AMIT SHAH

 Amit Shah and the March of BJP by Anirban Ganguly and Shiwanand Dwivedi ; Published by  Bloomsbury; Pages: 296; Price: Rs 399/-                               

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 Anirban Ganguly  is the Director of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation (SPMRF), the think tank of  BJP. He is the National Co-In-Charge of the Library and Documentation Department of the BJP and member of the Policy Research Department of the party. He has extensively worked in the areas of public policy, political research and ideological issues. He has several books to his credit.

Shivanand Swivedy is a Senior Research Fellow at SPMRF and author of two books—Parivartan Ke Ore—a review of the first two and half years of Modi—the other Naye Bharat Ke Ore—a review of five years of Modi government.

India’s  newly appointed Union Home Minister, Amit Shah has progressed  from pasting party posters to emerging as the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The book, under review,    traverses the high and low of  Shah’s journey .

 Shah was the moving spirit behind  Advani’s  famous ‘Rath Yatra’  aimed at  mobilising a strong support for  reconstruction of the Ram Temple as also the less chequered  forty-seven days’ Ekta Yatra’ led by  Dr Murli Manohar Joshi.  The third  Yatra—the  Tiranga Yatra, celebrated  and commemorated the Quit India Movement and  forgotten heroes of our  freedom struggle. This Three-in One effort has been covered thoroughly by the two authors.

Slowly but steadily and surely  Shah’s  fortune bloomed and threw up a truly dynamic leader.

Shah earned the sobriquet  ‘ BJP’s Chanakya ’ or ‘Modi’s Hanuman’; Hindi press called him “Shahenshah”--- but he earned highest marks for  transforming  crisis into opportunity  both  for the party and himself.

Shah has dominated India's fast-paced and complex political stage since 2014 and  has altered its electoral map by leading the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to successive historic victories post the May 2014 general elections.

Three aspects of  Shah are highlighted. Intellectual and ideological replenishment through study, the need to look upon the party not as a mere machine for elections but rather a mission for societal, national and political transformation and finally to work for the wide-ranging efforts under the Narendra Modi led BJP dispensation—proving Shah is a Master of Realpolitik.

 ‘Shah’s Pravaas: Expanding the Footprints’ is an account of the physical dimensions of the problem. Shah covered more than 7,90,000 kms between August 2014 and September 2018 undertaking major outreach programmes in this duration of forty-nine months. The average distance covered by him during this period was about 519 kilometres a day.

 Shah’s present rests on his politically illustrious but publicly tarnished past. The biggest stain on his collar is of being accused of having orchestrated the extrajudicial killings in Gujarat when he was the Home Minister under  Narendra Modi .

The real Amit Shah-the once booth-worker and, the master strategist who has pushed the BJP to an organisational pinnacle and yet talks of scaling peaks, a man who is unhesitant in his stand on nationalism and on anything which concerns India's national interest-----has remained in the shadows, self-effaced, away from the limelight.
The story of how he expanded the BJP into a pan-India party and the convergence of organisational science and ideology that has made the BJP a unique and formidable political entity is a story that needs to be told. The book narrates the personal and political journey of Amit Shah, captures the ideological world that shaped him and gives an account of the party that he is leading and shaping today. It is for the first time that his story is being told-an authentic, no-holds-barred portrayal of one of the most influential leaders of our times. 

Shah’s residence in New Delhi is adorned by portraits of two formidable personalities. Shah declared, “Anyone who aspires to understand and to govern India must read Chanakya and Savarkar, there is no alternative to these two epochal personalities”.
The book offers an insight into the early days of the BJP President and how his ideology was shaped by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP’s ideological mentor. It focuses in large part on Shah’s emphasis on outreach through extensive travel.

It also explores in great detail the planning that went into expanding the BJP’s footprint in states such as Kerala and West Bengal where the BJP had an almost negligible support base.

The book, which traces the rise of Shah in 14 chapters, gives nuggets of information about his personal life: how he makes it a point to listen to his granddaughter Rudri’s laughter over the phone at the end of the day, for instance, or his love of cricket and chess. It also sketches his early days as a foot soldier of the BJP, starting at the age of 13 in the campaign team of Maniben Patel (Sardar Patel’s daughter) during the Lok Sabha polls of 1977.

The period between 2010 and 2012 has been described as the “most challenging years” for Shah, who was imprisoned in 2010 after being accused of having orchestrated the extrajudicial killings of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kauser Bi . He was cleared of all charges  by a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) special court , which found the case to be “politically motivated”.

