volcker’s was one of these. This note attempts to make a case for Volcker to be considered ‘great’ – despite him being gawky in appearance (he’s over 2 meters tall), only comfortably well off (rather than obscenely rich) and, yawn, yawn, a central banker to the core.
Volcker’s achievements can be described through three episodes.
The first was his time in the Treasury Department (1969-1974), when he oversaw the abandonment of the post-1945 Bretton Woods arrangements that pegged the value of the dollar to gold, and of other currencies to the dollar at fixed exchange rates. As the Vietnam War escalated, demand in the US grew without accompanying increases in productivity, resulting in rising prices and, because of the inability to devalue the currency, uncompetitive exports. As investors began fleeing to other currencies, the US decided in August 1971 to end the dollar’s peg to gold and to usher in an era of flexible exchange rates. Volcker was entrusted with ensuring an orderly transition. Thanks to a combination of negotiation and coordination, the Bretton Woods arrangements were dismantled without sparking off a full-blown financial crisis. The relevance of this episode is still significant in the light of the Euro-zone’s struggles to cope with the havoc of maintaining fixed exchange rates.
The second was his war on inflation as Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank (or the Fed, the US’s central bank). In the 1970s, inflation was the bane of the US’s economy (12 percent in August 1979, a month after Volcker took over). Inflationary expectations had deeply set in, and had set off a ‘wage-price spiral’ – in plain English, wage negotiations that assumed 5-7 percent inflation and resulted in 7-9 percent wage increases, in turn causing prices to rise still further. Volcker designed a new Fed policy of explicitly slowing growth of money supply (rather than a central bank’s normal method of raising interest rates directly), forcing the US economy to slip into recession and its associated problem of unemployment (which peaked at 10.8 percent in late 1982). He stuck to his guns despite withering criticism from the US Congress and industry, and stayed the course until inflation climbed down. He then cut interest rates and made it easier to borrow money. Unemployment fell rapidly, and conservative economists (including Milton Friedman) warned of overheating and an imminent return to inflation. But Volcker saw the Fed’s worst failure as one of waiting too long to tighten monetary policy during the expansion, not of loosening too much during recession. History proved him right – a record breaking expansion followed, and inflation never returned.
The third was his championing of a ban on proprietary lending (when a firm trades financial instruments with its own money, rather than its customers’ money, so as to make a profit for itself) by commercial banks – now called the ‘Volcker Rule’. His reasoning was that commercial banks (where citizens keep their savings) are backed by deposit insurance and can borrow money from the Fed at a discount in a crisis, and this enables their access to cheap capital. Proprietary lending therefore involves using a state subsidy to make risky investments that leave the taxpayer on the hook if they fail – a sort of ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ situation. It also invariably puts banks in direct conflict with their clients. Volcker’s critics contend that the rule is untenable because commercial banks have to compete with entities (hedge funds, money market funds, international banks, etc.) that are not subject to these restrictions. There was furious lobbying to remove it – yet each time the rule looked in jeopardy some development would validate Volcker’s logic, such as news of Goldman Sachs knowingly shorting investments it was selling to its clients, or JP Morgan Chase losing billions on a single proprietary investment.
Indians have another cause to remember Volcker – he investigated the UN’s oil for food racket in Iraq that brought down our then foreign minister, Natwar Singh. Interestingly, our politician-bureaucracy mafia didn’t resort to their usual shenanigans in the report’s aftermath; gang-up, counter-accuse the investigator of racist bias, obfuscate by questioning the motivation, basis, methodology or numbers, etc. (the stunts being pulled on the Comptroller and Auditor General today). Volcker’s reputation and methodological rigour were impeccable and irreproachable – the @##&@# simply
shut up and resigned.
Great careers offer lessons to others, and Volcker’s is no exception.
To policy makers, the critical lessons are that of projecting confidence and credibility, and of articulating clear frameworks to resolve crises. Volcker understood that a government had to establish credibility in order to give policy makers the flexibility to act. In both the gold and inflation crises, it was the failure of authorities to make credible promises that invited speculative attacks by investors betting that the government would back down. In the 1980s, once people believed that Volcker was willing to administer the most painful medicines, and to keep at it until prices stopped ballooning, he earned the flexibility to bring inflation down to normal levels. Policy reversals undermine credibility and make rescue much more difficult – a lesson proved relevant by Europe’s chaotic response to its sovereign debt crisis. And also, serious crises cannot be tamed solely by improvised disaster control by well-intentioned officials – it takes explicit frameworks, that leave people in no doubt what the government will do when things go wrong. A benefit of a preference for frameworks over emergency meetings is, according to Milton Friedman, that it puts an end to the ‘occasional crisis – that produces frantic scurrying of high government officials from capital to capital’.
Volcker was tough on regulatory oversight. He believed that free markets are unable to govern themselves, that they can function only if people trust the system, and that conflict of interest and creative accounting are dangerous precisely because they destroy public trust. He said that bankers, like everyone else, would try to take advantage of a system that lacks oversight – and many so-called financial innovations are actually ways for firms to get around regulations or to avoid taxes, thus providing little benefit to consumers or to the economy. He articulated the need for clear and direct oversight of banks’ behaviour, saying that ‘commercial bankers understand when a bank examiner gives them a green light to lend. They also understand a red light, whether they like it or not, but most ignore the cautionary yellow.’
My own key take from Paul Volcker is his contention that honour is the most important thing a person has (he remembers that, in his earlier days in government, no banker worried more about his bonus than his reputation), and that public service is the most important thing a person can do – despite the modest pay and the considerable tribulations of government work.
To those of you still here, I would like to return to my question in page 1 of this note – can a man such as this be considered great? I am not sure I make a convincing case – there is something ‘unsexy’ about interest rates, financial regulation, and a career spent ensuring that the small guys sleep at night.
Further reading for those interested:
Goolsbee, Austan; The Volcker Way: Lessons from the Last Great Hero of Modern Finance; Foreign Affairs; January/February 2013
Silbur, William; Volcker: The Triumph of Persistence; Bloomsbury Press; 2012
Sunday, January 20, 2013
AJIT CHAU - FEMINIST?
AJIT CHAU – FEMINIST?
A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri, January 2013
Residents of the Shriram College of Commerce hostel in the early 1980s would remember the philosophy of not letting a girl pass by unappreciated – a philosophy that resulted in us honing our whistling techniques as girls moved in the space between the college and the hostel that our windows overlooked. We saw it as social service – this was the one place where homely girls got an opportunity to toss their hair, turn their noses up, go ‘Hhmmpppffff!!’ and saunter off simmering – and we were therefore not selective in our attentions. For some reason our college girls, despite many of them gaining confidence and life skills thanks to our efforts, did not see the benefits as we did, and most hostellers spent three years in college without speaking to a girl. But, in our own worldview, by virtue of not discriminating on shallow parameters such as looks, dress, size and carriage, we could have been labelled feminists.
I was turned away from feminism in the 1990s, when ‘feminist’ turned into a label for that angry and humourless woman in the ‘gender cell’ of whichever organization I happened to be drawing a salary from, and for illiberal bra-burners and lesbians who rejected the institutions of love, marriage and family and other values that most women, to my knowledge, held in common. The feminist did not speak for the women I met in the field; women who faced obstacles, violence and discrimination in every sphere of life with a mixture of courage, optimism and resignation, women who I admired very much and who I would do anything for. Instead, feminism seemed to stand for elitist women who had everything and wanted more, and to be fanatically dedicated towards a world of rights without accompanying responsibilities in which men were the enemy, and in which ‘date rape’ was a crime on par with paedophilia and mass murder (those who feel this is too strong, please Google ‘Antioch Rules’). I was not alone – many women were asking whether the feminist movement had gone too far down an extremist road whose basis lay in discredited totalitarian ideologies – Christina Hoff Summers, in her 1994 book ‘Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women’ stated the charges clearly, and others included Elizabeth Fox Genovese (‘Feminism Is Not The Story Of My Life’, 1996) and Katie Roiphe (‘The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism On Campus’, 1993). Was it possible to be a feminist, and in favour of equality, without holding radical and unpalatable views?