The book also offers a glimpse of how Shah planned and executed the party’s stellar performance in the electorally crucial state of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, which elects 80 of the 543 members of Parliament, in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP won 71 seats in UP, which carried it to a majority on its own in Parliament .

 “Amidst all the euphoria and praise, one question that was repeatedly asked was how did Amit Shah so accurately analyse the situation in UP and feel its pulse just within a year? In fact, without wasting a single minute, Shah had visited almost all fifty-two districts as soon as he had taken over the reins in UP, travelling for 142 days at a stretch. Travelling about 93,000 kms, Shah drew up a detailed contact and communication campaign for booth workers across all the Lok Sabha seats in the state,” the authors write in the chapter titled Mission UP .

Amit Shah’s arrival in UP in 2013, as national general secretary proved providential and turned the hope of forming a government in Delhi by winning UP into a reality. However, it was also true that Amit Shah’s knowledge about UP in the initial days, before this, was akin to the knowledge that leaders of Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu would perhaps have of the politics of a state like Kashmir. He was practically unaware of UP’s political parties, its society and the role and behaviour of castes in the state’s complex political arena. For Amit Shah, the expert in micromanaging elections, UP was a tough challenge. The party and its workers in the state, faced with continuous defeat and organisational failure had turned despondent. Shah had a few niggling questions when he surveyed the scene in the state. Why was the party in such a condition in the state? The more he tried to free himself from the question, the more did the matter seize him. Trying to alter the situation in the state would be like trying to erect walls on a foundation of sand, but despite this Shah was determined to work for a massive turnaround for the party in the state. He took up the challenge head on.

 An important contribution of  Shah lay in collecting the documents relating to the Party and making it available on public domain. The BJP  Library is one of the finest and no political party can boast of such a fine line up of research and scholarly material. And  Shah was one of the first to understand the importance of "Big Data" in planning for the National Elections. BJP has one of the most sophisticated data centres in which  material on all the main Lok Sabha constituencies is available at the click of a mouse.

The creation of this data base was due to the concerted efforts of computer savvy men and women who worked as volunteers for years on end. Shah is now the Home Minister. He won from the Gandhinagar seat. What will be his main thrust ?. He will be ruthless in the pursuit of Indian political objective and hence he will be in Machiavelli's sense a Prophet Armed. He will be tough on naxalite violence and will not hesitate to use his immense political capital to strengthen the BJP in parts of India where it is weak. As far as terrorist violence is concerned, there will be tough measures without too much thought for collateral damage. Being honest to the core, Amit Shah can afford to be ruthless---and  ruthless action is required in Kerala, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.

A large part of Shah’s success was the insipid and colourless leadership of the Congress party by Rahul Gandhi. A parvenu bereft of intellectual attainments all that he did was to hurl abuse at Modi and Shah. His speeches were laced with rhetoric and sarcasm, and failed to articulate his vision of India as opposed to the one espoused by Modi and Shah.

The book under review makes good reading.

   P.P.Ramachandran.

15/09/2019.

FALI NARIMAN---SUPREME COURT

God Save the Hon’ble Supreme Court by Fali Nariman; Published by Hay House Publishers ;Pages 304;Price Rs.599/-

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Fali Nariman writes,"In India,in recent months the way in which the Supreme Court of India has been "run",has become not just a matter of interest or debate--it has become a matter of acute controversy,causing widespread concern,because--and only because--a singular lack of a spirit of collegiality has been exhibited  amongst the judges,especially amongst the five seniormost including the Chief Justice of India. A pity indeed! Simply because it leaves us all wringing our hands in the "winter of despair".

 Fali S Nariman is 90.  He has spent 68 years at the bar--which is the tenure of  the Supreme Court of India. He has argued before 32 Chief Justices, witnessed passing of  hundreds of laws both being made and amended. For the first time he saw something like the rebellion of the four senior-most judges on January 12, 2018. This has compelled him to write the  book under review.  

The book has been written after a most controversial year in the history of the  Court. The January 12 Press Conference — one of its kind in the history of the court — dented the image of the institution. Four senior most judges, one of whom has been appointed the 46th Chief Justice of India, went public with their grievances against sitting Chief Justice of India, Justice Dipak Misra.

The book chronicles the slow build-up of the tension which spilled outside the quiet inner halls of the Supreme Court to the lawns of Justice Jasti Chelameswar’s official residence.

Nariman holds both Chief Justice Misra and Justice Chelameswar, the number two judge, accountable. The Chief Justice, for his silence in the face of a letter, written by the four of his Collegium colleagues, seeking an explanation about the assignment of specific cases to certain judges in the Supreme Court; Justice Chelameswar for ordering the setting up of a five-judge Constitution Bench to hear the medical college corruption case. 

  According to Nariman quarrels among judges are not infrequent. Justice P.N. Bhagwati, during the hearing of the First Judges case in the 1980s, made the then Chief Justice of India, Justice Y.V. Chandrachud, file an affidavit in the Supreme Court to explain the appointment and transfer of a particular high court judge.

Justice Bhagwati went on to note in his judgment that the affidavit was “delightfully vague”.

Nariman quotes Prof. Granville Austin that Justice Bhagwati did not quite like the fact that Justice Chandrachud preceded him as Chief Justice of India.

Nariman provides a valuable lesson for future chief justices, about the dangers of the lack of the spirit of collegiality in one of the world’s most powerful courts.

The book quotes Chief Justice R.C. Lahoti’s observations in the judgment in Tirupati Balaji Developers Pvt Ltd versus State of Bihar. He said “when there is little or no judicial collegiality, there is less incentive for judges to exercise self-restraint....”

Nariman writes about "objectivity", "transparency" and "trouble spots" of individual Chief Justices of India, which he says "can be explained only by appreciating" that the Supreme Court of India "is an institution whose importance and prestige is far above that of the men and women, who for the time being, sit in it or preside over it".

Thus, "it was a grave error of judgement" on the part of Justice Jasti Chelameswar to "direct by order the setting up of a Bench of five judges to hear a particular matter mentioned before him. It was EQUALLY (emphasis in original) an error on the part of Chief Justice Dipak Mishra not to have replied (privately, of course) to the undated letter (of November 2017) addressed to him by the four senior-most judges listing their complaints" which got publicised on January 12, 2018.

"Silence in the face of a letter containing allegations (against the person or authority to whom it is addressed) is never an option. When you reply to a letter, you reveal your stand - and posterity judges you by what you said at that time and not by hindsight," he says.

"Besides, when a Chief Justice 'digs in his heels' and fixes the roster or determines the composition of benches not to the liking of any particular judge or judges, there is no option but to 'lump' it and await his departure from office at the constitutionally prescribed date of retirement,"

Judges lose confidence in each other. The rebel press conference was the crossing of the Rubicon in many ways. And, one of the worst manifestations of the revolt is that it became open season for anyone to throw muck at the judiciary.

Nariman is all praise for Atal Bihari Vajpayee who taught him  an invaluable lesson.

"Atalji was an astute statesman to his fingertips. Courageous when required. Diplomatic when necessary. He taught me a great lesson -- that it pays not to be angry or lose your temper when speaking in Parliament. It is always advisable to scotch your opponent with faint praise!" writes Nariman.

According to Nariman  Vajpayee is "one of the greatest statesmen of his time -- in my view, the greatest Indian statesmen of my time in Parliament", He  instilled in him "a sense of fun and not merely a sense of good humour".

One example of this was when Vajpayee had returned from a foreign visit and it was customary for the prime minister to make a statement in each House of Parliament. MPs handpicked by the Chair were asked to pose questions so that more information could be elicited.

On one such occasion, Nariman found himself "one of the fortunate few to do so", along with two members belonging to different political parties. One of them posted a couple of questions and so did Nariman.

The third MP was diplomat-turned-politician K. Natwar Singh of the Congress, which was then in opposition "and his questions were very critical of the government and full of invective as well".

"Natwar Singh spoke in crisp English: 'Mr Chairman Sir, I have six questions for the Prime Minister.' And he set them out one by one. While raising each question, he raised his voice as well: a decibel louder -- each time angrier than when he had asked the previous question!"

 Vajpayee answered the questions raised by others and then came to the six posed by Natwar Singh. "Speaking in fluent Hindi he noted that the Congress MP was very intelligent and always knew his facts. He then added: 'Lekin unko gussa bahut jaldi aa jata hai' (he gets angry very quickly). That riposte brought the House down. The six questions remained unanswered -- having been dissolved in laughter," 

Nariman writes "There is a close race today as to which is lower in public esteem -- the lawyer or the law giver," adding that "sadly, for both lawyers and members of Parliament, ethics in politics or in the law is at a low."