Summers argues that yes, it is, and makes a case for the ‘equity feminist’ (as opposed to the ‘gender feminist’ of the radical persuasion described in the previous paragraph) who believes that women should have full legal, formal and actual equality with men, but no special privileges. She quotes Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who in 1854 said; “we ask no better laws than those you have made for yourselves. We ask no other protection than that which your present laws secure to you.” She suggests that, once the battle for equality is won, nothing further should be demanded – women were perfectly capable of competing with men on a level playing field, and concepts such as ‘positive discrimination’ and ‘golden skirts’ (reservation for women in boardrooms) were as paternalistic and stultifying as their predecessors in keeping women down.
I would have been comfortable with this viewpoint had I not come across the book ‘Sex and Social Justice’ by Martha C. Nussbaum in the IRMA library (I suspect that the first word of the title drew my attention – like seeing an AK-47 in a Buddhist meditation complex) and read the chapter in which she makes a case for radical feminism. She suggests that women have agendas that are not addressed by ‘equity feminists’; that violence against women is still common, and that legal developments that recognize asymmetry of power between men and women are required so that sexual intimidation and harassment in the workplace and in public areas, domestic violence, and marital rape can be effectively prosecuted as criminal offenses, and so that women can bring a charge of rape without testifying to their previous sexual history. She says that ‘gender feminists’ have won recognition for bringing these problems out, are best positioned to contribute effectively towards addressing them, and that further pursuit of the radical agenda, and not its abandonment, is required for progress towards equitable gender relations. An interesting argument that makes as much a case for a radical element to any movement as it does for the promulgation of ‘gender feminism’.
So, am I a ‘feminist’? This does depend upon whether, as a male, I am allowed to be one in the first place – and I have sometimes felt like a black guy trying to get membership in the Ku Klux Klan when I ask the question. And, if I were one, what category of feminist would I fall into (and what is my thinking on the feminist discourse on divisions between ‘strategic’ and ‘practical’ needs and stuff like that)? My wife has an answer – she says I am a ‘faux feminist’ (she actually uses a much ruder term that I am unable to repeat here) – the type who knows all the right words and has the ability to come across as enlightened at meetings, especially when there are impressionable women around, but is an unadulterated pig deep down where it matters.
I’m not so sure! I was at a workshop in Afghanistan recently in which I got into a debate with other participants on whether women’s inferior position in society was a result of the inviolable laws of nature, and they looked at me as though I was a bra-burning lesbian for arguing that the we would all be better off if our homes were more equal. I must confess that I also snidely enquired as to the whereabouts of these inviolable laws of nature when the (female) US Secretary of State visited the country and decided their budgets. Meeooww!!
It would be convenient if such views were confined to places where they could be passed off as those of uneducated peasants who don’t know better. Sadly, anyone following the run-up to the last US Presidential election would know that this is not the case. Worryingly, the presence of many successful women out there (who have made it on brilliance and hard work, i.e. not the wives, mistresses and daughters of the powerful), while providing a visible contradiction to the ‘women are incapable’ viewpoint, does not decrease subscription to the ‘natural laws’ argument. Is society actually better off if women stay at home? Is a community with a large number of unemployed women nicer than one with a large number of unemployed men? The fact is that many people think so! Feminism, at some point of time, will have to address the problem of male insecurity. To do so, the movement will have to include of a wider variety of viewpoints. To conclude – it is in the interests of feminism for the likes of Ajit Chau to be feminists. Here I come, ladies!
A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri, January 2013
Residents of the Shriram College of Commerce hostel in the early 1980s would remember the philosophy of not letting a girl pass by unappreciated – a philosophy that resulted in us honing our whistling techniques as girls moved in the space between the college and the hostel that our windows overlooked. We saw it as social service – this was the one place where homely girls got an opportunity to toss their hair, turn their noses up, go ‘Hhmmpppffff!!’ and saunter off simmering – and we were therefore not selective in our attentions. For some reason our college girls, despite many of them gaining confidence and life skills thanks to our efforts, did not see the benefits as we did, and most hostellers spent three years in college without speaking to a girl. But, in our own worldview, by virtue of not discriminating on shallow parameters such as looks, dress, size and carriage, we could have been labelled feminists.
I was turned away from feminism in the 1990s, when ‘feminist’ turned into a label for that angry and humourless woman in the ‘gender cell’ of whichever organization I happened to be drawing a salary from, and for illiberal bra-burners and lesbians who rejected the institutions of love, marriage and family and other values that most women, to my knowledge, held in common. The feminist did not speak for the women I met in the field; women who faced obstacles, violence and discrimination in every sphere of life with a mixture of courage, optimism and resignation, women who I admired very much and who I would do anything for. Instead, feminism seemed to stand for elitist women who had everything and wanted more, and to be fanatically dedicated towards a world of rights without accompanying responsibilities in which men were the enemy, and in which ‘date rape’ was a crime on par with paedophilia and mass murder (those who feel this is too strong, please Google ‘Antioch Rules’). I was not alone – many women were asking whether the feminist movement had gone too far down an extremist road whose basis lay in discredited totalitarian ideologies – Christina Hoff Summers, in her 1994 book ‘Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women’ stated the charges clearly, and others included Elizabeth Fox Genovese (‘Feminism Is Not The Story Of My Life’, 1996) and Katie Roiphe (‘The Morning After: Sex, Fear and Feminism On Campus’, 1993). Was it possible to be a feminist, and in favour of equality, without holding radical and unpalatable views?
Summers argues that yes, it is, and makes a case for the ‘equity feminist’ (as opposed to the ‘gender feminist’ of the radical persuasion described in the previous paragraph) who believes that women should have full legal, formal and actual equality with men, but no special privileges. She quotes Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who in 1854 said; “we ask no better laws than those you have made for yourselves. We ask no other protection than that which your present laws secure to you.” She suggests that, once the battle for equality is won, nothing further should be demanded – women were perfectly capable of competing with men on a level playing field, and concepts such as ‘positive discrimination’ and ‘golden skirts’ (reservation for women in boardrooms) were as paternalistic and stultifying as their predecessors in keeping women down.
I would have been comfortable with this viewpoint had I not come across the book ‘Sex and Social Justice’ by Martha C. Nussbaum in the IRMA library (I suspect that the first word of the title drew my attention – like seeing an AK-47 in a Buddhist meditation complex) and read the chapter in which she makes a case for radical feminism. She suggests that women have agendas that are not addressed by ‘equity feminists’; that violence against women is still common, and that legal developments that recognize asymmetry of power between men and women are required so that sexual intimidation and harassment in the workplace and in public areas, domestic violence, and marital rape can be effectively prosecuted as criminal offenses, and so that women can bring a charge of rape without testifying to their previous sexual history. She says that ‘gender feminists’ have won recognition for bringing these problems out, are best positioned to contribute effectively towards addressing them, and that further pursuit of the radical agenda, and not its abandonment, is required for progress towards equitable gender relations. An interesting argument that makes as much a case for a radical element to any movement as it does for the promulgation of ‘gender feminism’.
So, am I a ‘feminist’? This does depend upon whether, as a male, I am allowed to be one in the first place – and I have sometimes felt like a black guy trying to get membership in the Ku Klux Klan when I ask the question. And, if I were one, what category of feminist would I fall into (and what is my thinking on the feminist discourse on divisions between ‘strategic’ and ‘practical’ needs and stuff like that)? My wife has an answer – she says I am a ‘faux feminist’ (she actually uses a much ruder term that I am unable to repeat here) – the type who knows all the right words and has the ability to come across as enlightened at meetings, especially when there are impressionable women around, but is an unadulterated pig deep down where it matters.
I’m not so sure! I was at a workshop in Afghanistan recently in which I got into a debate with other participants on whether women’s inferior position in society was a result of the inviolable laws of nature, and they looked at me as though I was a bra-burning lesbian for arguing that the we would all be better off if our homes were more equal. I must confess that I also snidely enquired as to the whereabouts of these inviolable laws of nature when the (female) US Secretary of State visited the country and decided their budgets. Meeooww!!
It would be convenient if such views were confined to places where they could be passed off as those of uneducated peasants who don’t know better. Sadly, anyone following the run-up to the last US Presidential election would know that this is not the case. Worryingly, the presence of many successful women out there (who have made it on brilliance and hard work, i.e. not the wives, mistresses and daughters of the powerful), while providing a visible contradiction to the ‘women are incapable’ viewpoint, does not decrease subscription to the ‘natural laws’ argument. Is society actually better off if women stay at home? Is a community with a large number of unemployed women nicer than one with a large number of unemployed men? The fact is that many people think so! Feminism, at some point of time, will have to address the problem of male insecurity. To do so, the movement will have to include of a wider variety of viewpoints. To conclude – it is in the interests of feminism for the likes of Ajit Chau to be feminists. Here I come, ladies!
Thursday, December 27, 2012
You've Come A Long Way, Baby!
YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, BABY!
By Ajit Chaudhuri – December 2012
Returning to management school after 22 years offers opportunities for longitudinal comparisons. What has changed from the late 1980s? The short answer is – two things! One, communications! Computers, cell phones and the Internet have revolutionized research, assignment writing, and people to people interaction. And two; there are more women students on campus (to those ascribing my return to this factor, let me quote the statistical adage ‘correlation is not causation’)! In fact, 2012 is an inflexion year for IRMA – the first time that an incoming batch of prospective MBAs has more women than men. The proportions can only partially be attributed to IRMA’s policy of positive discrimination (yes, the admission criteria for women is lower), this trend is seen in most institutions of professional education and is more a testament to women’s increased access to education, their intelligence and concentration levels, and their capacity for hard work (but don’t worry, my dear male readers, we will always reign supreme in class 8 mathematics).
IRMA is coping admirably with this change. Men’s hostel blocks have been converted into women’s ones (I wonder what happens to the piss-pots and graffiti), north Indian type behaviour in common spaces (comment-passing, testicle-scratching, et al) has been clamped down upon, and courses on gender attitudes introduced. Even the evening football game welcomes women participants. But will the world that these highly qualified women (HQWs for short – caused by my reluctance to type and not my eagerness to typify – and by HQW I mean only the achievers among them, and not those passing time between college and marriage) enter upon graduating be as kind? This paper looks at this world, at the difficulties these young women will face in converting their potential into achievement, and offers some advice.
HQWs entering the job market today have much to thank previous generations of HQWs. Many battles have been fought (and won); glass ceilings smashed, and stereotypes broken. Critical decisions and discussions now happen in office (and not in golf courses and bars), and most modern recruiters are gender blind. But some remain! The first is the conflict between getting ahead and raising a family? The fact is that most achievers follow a similar career path; they are identified in their late 20s and early 30s, and are provided with serious opportunity soon after – usually a position in which all functions converge, like a cost or profit centre, or managing country operations in Kazakhstan or somewhere, where the buck stops at their desks. This is a 24/7 position, with little scope for distraction or a full night’s sleep. But this is also when their career paths deviate from that of their peers, leading to senior management, directorship, and even top management – while others languish in the middle and contemplate early retirement and organic farming or whatever. HQWs with young families tend to refuse this opportunity for obvious reasons, possibly expecting that it will knock again when they are better able to manage the strain. By doing so, however, they wave goodbye to the corner office – forever. Another trap is that of flexi-time, tele-commuting, and part-time work – no matter how attractive they are, and how much a woman needs them to balance demands on her time, taking these options in most organizations is an effective way of communicating one’s unsuitability for the trials and tribulations of senior management.
If you do manage to negotiate these traps, or if you don’t have children and can afford to give your career everything, you will find that the fast track is more than about being brilliant, hard working and strategic. You also have to be ruthless – a trait that cannot be acquired or learnt – and you have to build relationships with mentors and mentees to give yourself an edge. Unfortunately, HQWs are at a disadvantage here; the socialization of girls in India as participatory, care giving and communitarian is difficult to rub off (despite management school’s best efforts), and mentor-mentee relationships are close and intense ones that discourage the crossing of gender lines (and lead to all sorts of rumours, and often the real thing as well, when they do).
The other battle is that of finding suitable life partners; men who will be a positive factor in one’s career and its advancement. At one level, this is easy – most men are similar, and one merely has to avoid the future wife beaters and the mentally ill (easily said, but they are ten percent of all men and these traits only show up about a year after marriage), and see that he is fed on time, that there is no conversation when sports is on TV, and that one doesn’t shout at him in front of his friends, for marital relations to be clement. This, however, does require the management of expectations – and HQWs often go wrong here, there is this vision of the perfect man waiting for them; high income, handsome, educated, sensitive, supportive, blah, blah, blah, a vision that is played up to by the genre of films known as chick flicks (in real life, if such men do exist they usually already have boyfriends). Coupled with this are the facts that the office, where HQWs spend most of their time, is not a good place to hunt, the Internet is full of perverts, and the combination of intelligence and a fast track career is not exactly an aphrodisiac to most men.
What is the likely outcome? Well, by their mid-30s they become desperate (it is now or never regarding having children), they find that the laws of supply and demand are not in their favour (there are few single straight men in their age group, and they are invariably having such a good time that they are loath to change their status), and they end up as fodder for otherwise unsuitable men. How can the coming generation of HQWs circumvent such a scenario? One, be a little nicer to your admirers in management school, and accept a few flaws (male students, I want a kickback for this nugget of advice) – the known devil is often better than the deep blue sea! Two, if you have to run around with older (married) men, they should drive a Ferrari. And three, if two converts into marriage, have a kid quickly – this is actually an unwritten rule for all second/third/etc. wives, it locks the guy in and makes treating you like he did your predecessor an expensive (and, to you, lucrative) proposition.
To conclude, welcome to the world, ladies! May your battles be different from those of earlier generations, may you find an appropriate balance, and may you change the world! And yes, may you stay, as Dylan said, forever young.
Some additional reading for those particularly interested in HQW issues:
Slaughter, Anne-Marie; Why Women Still Can’t Have It All; The Atlantic; July/August 2012 (available on-line)
Hewlett, Sylvia Ann and Carolyn Buck Luce; Off Ramps and On Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success; Harvard Business Review; March 2005
By Ajit Chaudhuri – December 2012
Returning to management school after 22 years offers opportunities for longitudinal comparisons. What has changed from the late 1980s? The short answer is – two things! One, communications! Computers, cell phones and the Internet have revolutionized research, assignment writing, and people to people interaction. And two; there are more women students on campus (to those ascribing my return to this factor, let me quote the statistical adage ‘correlation is not causation’)! In fact, 2012 is an inflexion year for IRMA – the first time that an incoming batch of prospective MBAs has more women than men. The proportions can only partially be attributed to IRMA’s policy of positive discrimination (yes, the admission criteria for women is lower), this trend is seen in most institutions of professional education and is more a testament to women’s increased access to education, their intelligence and concentration levels, and their capacity for hard work (but don’t worry, my dear male readers, we will always reign supreme in class 8 mathematics).
IRMA is coping admirably with this change. Men’s hostel blocks have been converted into women’s ones (I wonder what happens to the piss-pots and graffiti), north Indian type behaviour in common spaces (comment-passing, testicle-scratching, et al) has been clamped down upon, and courses on gender attitudes introduced. Even the evening football game welcomes women participants. But will the world that these highly qualified women (HQWs for short – caused by my reluctance to type and not my eagerness to typify – and by HQW I mean only the achievers among them, and not those passing time between college and marriage) enter upon graduating be as kind? This paper looks at this world, at the difficulties these young women will face in converting their potential into achievement, and offers some advice.
HQWs entering the job market today have much to thank previous generations of HQWs. Many battles have been fought (and won); glass ceilings smashed, and stereotypes broken. Critical decisions and discussions now happen in office (and not in golf courses and bars), and most modern recruiters are gender blind. But some remain! The first is the conflict between getting ahead and raising a family? The fact is that most achievers follow a similar career path; they are identified in their late 20s and early 30s, and are provided with serious opportunity soon after – usually a position in which all functions converge, like a cost or profit centre, or managing country operations in Kazakhstan or somewhere, where the buck stops at their desks. This is a 24/7 position, with little scope for distraction or a full night’s sleep. But this is also when their career paths deviate from that of their peers, leading to senior management, directorship, and even top management – while others languish in the middle and contemplate early retirement and organic farming or whatever. HQWs with young families tend to refuse this opportunity for obvious reasons, possibly expecting that it will knock again when they are better able to manage the strain. By doing so, however, they wave goodbye to the corner office – forever. Another trap is that of flexi-time, tele-commuting, and part-time work – no matter how attractive they are, and how much a woman needs them to balance demands on her time, taking these options in most organizations is an effective way of communicating one’s unsuitability for the trials and tribulations of senior management.