Vajpayee, Nariman writes, had a "very trusted, efficient and well-loved lieutenant" in his Council of Ministers. "But in July 2000, when that Minister stepped out of the crease and made intemperate remarks against the integrity of the then Chief Justice of India (about wrongly stating his date of birth), and when this became public, Prime Minister Vajpayee moved swiftly -- on the high moral and ethical principle that one constitutional functionary must never denigrate or malign another high-ranking constitutional functionary,"

Vajpayee went to the President and had him sacked, says Nariman.

"There were few protests, from Vajpayee's own party. But Vajpayee was adamant -- there was no taking back of the dropped minister. This high moral sense of values exhibited by Vajpayee is what I what consider another great example of ethics in politics." 

Nariman  has high praise for Nani Palkhivala.He quotes with approval Justice H.R.Khanna,who records in his memoirs--"..the heights of eloquence to which Palkhivala had risen had seldom been equalled and never been surpassed in the history of the Supreme Court."

The book is noted for its graceful style and wealth of anecdotes.

It must be read by those who have anything to do with law--especially budding lawyers.

P.P.Ramachandran.

29/9/2019.

UDHAM SINGH

The Patient Assassin by Anita Anand ;Published by Simon&and Schuster;Pages 373 ;Price Pounds 20/-   

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This is the Centenary year of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. We witnessed the dramatic image of the Archibishop of Canterbury Justine Welby prostrating in front of the memorial to the victims of the massacre-a visible symbol of repentance.He declared that he felt a deep sense of shame. The centenary has also resulted in a number of books--especially by Kim Wagner and Kishwar Desai. A paramount character of the event and its aftermath is Udham Singh who shot to death Sir Michael O'Dwyer who ordered the shooting.

Udham Singh was the man who on the afternoon of 13 March 1940 entered a public meeting at Caxton Hall, Westminster, and assassinated Sir Michael O’Dwyer. That primary job done, he took aim at other members of the platform party and wounded Lord Zetland, the Secretary of State for India, Sir Louis Dane, who had been O’Dwyer’s predecessor, and Lord Lamington, a former Governor of Bombay.

This grand assembly of old India hands had just finished their discussion of Afghanistan and the threat posed to it by Germany’s then ally, the Soviet Union. They were relaxed and unaware of any danger; a better-equipped assassin would have made a clean sweep of all four. But Udham Singh, had somehow managed to acquire the wrong calibre bullets for his Smith & Wesson; O’Dwyer alone died because he was shot in the back at point blank range and, as the first target, he had no time to defend himself. But O’Dwyer was the only victim Singh cared about – the rest were a bonus in a long-delayed act of revenge that had its origins more than 20 years before, when on 13 April 1919 troops led by General Reginald Dyer fired into a crowd of unarmed civilians in the city of Amritsar, killing either 379 (the official figure) or more than 1,000 of them (the unofficial estimate of the Indian National Congress). Indian fury at the slaughter extended well beyond the nascent independence movement, and the relationship between the rulers and ruled lurched into what became an unstoppable decline.

The book under review is a true tale of massacre, revenge, and India’s quest for Independence.The author is  Anita Anand who is a biographer and radio presenter and it throws a flood of light on Udham Singh.

The Jallianwala massacre brought the two men together. In April  1919, O’Dwyer instructed General Reginald Dyer to order his men to fire on a crowd of thousands of unarmed men, women and children in Jallianwala Bagh, a popular garden in the Punjabi city of Amritsar. Udham Singh, who lived in Amritsar, swore that he would avenge the victims.Singh was an impoverished Punjabi orphan and Dwyer  an ambitious Anglo--Irish civil servant who was the second most powerful man in the British Raj . Anand expertly weaves their stories together, making their unlikely meeting both inevitable and tragic. She also recognizes that many questions surrounding Singh will remain unanswered. The historical record is murky, and the intelligence files surrounding his case have only recently been released. 

Singh himself—at turns a charming rogue, a spinner of tales and a passionate revolutionary—didn’t seem to know if he was a patriot, madman or pawn. This lack of clarity allowed Singh to be labeled either a martyr or a terrorist, depending on the point of view of the person telling his story. Anand, whose family was directly affected by the massacre, rejects these easy labels. Instead, she delves into the historical record with rigour and objectivity, painting a portrait of Singh that is more than symbolic .