If you do manage to negotiate these traps, or if you don’t have children and can afford to give your career everything, you will find that the fast track is more than about being brilliant, hard working and strategic. You also have to be ruthless – a trait that cannot be acquired or learnt – and you have to build relationships with mentors and mentees to give yourself an edge. Unfortunately, HQWs are at a disadvantage here; the socialization of girls in India as participatory, care giving and communitarian is difficult to rub off (despite management school’s best efforts), and mentor-mentee relationships are close and intense ones that discourage the crossing of gender lines (and lead to all sorts of rumours, and often the real thing as well, when they do).
The other battle is that of finding suitable life partners; men who will be a positive factor in one’s career and its advancement. At one level, this is easy – most men are similar, and one merely has to avoid the future wife beaters and the mentally ill (easily said, but they are ten percent of all men and these traits only show up about a year after marriage), and see that he is fed on time, that there is no conversation when sports is on TV, and that one doesn’t shout at him in front of his friends, for marital relations to be clement. This, however, does require the management of expectations – and HQWs often go wrong here, there is this vision of the perfect man waiting for them; high income, handsome, educated, sensitive, supportive, blah, blah, blah, a vision that is played up to by the genre of films known as chick flicks (in real life, if such men do exist they usually already have boyfriends). Coupled with this are the facts that the office, where HQWs spend most of their time, is not a good place to hunt, the Internet is full of perverts, and the combination of intelligence and a fast track career is not exactly an aphrodisiac to most men.
What is the likely outcome? Well, by their mid-30s they become desperate (it is now or never regarding having children), they find that the laws of supply and demand are not in their favour (there are few single straight men in their age group, and they are invariably having such a good time that they are loath to change their status), and they end up as fodder for otherwise unsuitable men. How can the coming generation of HQWs circumvent such a scenario? One, be a little nicer to your admirers in management school, and accept a few flaws (male students, I want a kickback for this nugget of advice) – the known devil is often better than the deep blue sea! Two, if you have to run around with older (married) men, they should drive a Ferrari. And three, if two converts into marriage, have a kid quickly – this is actually an unwritten rule for all second/third/etc. wives, it locks the guy in and makes treating you like he did your predecessor an expensive (and, to you, lucrative) proposition.
To conclude, welcome to the world, ladies! May your battles be different from those of earlier generations, may you find an appropriate balance, and may you change the world! And yes, may you stay, as Dylan said, forever young.
Some additional reading for those particularly interested in HQW issues:
Slaughter, Anne-Marie; Why Women Still Can’t Have It All; The Atlantic; July/August 2012 (available on-line)
Hewlett, Sylvia Ann and Carolyn Buck Luce; Off Ramps and On Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success; Harvard Business Review; March 2005
Friday, December 7, 2012
The Proximity of Greatness
THE PROXIMITY OF GREATNESS
Ajit Chaudhuri – November 2012
‘Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them!’
My first tryst with greatness was in 1978! I was watching Brazil play at the World Cup (in those days, one did that on a small black and white TV a few days after the game was played), when Roberto Rivelino came on as a substitute and was referred to as ‘the great Rivelino’ by the commentator whenever he touched the ball. Wow, I remember thinking, and what must one do to earn that sort of respect? I got an answer at a discussion about the Indian footballer Inder Singh in the early 1980s – this was among spectators in the cheap seats during a football game at Ambedkar Stadium in Delhi, long after Inder had retired, when a guy said – ‘Maine Inder ko jeet-tey dekha, maine Inder ko haartey dekha, lekin maine Inder ko kabhi bey-imaani kartey nahin dekha’ (roughly translated as ‘I have seen Inder win, I have seen Inder lose, but I have never seen Inder do something dishonest’). And that, I thought at the time, is how I would like to be remembered – assuming that people are willing to overlook the matter of a missing ashtray from the Maurya Sheraton Hotel that somehow turned up in my hostel room back in college days.
But, I digress! This paper is not about either honesty or football – it is about ‘being great’! There is something pathetic about monarchs who have ‘the great’ appended to their names (Peter, Catherine, Frederick, et al), it being unlikely that their subjects had much choice on the matter – a mere ‘His/Her Majesty’ or ‘Royal Highness’ would no doubt have ensured that their heads faced a separate existence from the rest of their bodies; in that respect, I always preferred Ivan the Terrible on his choice of moniker. Modern day greatness is a little different in that it is conferred by hagiographic biographers upon anyone with money and a penchant for PR , and there is a veritable raucousness all around from the multitudes clamouring for the title. I’m not sure how many people actually merit ‘greatness’, more so in their own lifetimes, when time has yet to put their achievements into perspective and smoothen memories of the chaos they have caused. The living great are few in number and, except possibly for Nelson Mandela, difficult to recognize.
Dr. Verghese Kurien was already great when I entered IRMA in 1987 – Operation Flood had happened, and the enormity of the achievement, that households across the country had reliable access to that most basic of products, and the subsequent recognition of it, had set in. One got the occasional glimpse of him in the two years that I was there, mostly as a chief guest to IRMA functions, and one saw the unbridled power that he held, as also his ruthlessness, charm and sense of humour. An occasion I remember was some function in the IRMA auditorium that the students were invited to, presumably to put bums on seats, and Dr. K introduced the chief guest (the then central minister Margaret Alva) by saying that they had met before and that she had called him a male chauvinist pig. So when Ms. Alva came on to speak, we were spared the usual politician monologue about how much the government was spending on this, that and the other and how grateful we should be to it for our existence; she devoted all her time to communicating that she had in fact not called Dr. K an MCP, she had merely wondered why the National Dairy Development Board’s emblem was a bull (and not a cow).
The difficulty for young students at the time was that Dr. K’s achievements were not up for question – which was fine – but neither were the cooperative principles that enabled them. There was no space for dissent or scepticism, (Dr. K didn’t share Sir Karl Popper’s belief that something is best proved by focusing on disproving it and succeeding by not succeeding), and there was an Orwellian bombardment of the ‘Anand Pattern’ down our throats. Needless to add, we grew allergic to the word ‘cooperatives’ while we were there, and those who saw value in them did so in spite of, rather than because of, IRMA. It was only later that one grasped the enormity of his achievements and the possibilities for poverty alleviation that cooperation provided; when one had a better understanding of the scale at which Dr. K worked and of the barriers he faced in a country that incentivizes inactivity, obsequiousness and slime.
What can the wannabe ‘greats’ of today learn from Dr. K about greatness? In this paper, I hazard to venture some simple guesses.
One, the great give meaning to the terms ‘values’, ‘vision’ and ‘mission’ – they are not mere buzzwords ticked off on some strategic plan – and they communicate this successfully to others. This trait separates the ‘great’ from other competent leaders, institution builders and administrators. And it is this that is missed most when they go, when a vision vacuum sets in in their wake.
Two, all good leaders share the traits of brilliance, self-belief, drive, attention to detail, the ability to work extremely hard and to communicate well, and ruthlessness. The great, in addition, use these traits for public benefit and the larger good – personal pecuniary matters tend not to have obsessive allure.
Three, the great are scrupulously honest and they ensure that the institutions they set up share that characteristic. Dr. K had no shades of grey regarding integrity – he used to say that it was like pregnancy and virginity in that you either were or you weren’t, and if you weren’t you were not going to survive with him. New entrants to NDDB were told that the institution did not pay bribes, and also that it did not accept not paying bribes as an excuse for work not getting done – one had to get the work done without paying off anyone.
Four, the great recognise greatness in others. Visitors to his home in his later years were invariably shown his proudest possession, a large photograph of Mount Everest (or was it a painting?) that had been personally signed, at different times, by Tenzing and Hillary. This had the pride of place on his wall, and was given far more prominence than his own respective Padma awards.
Five, greatness rarely ends well; the great have an innate inability to fade quietly into the sunset. Those that don’t get assassinated or taken away by more natural means early enough tend to stay on their thrones until they are prised away, finger-by-finger, kicking and screaming all the way.
And six, and to conclude, the great live on in the people they have touched – more so than the institutions they have created. My father visited Anand earlier this year and dragged me off, against my will (irreverence and scepticism being somewhat ingrained in my character), to meet him. I was surprised later by how sentimental I was during this visit, when the enormity of what I (and so many others) owed this old man and how much we are what we are because of him kicked in. So thanks, Dad, for forcing that visit!
Acronyms
IRMA Institute of Rural Management, Anand
MCP Male Chauvinist Pig
NDDB National Dairy Development Board
PR Public Relations
Ajit Chaudhuri – November 2012
‘Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them!’
My first tryst with greatness was in 1978! I was watching Brazil play at the World Cup (in those days, one did that on a small black and white TV a few days after the game was played), when Roberto Rivelino came on as a substitute and was referred to as ‘the great Rivelino’ by the commentator whenever he touched the ball. Wow, I remember thinking, and what must one do to earn that sort of respect? I got an answer at a discussion about the Indian footballer Inder Singh in the early 1980s – this was among spectators in the cheap seats during a football game at Ambedkar Stadium in Delhi, long after Inder had retired, when a guy said – ‘Maine Inder ko jeet-tey dekha, maine Inder ko haartey dekha, lekin maine Inder ko kabhi bey-imaani kartey nahin dekha’ (roughly translated as ‘I have seen Inder win, I have seen Inder lose, but I have never seen Inder do something dishonest’). And that, I thought at the time, is how I would like to be remembered – assuming that people are willing to overlook the matter of a missing ashtray from the Maurya Sheraton Hotel that somehow turned up in my hostel room back in college days.
But, I digress! This paper is not about either honesty or football – it is about ‘being great’! There is something pathetic about monarchs who have ‘the great’ appended to their names (Peter, Catherine, Frederick, et al), it being unlikely that their subjects had much choice on the matter – a mere ‘His/Her Majesty’ or ‘Royal Highness’ would no doubt have ensured that their heads faced a separate existence from the rest of their bodies; in that respect, I always preferred Ivan the Terrible on his choice of moniker. Modern day greatness is a little different in that it is conferred by hagiographic biographers upon anyone with money and a penchant for PR , and there is a veritable raucousness all around from the multitudes clamouring for the title. I’m not sure how many people actually merit ‘greatness’, more so in their own lifetimes, when time has yet to put their achievements into perspective and smoothen memories of the chaos they have caused. The living great are few in number and, except possibly for Nelson Mandela, difficult to recognize.
Dr. Verghese Kurien was already great when I entered IRMA in 1987 – Operation Flood had happened, and the enormity of the achievement, that households across the country had reliable access to that most basic of products, and the subsequent recognition of it, had set in. One got the occasional glimpse of him in the two years that I was there, mostly as a chief guest to IRMA functions, and one saw the unbridled power that he held, as also his ruthlessness, charm and sense of humour. An occasion I remember was some function in the IRMA auditorium that the students were invited to, presumably to put bums on seats, and Dr. K introduced the chief guest (the then central minister Margaret Alva) by saying that they had met before and that she had called him a male chauvinist pig. So when Ms. Alva came on to speak, we were spared the usual politician monologue about how much the government was spending on this, that and the other and how grateful we should be to it for our existence; she devoted all her time to communicating that she had in fact not called Dr. K an MCP, she had merely wondered why the National Dairy Development Board’s emblem was a bull (and not a cow).
The difficulty for young students at the time was that Dr. K’s achievements were not up for question – which was fine – but neither were the cooperative principles that enabled them. There was no space for dissent or scepticism, (Dr. K didn’t share Sir Karl Popper’s belief that something is best proved by focusing on disproving it and succeeding by not succeeding), and there was an Orwellian bombardment of the ‘Anand Pattern’ down our throats. Needless to add, we grew allergic to the word ‘cooperatives’ while we were there, and those who saw value in them did so in spite of, rather than because of, IRMA. It was only later that one grasped the enormity of his achievements and the possibilities for poverty alleviation that cooperation provided; when one had a better understanding of the scale at which Dr. K worked and of the barriers he faced in a country that incentivizes inactivity, obsequiousness and slime.
What can the wannabe ‘greats’ of today learn from Dr. K about greatness? In this paper, I hazard to venture some simple guesses.
One, the great give meaning to the terms ‘values’, ‘vision’ and ‘mission’ – they are not mere buzzwords ticked off on some strategic plan – and they communicate this successfully to others. This trait separates the ‘great’ from other competent leaders, institution builders and administrators. And it is this that is missed most when they go, when a vision vacuum sets in in their wake.
Two, all good leaders share the traits of brilliance, self-belief, drive, attention to detail, the ability to work extremely hard and to communicate well, and ruthlessness. The great, in addition, use these traits for public benefit and the larger good – personal pecuniary matters tend not to have obsessive allure.
Three, the great are scrupulously honest and they ensure that the institutions they set up share that characteristic. Dr. K had no shades of grey regarding integrity – he used to say that it was like pregnancy and virginity in that you either were or you weren’t, and if you weren’t you were not going to survive with him. New entrants to NDDB were told that the institution did not pay bribes, and also that it did not accept not paying bribes as an excuse for work not getting done – one had to get the work done without paying off anyone.
Four, the great recognise greatness in others. Visitors to his home in his later years were invariably shown his proudest possession, a large photograph of Mount Everest (or was it a painting?) that had been personally signed, at different times, by Tenzing and Hillary. This had the pride of place on his wall, and was given far more prominence than his own respective Padma awards.
Five, greatness rarely ends well; the great have an innate inability to fade quietly into the sunset. Those that don’t get assassinated or taken away by more natural means early enough tend to stay on their thrones until they are prised away, finger-by-finger, kicking and screaming all the way.
And six, and to conclude, the great live on in the people they have touched – more so than the institutions they have created. My father visited Anand earlier this year and dragged me off, against my will (irreverence and scepticism being somewhat ingrained in my character), to meet him. I was surprised later by how sentimental I was during this visit, when the enormity of what I (and so many others) owed this old man and how much we are what we are because of him kicked in. So thanks, Dad, for forcing that visit!
Acronyms
IRMA Institute of Rural Management, Anand
MCP Male Chauvinist Pig
NDDB National Dairy Development Board
PR Public Relations
Friday, September 21, 2012
QUEENS
QUEENS
By Ajit Chaudhuri, September 2012
Life as an unemployed bum (oops, sorry, mature student!) is tough – I’m broke, the light at the end of the tunnel is not discernable, the journey from where I was 18 months ago has been long, hard and, by most rational indicators, steeply downhill, and, by virtue of moving back to the bright lights of Delhi, these facts are thrown at my face often. But, before you, dear reader, start reaching for your handkerchief, let me tell you that if one has to be a bum, then the summer of 2012 was the time for it – with one sporting extravaganza after another, Euros football, Olympics, Para-Olympics, et al, combining fantastic performances with wonderful TV coverage.
For me, the standout Indian sporting performance of the summer was one that did not hit the headlines – not the medal winners at the Olympics, creditable though that was, and not the footballers who won a third straight Nehru Cup. It was the Indian women finishing fourth in the August/September Chess Olympiad in Istanbul (the men finished 35th). The team consisted of D. Harika (who is one of only 27 women in the world who are men’s Grandmasters) on the first board, Esha Karavade on the second, the glamorous Tania Sachdeva on the third (who also won an individual medal with 9 out of a possible 11 points), and Mary Ann Gomes and Soumya Swaminathan sharing the fourth.
Now, I have a confession to make – I rarely watch women’s sports. Why did I make an exception here? I wish I could impress you by saying national pride, or an abiding interest in chess, but that would be stretching it. The fact is that there were some beauties out there, the quality of play (in my semi-educated opinion) was pretty good, and the combination of the two, to me, is irresistible.
Yes – women chess players are good looking! Now, I can already hear a collective and simultaneous ‘what?’ and ‘bullshit!’ and the composition of scathing responses that suggest an ocular check-up and question my medication! So, this note attempts to present my case in a logical manner.