The book is an acute work of historical detection which  has a complex, weblike structure that makes for an unputdownable and riveting   account of the massacre and its aftermath. Anand poignantly portrays a complex flawed man overwhelmed  by anger, guilt and grief. 

  On April 13, 1919 the Punjab’s Lieutenant Governor, Sir Michael O’Dwyer ordered a heavily-armed detachment of soldiers to a dusty, neglected, but nonetheless popular gathering place called the Jallianwala Bagh, which was crammed with people, some of whom were there to attend a political meeting and many, many more of whom were merely relaxing in one of the city’s only respite-spaces away from the press of traffic. The only entrance to the Bagh was so narrow that the mounted machine-guns  Brigadier General Reginald Dyer (“The Butcher of Amritsar”) brought along couldn’t enter the park, but the soldiers he marched in on foot were heavily armed. 

The dramatic entrance of the soldiers had an immediate effect on those inside the Bagh. Expecting an imminent order to disperse, some started to pack up their picnics as the soldiers spread out on a raised bank of earth along the northern wall. Others stood rooted to the spot, watching as the uniformed men dropped to one knee and took aim. 

“Wherever there was hope, there was death,” Anand writes. “A fanning peepul, an indigenous tree with a broad trunk, became a shelter for dozens of screaming people. Dyer directed his men to aim at the tree. Splinters flew with blood and flesh”. 

Anand structures her  new book around key lives that day: she focuses not only on the biography of Dyer, the but also, even more fascinatingly, on the biography of Udham Singh, who achieved a place in the pantheon of Indian national heroes and martyrs: he was hanged for the murder a few months later. Anand has delved into the life of Udham Singh, climaxing of course in the moment when he’s stalking his prey at last.

The pairing of Dyer’s life and Udham Singh’s (with ample digressions about the author’s own grandfather, Ishwar Das Anand, who narrowly escaped being caught in the massacre) serves to create a more personal and immediate portrait of an India boiling with tension and delusion.

  Anand’s grandfather  could recall scenes from that terrifying day a century ago, but her book’s preoccupation is the aftermath: how a low-born Sikh murdered a country-born Irishman in the august surroundings of imperial London. In this story, very little is predictable. O’Dwyer, one of 14 siblings born to a Catholic farmer in County Tipperary, is hardly the conventional idea of a senior Raj administrator. Singh, flamboyant enough to find work as an extra in Alexander Korda’s Elephant Boy (where he appears in a corner of the Indian jungle created by the Denham Studios in 1936), refuses to conform to typical characterisations of the lone assassin. In Anand’s narrative, the courses of two lives separated by a gulf in race, class and geography narrow slowly until they meet each other, momentarily and theatrically, on stage in front of a London audience. 

At first glance, neither Singh’s choice of victim nor the source of his motivation is obvious. O’Dwyer was 30 miles away in Lahore, the provincial capital, when General Dyer ordered his troops to fire, and nothing suggests that Singh was a witness to the slaughter. O’Dwyer, however, got up to some bloody mischief of his own the next day when he ordered RAF planes to bomb and machine-gun what he wrongly identified as a rebellious mob in another district of Punjab, while a telegram to Dyer left no doubt that the Lieutenant Governor approved of the general’s action in Amritsar.

The Indian members of the official inquiry into the whole tragic debacle issued a minority report that castigated O’Dwyer for his assumption that Punjab was on the brink of revolt, arguing that the massacre had been precipitated by his overreaction. That didn’t moderate O’Dwyer’s views in any way. He continued to support Dyer long after the general resigned and never stopped publicising his belief that the massacre had prevented widespread rebellion.  He believed that Indian nationalism should never be appeased and that threats to the status quo needed to be punished severely. When Dyer, for long a sick man, died in his West Country cottage in 1927, O’Dwyer was left as the massacre’s most prominent apologist and a good replacement as its chief culprit.

 Anand gives the impression that Udham Singh swore vengeance on the day of the massacre itself or soon after. Singh “took a handful of blood-soaked earth in his hand … and he swore a terrible vow … No matter how long it took, no matter how far it took him … he would track down the dogs who did this to his people and kill them.” What Anand provides about his state of mind is good speculation; all we know for certain is that he moved about the world like an adventurer.