I could begin with a list of beauties who play chess – Alexandra Kosteniuk, playing fourth board on the winning Russian team at the same Olympiad, a men’s grandmaster, and the 2008 women’s world champion, is also a swimsuit model, and Sachdeva herself could set any catwalk alight. But what would that prove? At best, we would be able to agree that the listed players are beautiful – the ability of the list (or the sample) to speak for women chess players as a whole (or the population) is debatable, and the conclusion would be considered as having ‘low external validity’. Sceptics would correctly suggest that this is a case of ‘cherry picking’, or selection of data so that a study provides a desired result that could be misleading or even contrary to actuality – acceptable for a defence lawyer in court, or for my kids (who use the politicians’ and industrialists’ children in their class as a benchmark) when making a case for more pocket money, but not for a wannabe academic looking to glamorize women’s chess. And contrarians would come out with a list of extremely ugly chess players (they exist!), use my own arguments to draw the opposite conclusion, and thereby render my findings as nonsensical.
I am bothering you with a long criticism of this method because it is frequently used to draw dramatic conclusions and make dumb policies. A series of case studies, with each describing the benefits of some development project on a particular individual or family, actually say very little about the efficiency, effectiveness and impact of the project as a whole. That many terrorists on the USA’s watch-out lists are south Asians should not mean that Homeland Security feel me up with extra vigour when I enter the country. That some white Toyota Qualises are used as taxis should not mean that beggars ignore me (yes, I do drive one) at Delhi’s crossings. But hey, what do I know?
So how, instead, should I make my case? I will attempt this by falsifying the opposite argument, by attacking the two critical assumptions that drive the presumption that women chess players are ugly – that chess players are brainy, and that brainy women are ugly. I will list the best women chess players using robust criteria – have to be among the top ten women players as per the September 2012 FIDE rankings AND have to be men’s grandmasters – as per the assumptions, the best are the brainiest and therefore should be the ugliest. And I will judge them on the basis of pictures taken while playing chess (not while modelling, or while getting married, when photographers are kinder) so as to be consistent. Now, if this sample isn’t particularly ugly, what can we conclude? One, that the women are possibly exceptions or, in statistical parlance, ‘outliers’ – an acceptable argument if there are one or two lookers among them, but not more – by definition, we can’t all be exceptions! And two, that the assumptions don’t hold, which in turn renders the conclusion, that women chess players are ugly, as untenable!
What does the research say? Here are descriptions of the 8 women who meet the criteria, in the order of their September 2012 FIDE rankings.
No. 1 – Judit Polgar of Hungary – a true role model! Though by far the best woman player in history, she doesn’t play in women’s tournaments. She was the youngest ever men’s grandmaster when she first became one, in 1991, beating Bobby Fischer’s record by a month. She has been a top ten men’s player (best ranking was 8 in July 2005, currently 48), and she played third board on the Hungarian men’s team at the 2012 Olympiad. She has cracked every gender barrier in chess. And looks-wise – she is a stunner!
No. 2 – Anna Muzychuk of Slovakia (Ukrainian origin) – another stunner!
No. 3 – Hou Yifan of China – this child prodigy is the reigning women’s world champion and played top board for the 2nd placed team at the 2012 Olympiad. The Chinese were leading until the penultimate round, when a shock draw with lowly Kazakhstan paved the way for a Russian win. I am bypassing my appraisal of Hou – can’t look at her ‘that way’ as she is just 18 years old.
No. 4 – our very own Koneru Humpy of India – she decided against taking part in the 2012 Olympiad (which makes the 4th place finish even more of an achievement), with her confidence low after a battering from Hou Yifan in the final of the women’s world championship. She is another who prefers playing in men’s tournaments. Looks-wise, ordinary (but by no means ugly)!
No. 5 – Zhao Xue of China – she played second board on the Chinese team at the 2012 Olympiad – looks-wise, cute!
No. 6 – Nana Dzagnidze of Georgia – looks-wise, a beauty!
No. 7 – Katerina Lahno of Ukraine – she played first board for the team that pipped India to 3rd place – looks-wise, also a beauty!
No. 8 – did not make it to the sample, as she is not a men’s Grandmaster!
No.s 9 and 10 – Nadezhda and Tatiana Kosintseva respectively of Russia, sisters, and playing third and first boards respectively for the winning Russian team at the 2012 Olympiad – looks-wise, both of them are stunners!
I rest my case!
A concluding thought – should oomph-ey Hindi films, beauty pageants and mujrahs be worried at these findings, and time releases, events and performances so as not to clash with women’s chess tournaments? Well, maybe not! Being able to reject a hypothesis (the hypothesis in this case being that women chess players are ugly), as I hope I have convincingly done, is significantly different from proving the alternative (that women chess players are beautiful). There is little to suggest from this analysis that ornithologists and high-end prowlers need to re-think their prime locations.
By Ajit Chaudhuri, September 2012
Life as an unemployed bum (oops, sorry, mature student!) is tough – I’m broke, the light at the end of the tunnel is not discernable, the journey from where I was 18 months ago has been long, hard and, by most rational indicators, steeply downhill, and, by virtue of moving back to the bright lights of Delhi, these facts are thrown at my face often. But, before you, dear reader, start reaching for your handkerchief, let me tell you that if one has to be a bum, then the summer of 2012 was the time for it – with one sporting extravaganza after another, Euros football, Olympics, Para-Olympics, et al, combining fantastic performances with wonderful TV coverage.
For me, the standout Indian sporting performance of the summer was one that did not hit the headlines – not the medal winners at the Olympics, creditable though that was, and not the footballers who won a third straight Nehru Cup. It was the Indian women finishing fourth in the August/September Chess Olympiad in Istanbul (the men finished 35th). The team consisted of D. Harika (who is one of only 27 women in the world who are men’s Grandmasters) on the first board, Esha Karavade on the second, the glamorous Tania Sachdeva on the third (who also won an individual medal with 9 out of a possible 11 points), and Mary Ann Gomes and Soumya Swaminathan sharing the fourth.
Now, I have a confession to make – I rarely watch women’s sports. Why did I make an exception here? I wish I could impress you by saying national pride, or an abiding interest in chess, but that would be stretching it. The fact is that there were some beauties out there, the quality of play (in my semi-educated opinion) was pretty good, and the combination of the two, to me, is irresistible.
Yes – women chess players are good looking! Now, I can already hear a collective and simultaneous ‘what?’ and ‘bullshit!’ and the composition of scathing responses that suggest an ocular check-up and question my medication! So, this note attempts to present my case in a logical manner.
I could begin with a list of beauties who play chess – Alexandra Kosteniuk, playing fourth board on the winning Russian team at the same Olympiad, a men’s grandmaster, and the 2008 women’s world champion, is also a swimsuit model, and Sachdeva herself could set any catwalk alight. But what would that prove? At best, we would be able to agree that the listed players are beautiful – the ability of the list (or the sample) to speak for women chess players as a whole (or the population) is debatable, and the conclusion would be considered as having ‘low external validity’. Sceptics would correctly suggest that this is a case of ‘cherry picking’, or selection of data so that a study provides a desired result that could be misleading or even contrary to actuality – acceptable for a defence lawyer in court, or for my kids (who use the politicians’ and industrialists’ children in their class as a benchmark) when making a case for more pocket money, but not for a wannabe academic looking to glamorize women’s chess. And contrarians would come out with a list of extremely ugly chess players (they exist!), use my own arguments to draw the opposite conclusion, and thereby render my findings as nonsensical.
I am bothering you with a long criticism of this method because it is frequently used to draw dramatic conclusions and make dumb policies. A series of case studies, with each describing the benefits of some development project on a particular individual or family, actually say very little about the efficiency, effectiveness and impact of the project as a whole. That many terrorists on the USA’s watch-out lists are south Asians should not mean that Homeland Security feel me up with extra vigour when I enter the country. That some white Toyota Qualises are used as taxis should not mean that beggars ignore me (yes, I do drive one) at Delhi’s crossings. But hey, what do I know?