Born the son of railway crossing-keeper in rural Punjab and raised in an orphanage, Singh left India for the first time during the first world war, when he joined the Indian army’s expeditionary force to Mesopotamia as a carpenter. Lowly jobs in India followed, and then he went off again to work as a labourer on the Uganda Railway in East Africa. He travelled to England via France and eventually to Mexico, where he settled in El Paso for a time until in 1924 he was smuggled across the US border and into California. It was here, under the tutelage and occasional subsidy of the revolutionary Ghadar movement, that Singh seems to have discovered his vocation as an anti-Raj propagandist.

According to Anand, the Ghadars sent him on tours to continental Europe and the Soviet Union, and eventually to the UK, where his multiple aliases and addresses and his trip to Russia soon made him of interest to the authorities.  His trial at the Old Bailey in June 1940 lasted only two days. Worried about its effect on Indian and foreign opinion, the British government determined that it should attract as little publicity as possible. The number of reporters attending was to be limited; all press messages to India and America in particular were to be carefully scrutinised; censors in India were to be put on their guard against any rhetorical “heroics” that Singh might indulge in the dock. In the event, it was Reuters who supplied most of the copy from the trial, and Reuters had agreed to omit anything that could be described as incendiary in the political sense, and to make no connection between the massacre of 1919 and O’Dwyer’s assassination. Singh sank below the waves of wartime news as a solitary killer unconnected to history, perhaps a little mad.

He was hanged at Pentonville prison – a shamefully bungled execution by a nervous hangman, so Anand has discovered from documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. But all the same it is an absorbing account of a strange and obsessive life.

According to legend, eighteen-year-old Sikh orphan Udham Singh was injured in the attack, and remained surrounded by the dead and dying until he was able to move the next morning. Then, he supposedly picked up a handful of blood-soaked earth, smeared it across his forehead, and vowed to kill the men responsible.

The truth, as the author has discovered, is more complex—but no less dramatic. The book throws a devastating light on one of history’s most horrific events, but it reads like a taut thriller and reveals the incredible but true story behind a legend that still endures today. 

                                                   

                                                       Udham Singh

P.P.Ramachandran.

22/9/2019.

PROF.DEODHAR'S ECONOMIC SUTRA

Economic Sutra by Satish.Y.Deodhar ; Published by Penguin ;  Pages 199 ; Price Rs 399/-

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A highlight of my tour to England was a visit to Stratford-upon- Avon—the hallowed birthplace of William Shakespeare. As we –a group of Indians --went round an English guide was waxing eloquent on the Bard of Avon and when he saw a group of Indians he declared that Kalidasa was the “Shakespeare of India”. My pride was hurt and I blurted out—“ No. You are wrong. Shakespeare is the  “Kalidasa of England” . Shakespeare’s period is  1564 –1616 A,D  and that of Kalidasa is 4-5 century C E. Quite obviously you compare the old one as a base  to the new one.

Why  this anecdote?

Dr.Satish Deodhar , the author of the book under review has an identical statement to make on the relationship of Kautilya and Machiavelli, author of the celebrated book “The Prince”. To quote Deodhar --“ In fact, it is  Machiavelli  who should be called “Europe’s Kautilya” of sorts, for Kautilya wrote his treatise close to two millennia prior to Machiavelli ( 1469--1527).”

To come back to my review.

Dr.Satish Deodhar is a distinguished professor in the prestigious Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. He is the author of a highly popular book “Day to Day Economics” which was reviewed by me.

The sub-title of the book under review is “Ancient Indian Antecedents to Economic Thought”.

The volume  offers a striking perspective on ancient Indian economic thoughts by analysing the original and secondary sources with the aid of English translations. It offers a detailed analysis of Kautilya’s ideas on political economy as also economic ideas prevailing before the advent of Kautilya and after. Deodhar provides parallel political thought dominating the Occidental world.

According to the author, India experienced continuous existence of social, religious and economic life. India’s G D P  accounted for 50 per cent of the Global  G D P during the Golden Age of the Guptas. He explains the precipitous decline thereafter. An important point to be borne in mind is that while modern economic theory emphasises the pursuit of material wealth as an end by itself, ancient Indian texts treated economic advancement as one of the four objectives of existence viz., Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha.

Deodhar unravels the Indian mind and psyche. Ancient  savants believed in the provision of public goods and quasi-public goods and market  facilitation by rulers who displayed prudence in fiscal matters.

The book throws a flood of light on government policies, working guilds and property rights related to land acquisition. We have a detailed discussion on what characterised ancient India, the echoes of which persist even now—viz.,--division of labour, varna and the presence of jati system in India.