So how, instead, should I make my case? I will attempt this by falsifying the opposite argument, by attacking the two critical assumptions that drive the presumption that women chess players are ugly – that chess players are brainy, and that brainy women are ugly. I will list the best women chess players using robust criteria – have to be among the top ten women players as per the September 2012 FIDE rankings AND have to be men’s grandmasters – as per the assumptions, the best are the brainiest and therefore should be the ugliest. And I will judge them on the basis of pictures taken while playing chess (not while modelling, or while getting married, when photographers are kinder) so as to be consistent. Now, if this sample isn’t particularly ugly, what can we conclude? One, that the women are possibly exceptions or, in statistical parlance, ‘outliers’ – an acceptable argument if there are one or two lookers among them, but not more – by definition, we can’t all be exceptions! And two, that the assumptions don’t hold, which in turn renders the conclusion, that women chess players are ugly, as untenable!
What does the research say? Here are descriptions of the 8 women who meet the criteria, in the order of their September 2012 FIDE rankings.
No. 1 – Judit Polgar of Hungary – a true role model! Though by far the best woman player in history, she doesn’t play in women’s tournaments. She was the youngest ever men’s grandmaster when she first became one, in 1991, beating Bobby Fischer’s record by a month. She has been a top ten men’s player (best ranking was 8 in July 2005, currently 48), and she played third board on the Hungarian men’s team at the 2012 Olympiad. She has cracked every gender barrier in chess. And looks-wise – she is a stunner!
No. 2 – Anna Muzychuk of Slovakia (Ukrainian origin) – another stunner!
No. 3 – Hou Yifan of China – this child prodigy is the reigning women’s world champion and played top board for the 2nd placed team at the 2012 Olympiad. The Chinese were leading until the penultimate round, when a shock draw with lowly Kazakhstan paved the way for a Russian win. I am bypassing my appraisal of Hou – can’t look at her ‘that way’ as she is just 18 years old.
No. 4 – our very own Koneru Humpy of India – she decided against taking part in the 2012 Olympiad (which makes the 4th place finish even more of an achievement), with her confidence low after a battering from Hou Yifan in the final of the women’s world championship. She is another who prefers playing in men’s tournaments. Looks-wise, ordinary (but by no means ugly)!
No. 5 – Zhao Xue of China – she played second board on the Chinese team at the 2012 Olympiad – looks-wise, cute!
No. 6 – Nana Dzagnidze of Georgia – looks-wise, a beauty!
No. 7 – Katerina Lahno of Ukraine – she played first board for the team that pipped India to 3rd place – looks-wise, also a beauty!
No. 8 – did not make it to the sample, as she is not a men’s Grandmaster!
No.s 9 and 10 – Nadezhda and Tatiana Kosintseva respectively of Russia, sisters, and playing third and first boards respectively for the winning Russian team at the 2012 Olympiad – looks-wise, both of them are stunners!
I rest my case!
A concluding thought – should oomph-ey Hindi films, beauty pageants and mujrahs be worried at these findings, and time releases, events and performances so as not to clash with women’s chess tournaments? Well, maybe not! Being able to reject a hypothesis (the hypothesis in this case being that women chess players are ugly), as I hope I have convincingly done, is significantly different from proving the alternative (that women chess players are beautiful). There is little to suggest from this analysis that ornithologists and high-end prowlers need to re-think their prime locations.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Book of Lists
THE BOOK OF LISTS
A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri: September 2012
This note traces its origins to a conversation with a pretty young thing at the IRMA students’ mess – she was late for breakfast (and therefore not surrounded by her admirers), I was at my usual time (scheduled so that I avoid the deluge of students trying to grab a bite before class), and we decided to eat together. Now, what does an old codger (I turned 49 in August) talk to young ladies about? They know zilch about football, my been-there-done-that stories are boring even to me, and a discussion about development economics and public policy would have led to indigestion. Well, it turned out that she had an interest in reading – so we talked about the best books we had read, had our respective breakfasts, and went on with our lives.
The encounter had me thinking, ‘what were the best books I had read?’ Here is a final (and heavily culled) list – 42 in total! I include the year of publication and the approximate time of my life that I first read it – which may account for why some of them made such an impression. And there are some with an author I have extensively read and enjoyed, in which case I include my second-favourite of that author. The list is in alphabetical order!
Animal Farm – George Orwell – 1945 – a satire on socialism – read in my late teens – I also recommend ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ (1937)
Battlecry – Leon Uris – 1953 – a story of a Marine battalion in the WW2 Pacific theatre – read in late teens – I also recommend ‘Armageddon’ (1963)
The Call of the Wild – Jack London – 1903 – a story of a domestic dog’s survival in the Canadian north – first read in mid teens
Changing Places – David Lodge – 1975 – British professor switches places (and other things) with an American one, a story of academic life set in two universities as seen by the outsider – first read in early thirties
Cider House Rules – John Irving – 1985 – a long-winding love story set in Maine that challenges accepted values – first read in mid-thirties – I also recommend ‘The World According to Garp’ (1978)
The Clan of the Cave Bear – Jean M. Auel – 1980 – pre-historic novel of a girl migrating with a group of Neanderthals – read in mid-thirties
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time – Mark Haddon – 2004 – family life as seen by an autistic kid – read in early forties
The Devil’s Alternative – Frederick Forsyth – 1979 – the cold war powers reach a precipice and a British ex-spy and his Russian lady ex-love coordinate to bring them back – first read in late teens
The Eagle Has Landed – Jack Higgins – 1975 – WW2 novel about a crack German paratrooper unit looking to kidnap Churchill – first read in mid teens
Eaters of the Dead – Michael Crichton – 1976 – Arab guy moves with a group of Vikings back to the North and fights their enemies – read in late thirties – I also recommend ‘Rising Sun’ (1992) and ‘Congo’ (1980)
Eye of the Tiger – Wilbur Smith – 1975 – roguish fishing boat captain is forced into violence and finds love – read in late teens
The Far Pavillions – MM Kaye – 1978 – love between an Indian princess and a British soldier who grew up as an Indian orphan – first read in mid teens
Flashman – George Macdonald Frazer – 1969 – a British villain manages to become a hero in Afghanistan and yet retain his villainy – read in early thirties
Flint – Louis L’Amour – 1960 – a western in which a gunfighter moves east to become a successful financier and then comes back west to rediscover his past – first read in early-teens – I also recommend ‘Shalako’ (1962)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson – 2005 – a depraved Swedish novel about women and the men who hate them – read in mid-forties
The Godfather – Mario Puzo – 1969 – turf wars between mafia families – first read in early teens
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck – 1939 – the westward movement of depression affected people in search of work – read in late teens – I also recommend ‘Tortilla
Flats’ (1935) and ‘The Moon is Down’ (1942)
Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie – 2006 – a novel of life and times set around the Biafran War in Nigeria – read in mid forties
Hook Line and Sinker – Lynn Turner – 1986 – rich boy meets, falls in love with, and grovels to win beautiful girl – an M&B I read in early thirties – another I recommend is ‘The Widow and the Wastrel’ by Janet Dailey (1977)
How Green Was My Valley – Richard Llewellyn – 1939 – the story of a Welsh mining town – read in early twenties
The Hunt for Red October – Tom Clancy – 1984 – a cold war story of a top end Soviet nuclear submarine defecting to the West and almost setting of another world war – read in early twenties
King Rat – James Clavell – 1962 – a story of power and domination in a Japanese prison – read in late teens – I also recommend ‘Shogun’ (1975)
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini – 2003 – a story of relationships set in Afghanistan – first read in early forties
The Ladies of Missalonghi – Colleen McCullough – 1987 – women’s empowerment Australian style – first read in mid thirties
Lord of the Flies – William Golding – 1954 – a group of boys lost on an island turn into a bunch of vicious beasts – read in early twenties
Moscow Twilight – William E Holland – 1992 – a complicated Soviet romance in the times of perestroika – read in early thirties
Mr. God This is Anna – Fynn – 1974 – philosophy on life by a five-year-old abused orphan girl – read in late teens
Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami – 1987 – a coming of age novel set in Japan – read in late forties
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey – 1962 – a story of power and domination in a lunatic asylum – read in late teens
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver – 1998 – reluctant daughters’ version of life as a missionary family in 1960s Congo – read in early forties
Polar Star – Martin Cruz Smith – 1989 – a whodunit set in a Soviet factory ship during the cold war – read in early thirties – I also recommend ‘Gorky Park’ (1981) and ‘Havana Bay’ (1999)
The Prisoner of Zenda – Anthony Hope – 1894 – love and intrigue in a fictional minor middle European kingdom – first read in mid teens
The Range Robbers – Oliver Strange – 1930 – a western in which ‘Sudden’ gets the girl – first read in early teens
The Razor’s Edge – W. Somerset Maugham – 1944 – traumatized American searches for the meaning of life in the fleshpots of Paris – read in early twenties – I also recommend ‘Of Human Bondage’ (1915)
Running Blind – Desmond Bagley – 1970 – an about-to-retire British spy is given a hospital pass assignment in Iceland – read in early teens
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian – Marina Lewycka – 2005 – old man wants to marry buxom gold digger woman who already has a husband and son, and his daughter doesn’t like it – read in early-forties
Snow – Orhan Pamuk – 2004 – a story of love, life, clash of values, and women’s empowerment in eastern Turkey – read in mid forties
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth – 1993 – don’t remember the story but I read 1349 pages in one sitting, so must have had something – read in mid thirties
Tara Road – Maeve Binchy – 1998 – troubled Irish woman switches houses temporarily with troubled American woman – first read in late thirties
Tiger By The Tail – James Hadley Chase – 1954 – the best JHC – first read in early teens – I also recommend ‘The Vulture is a Patient Bird’ (1969)
To Kill a Mocking Bird – Harper Lee – 1960 – a lawyer stands up for what’s right in a racially tense part of southern USA – read in early twenties
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy – 1869 – a fictional account of events in Russia around the Napoleonic invasion of 1812 – read in early twenties
A 2-Pager by Ajit Chaudhuri: September 2012
This note traces its origins to a conversation with a pretty young thing at the IRMA students’ mess – she was late for breakfast (and therefore not surrounded by her admirers), I was at my usual time (scheduled so that I avoid the deluge of students trying to grab a bite before class), and we decided to eat together. Now, what does an old codger (I turned 49 in August) talk to young ladies about? They know zilch about football, my been-there-done-that stories are boring even to me, and a discussion about development economics and public policy would have led to indigestion. Well, it turned out that she had an interest in reading – so we talked about the best books we had read, had our respective breakfasts, and went on with our lives.
The encounter had me thinking, ‘what were the best books I had read?’ Here is a final (and heavily culled) list – 42 in total! I include the year of publication and the approximate time of my life that I first read it – which may account for why some of them made such an impression. And there are some with an author I have extensively read and enjoyed, in which case I include my second-favourite of that author. The list is in alphabetical order!
Animal Farm – George Orwell – 1945 – a satire on socialism – read in my late teens – I also recommend ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ (1937)
Battlecry – Leon Uris – 1953 – a story of a Marine battalion in the WW2 Pacific theatre – read in late teens – I also recommend ‘Armageddon’ (1963)
The Call of the Wild – Jack London – 1903 – a story of a domestic dog’s survival in the Canadian north – first read in mid teens
Changing Places – David Lodge – 1975 – British professor switches places (and other things) with an American one, a story of academic life set in two universities as seen by the outsider – first read in early thirties
Cider House Rules – John Irving – 1985 – a long-winding love story set in Maine that challenges accepted values – first read in mid-thirties – I also recommend ‘The World According to Garp’ (1978)
The Clan of the Cave Bear – Jean M. Auel – 1980 – pre-historic novel of a girl migrating with a group of Neanderthals – read in mid-thirties
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time – Mark Haddon – 2004 – family life as seen by an autistic kid – read in early forties
The Devil’s Alternative – Frederick Forsyth – 1979 – the cold war powers reach a precipice and a British ex-spy and his Russian lady ex-love coordinate to bring them back – first read in late teens
The Eagle Has Landed – Jack Higgins – 1975 – WW2 novel about a crack German paratrooper unit looking to kidnap Churchill – first read in mid teens
Eaters of the Dead – Michael Crichton – 1976 – Arab guy moves with a group of Vikings back to the North and fights their enemies – read in late thirties – I also recommend ‘Rising Sun’ (1992) and ‘Congo’ (1980)
Eye of the Tiger – Wilbur Smith – 1975 – roguish fishing boat captain is forced into violence and finds love – read in late teens
The Far Pavillions – MM Kaye – 1978 – love between an Indian princess and a British soldier who grew up as an Indian orphan – first read in mid teens
Flashman – George Macdonald Frazer – 1969 – a British villain manages to become a hero in Afghanistan and yet retain his villainy – read in early thirties
Flint – Louis L’Amour – 1960 – a western in which a gunfighter moves east to become a successful financier and then comes back west to rediscover his past – first read in early-teens – I also recommend ‘Shalako’ (1962)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson – 2005 – a depraved Swedish novel about women and the men who hate them – read in mid-forties
The Godfather – Mario Puzo – 1969 – turf wars between mafia families – first read in early teens
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck – 1939 – the westward movement of depression affected people in search of work – read in late teens – I also recommend ‘Tortilla
Flats’ (1935) and ‘The Moon is Down’ (1942)
Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie – 2006 – a novel of life and times set around the Biafran War in Nigeria – read in mid forties
Hook Line and Sinker – Lynn Turner – 1986 – rich boy meets, falls in love with, and grovels to win beautiful girl – an M&B I read in early thirties – another I recommend is ‘The Widow and the Wastrel’ by Janet Dailey (1977)
How Green Was My Valley – Richard Llewellyn – 1939 – the story of a Welsh mining town – read in early twenties
The Hunt for Red October – Tom Clancy – 1984 – a cold war story of a top end Soviet nuclear submarine defecting to the West and almost setting of another world war – read in early twenties
King Rat – James Clavell – 1962 – a story of power and domination in a Japanese prison – read in late teens – I also recommend ‘Shogun’ (1975)
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini – 2003 – a story of relationships set in Afghanistan – first read in early forties
The Ladies of Missalonghi – Colleen McCullough – 1987 – women’s empowerment Australian style – first read in mid thirties
Lord of the Flies – William Golding – 1954 – a group of boys lost on an island turn into a bunch of vicious beasts – read in early twenties
Moscow Twilight – William E Holland – 1992 – a complicated Soviet romance in the times of perestroika – read in early thirties
Mr. God This is Anna – Fynn – 1974 – philosophy on life by a five-year-old abused orphan girl – read in late teens
Norwegian Wood – Haruki Murakami – 1987 – a coming of age novel set in Japan – read in late forties
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey – 1962 – a story of power and domination in a lunatic asylum – read in late teens
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver – 1998 – reluctant daughters’ version of life as a missionary family in 1960s Congo – read in early forties
Polar Star – Martin Cruz Smith – 1989 – a whodunit set in a Soviet factory ship during the cold war – read in early thirties – I also recommend ‘Gorky Park’ (1981) and ‘Havana Bay’ (1999)
The Prisoner of Zenda – Anthony Hope – 1894 – love and intrigue in a fictional minor middle European kingdom – first read in mid teens
The Range Robbers – Oliver Strange – 1930 – a western in which ‘Sudden’ gets the girl – first read in early teens
The Razor’s Edge – W. Somerset Maugham – 1944 – traumatized American searches for the meaning of life in the fleshpots of Paris – read in early twenties – I also recommend ‘Of Human Bondage’ (1915)
Running Blind – Desmond Bagley – 1970 – an about-to-retire British spy is given a hospital pass assignment in Iceland – read in early teens
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian – Marina Lewycka – 2005 – old man wants to marry buxom gold digger woman who already has a husband and son, and his daughter doesn’t like it – read in early-forties
Snow – Orhan Pamuk – 2004 – a story of love, life, clash of values, and women’s empowerment in eastern Turkey – read in mid forties
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth – 1993 – don’t remember the story but I read 1349 pages in one sitting, so must have had something – read in mid thirties
Tara Road – Maeve Binchy – 1998 – troubled Irish woman switches houses temporarily with troubled American woman – first read in late thirties
Tiger By The Tail – James Hadley Chase – 1954 – the best JHC – first read in early teens – I also recommend ‘The Vulture is a Patient Bird’ (1969)
To Kill a Mocking Bird – Harper Lee – 1960 – a lawyer stands up for what’s right in a racially tense part of southern USA – read in early twenties
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy – 1869 – a fictional account of events in Russia around the Napoleonic invasion of 1812 – read in early twenties
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