Pride of place is accorded to Kautilya’s “Arthasastra” in which the responsibility of a welfare state are well brought out. Political economy facilitated sustainable generation of wealth, the ensuring of provision of public goods, regulation and use of common property resources and control of natural monopolies. Kautilya identifies the sources of revenue and types of taxes that could be levied and also laid down norms for emoluments of government staff. Kautilya’s theory of public finance is comprehensive and is the world’s most ancient.

The author brings out the applicability today of ancient Indian economic thoughts.

Deodhar provides an appropriate introduction to Kautilya.  His  “Arthasastra” was based on the collation and improvement of many ideas already expressed by his predecessors and in some Vedic texts. Deodhar’s aim is to elicit elements of economic thought that have been put to words in the ancient texts that that are proven to have historical existence.

“Sutra” is a Sanskrit word that means a string on a thread that holds jewels together. We have Patanjali Sutras, Brahma Sutra of Sankaracharya and  Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana.

The  “Economic Sutra” strings together and succinctly presents elements of ancient economic thought.

The book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter I  is a curtain raiser on ancient Indian texts and history. Deodhar introduces these texts in general and highlights the material on economic aspects . He also analyses the causes for the niggardly attention paid to it by Western scholars.

The texts are the Four Vedas, the Epics Ramayana and Mahabharata,six major Dharmasastras, eighteen Puranas, the Nata Sastra, the Natya Sastra, Ashtadhyayi of Panini. Most importantly the Arthasastra--- which was written as a treatise for ideal functioning of the economy, the state administration and the conduct of the ruler. These prove that economic issues were discussed even a millennia ago.

Next three chapters provide elements of pre-classical early economic thoughts from texts dating to 1500  C E—on material desires, wealth, price and taxes, policies of State, Varna as a division of labour concepts and its relation to Jati and caste.

Chapter Two discusses material desires, prices, money, wealth, interest rate, balancing of material and otherworldly pursuits, etc. It introduces the idea of taxes, sources of revenue and government spending in public works in Ancient India.

Chapter Three analyses documented historical evidence of guilds, principles of just governance, absence of Eminent Domain and the presence of private property.

Chapter Four covers Varna, Jati as means of division of labour.

Chapters  Five and Six are dedicated to Kautilya’s thoughts—Economics, Public Goods and Public Finance, Markets, Prices, Interest and Wages . Kautilya had a deep understanding of interest as return on capital and wages as return on labour.

The Seventh chapter offers Dedhar’s concluding observations. Ancient literature show that some of the economic principles that have been identified in the modern world were being put into practice as political economy tools back then. Arthasastra explains how the smooth functioning of the markets exemplify pragmatic application of the elements of economic principles.

Deodhar’s work shows his mastery of this subject, his tremendous ability to present it in simple language  comprehensive to the common man. The book is a great intellectual exercise which skims the cream of the esoteric literature and presents in easily digestible Sutras.

P.P.Ramachandran

8/9/2019.

MISHRA ON GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

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Systemic Risk and Macroprudential Regulations by Dr.Rabi Mishra ; Published by Sage; Pages 455 ; Price Rs 1445/-                                                                                      **********************************

Let me begin my review with a charming  true story. Queen Elizabeth  on being  invited for a function by the London School of Economics  asked the impressive gathering  of professors, economists, politicians  and bankers why the experts  had failed to foresee the  “Global Financial Crisis?”. That question continued to  haunt  the world of economists and bankers. In the years preceding the catastrophe only two persons uttered a note of warning. Post event a number of books have been written to unravel the mystery of  the Global Financial Crisis (hereafter GFC). One of the significant volumes is the book under review and it is an outstanding contribution to that venture.

The author Dr.Rabi Mishra is presently an Executive Director in the Reserve Bank of India. He acquired his Ph.D from the University of Mumbai. He distinguished himself as Principal of the Reserve Bank Staff College which imparts training to Senior Executives of RBI. He spent a year in the Department of Economics of the Harvard University and conducted a serious study of the problem of financial risk management and consequent challenges to public policy.

The book has an illuminating (fifteen pages) Foreword by Dr.Benjamin Friedman, the Maier Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University.

Ten years ago the world faced a collapse of major financial firms, decline in asset values and consequent destruction of paper wealth, interruption of credit flow and loss of confidence in both firms and credit market instruments.

Several countries overhauled their regulation and supervision of  financial institutions, The “Buzz” words now are “Macroprudential Policy” and this is the agenda and aim of both developed and developing economies.

Economists have turned the searchlight on the design of the     “ International Financial Architecture”. The increasing globalisation of international activity in general and of financial markets and institutions especially is surely a source of strain on the ‘Nation-State system’. The challenge is to devise elements of a broader system that resolves the tension between preserving the advantages of decentralized private sector financial systems and minimizing the associated risks which can develop within the ‘Nation-State’ itself.

The task currently  faced by economists and policy makers is to rethink the economics underlying the behaviour that can lead to a crisis. In addition, they have to design new policies and procedures.

Mishra’s book is an attempt to combine different ideas and thought believed to be the cause of the GFC, the consequences and the responses. He clinically analyses the regulatory reforms that have been adopted as a response to the GFC and how to improve the toolbox to ensure a safe financial system that offers genuine and undiluted  support.

The GFC was a result of ‘Vulnerabilities’ that were building up since the start of the millennium. Mishra discusses threadbare these ‘Vulnerabilities’. The GFC brought to light the ethical deficit and trust deficit that pervaded the system. The problems were compounded by the lack of crisis management tools and the public perception and objection to helping  troubled firms.

Mishra provides an admirable summary of the developments that installed entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Housing Price Bubble---which was transformed  into a Financial Bubble and the disastrous consequences when the bubbles burst.

Public policy failure was most visible in the weakness in the  regulation and supervision. Basel I  and Basel II  suffered from procyclicality embedded in the rules. The inadequacies in anticipating systemic risks and dealing with them were a major shortcoming of the pre-crisis regulatory and supervisory regime. Systemic risks were not under the radar of the regulators. Basel I  and Basel II  did not have any macroprudential elements in the regulations. All these led to increased focus on macroprudential tools to deal with systemic risk.

The GFC revealed serious shortcoming in the governance and risk management practices in regulated institutions. Mishra emphasizes that achieving financial stability is an elusive objective and demands policy coordination at both the national and international level.

The author concludes that a robust financial system is essential for economic well-being of people. The GFC  exposed many cracks in the financial system and its adverse results. Post crisis reforms can succeed only if we strengthen prudential oversight and finally behaviour and governance in the private sector.

According to Mishra the world economies should strive for a more balanced system and rule-based monetary policies taking into account the likely spillover effects it will create the world over. An immediate objective can be creating a more stable world with less financial turbulence, as central banks traverse down the exceptional monetary measures they had taken to stimulate the economy.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I deals with the post-crisis financial regulatory reforms. It analyses issues such as strengthening of the capital, liquidity, ring fencing of  banks and the resolution plans post-financial crisis. Also discussed are the other structural reforms that became inevitable after the crisis.

Part II is dedicated to managing systemic risk through macroprudential policy. Mishra thoroughly discusses various sources of systemic risk and provides a framework to manage such risk by macroprudential regulation and its coordination with monetary policy authority. One chapter is devoted to the significance of early warning methods to predict crisis and offers positive steps to avert the crisis. Details are provided of stress-testing programmes to be implemented at macro-level by financial sector supervisors and central banks. This offers help to recognize the weakest link and be armed with the necessary cushion at unexpected stressful events. Also provided are tools for macroprudential regulations for adoption and use by policymakers.

The third Part of the book is concerned with managing financial crisis and  furnishes a policy tool-kit for adequate response to  any likely financial crisis.

The fourth and final Part is “ Coordination in international policymaking” and has three chapters. They deal with measures that will help develop better coordination among global financial institutions. Dynamics of such an exercise are analysed cogently. The final two chapters present a list of possible challenges to global coordination and enumerate several approaches to improve the methods of coordination.

An Epilogue offers a catalogue  of potential risks in the financial sector threatening central banks the world over.

 All of us know that Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz gave Dr.Y.V.Reddy a Certificate--  "If America had a central bank chief like Y.V.Reddy, the U S economy would not have been in such a mess." 

Now let us view the certificate  that the learned RBI ex-Governor has given to  Mishra and his book—

“The impact and implications of Global Financial Crisis on the theory and practice of financial sector are brought out very clearly. It has the imprint of deep insight, long experience and clarity in articulation.”

The volume is of immense value to central bankers, economists and policy makers. The book is a valuable addition to the  exiguous literature on G F C.

P.P.Ramachandran.

1/9/2019.