Givvup Only Are There

In comments, BJ says that he has a fair idea of why I think TamBrahm weddings are like ERP implementations, and asks me to confirm his suspicions with a post on this. I don’t know if he is zinking what I am zinking, but here goes.

As someone who had only seen Arya Samaji weddings (and also one sardar wedding) up until the age of 21, I was utterly flabbergasted the first time I saw a TamBrahm wedding. The whole point of Arya Samaj was that if you were going to involve yourself with religion, you should bloody well understand what you’re getting into. So if you don’t speak Sanskrit, the priest must translate everything, and give a proper explanation while he’s doing so.

In contrast, at TamBrahm weddings (and any religious ceremony for that matter – we did a bhoomi poojan at the Kanchipuram factory with local priests), the involvement of the concerned parties is minimal. They just sit around while the priests chant stuff they don’t understand.

This makes TamBrahm weddings very much like the common, or garden-variety ERP implementation. The ERP consultants are parallel to the priests. Because nobody can understand them, you have to take their word for it that they’re experts and know what’s going on. Then, there is a long and painful period in which the priests/ ERP consultants do lots of stuff that looks impressive, but nobody actually knows if it’s accomplishing anything. Finally, they collect their fees, and leave the company/ happy couple to sort things out on their own.

Extending the analogy, Punjabi Arya Samaji weddings are like installing Windows. You’re given the opportunity to read the whole end-user license agreement and cancel if you’re not happy with it. But everyone is so excited about the bling and cool new features that they skip reading it, or just nod along to whatever the shastri says and install it. After the honeymoon period, you suddenly realise that this thing is taking up far more resources than you’d anticipated.

North Indian Sanatan Dharmi weddings are like the Apple App Store. Everything looks incredibly cool and blingy, but the license agreement is completely opaque and nobody has any clue what they’re getting into.

Living in is like installing and running Linux without a GUI and only with a console. And that too by compiling the source with gcc and not from some cool Ubuntu disc or Red Hat Package manager. It seems hardcore and revolutionary, but when you get down to the specifics, is really just a lot of housework without any bling.

The analogy has now gone far enough. That’s it for the post.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: arya samaj, consultant, erp, gcc, license agreement, marriage, our glorious culture, rapid prototyping, red hat package manager, sanatan dharam, tambrahm, transparency, wedding

For small or mid-sized companies in India, especially manufacturers, it’s impossible to avoid government interference. Whether it’s the town and country department, or the electricity board, or the state industry ministry, or the central ministry which is in charge, everyone will demand some sort of cut or speed money or the other. It is a chronic pain in the corporate arse.

On the other hand, as Sainath keeps pointing out, if you’re a huge company like Reliance, then the government bends over backwards to please you for fear that you won’t invest and generate employment. It gives you free land, builds a road to your factory or airport, gives you excise holidays and suchlike.

The implication is that at some specific turnover between 100 crore rupees and 5000 crore rupees, the government stops harassing you and you start harassing the government. The exact figure is something that needs to be researched, but for obvious reasons, I think it should be called the Yakov Smirnoff turnover.

written by Aadisht

Tata Docomo’s advertising tagline is “Why walk alone when we can dance together?”

I think the Tata group is mocking Rabindranath Tagore and Ekla Cholo Re. This is to get back at the Bongs for what they did to Tata Motors at Singur.

written by Aadisht

In the past ten days Salman Khurshid has advocated a return to 1980s Comptroller of Capital Issues style pricing, and also done the headline-hogging complaint about Indian CEOs drawing too much pay. The CEO pay issue is truely bizarre and WTF, for a number of reasons, including:

1. As Deepak Shenoy points out, Khurshid is currently getting free acco in a house that would rent out at 10 lakhs a month if it was on the market.
2. US CEO compensation is an issue because half of Wall Street has been nationalised and so the government has a right to decide compensation policies. What the hell is the Indian government losing if CEOs are paid too much?
3. As this Business Standard oped points out (link will decay eventually), it’s not even like Indian CEOs are paid obscene amounts (not only by global standards, but by Khurshid’s own standards). So what is the bogeyman of vulgar salaries that he’s raising? The true scandal occurs in the millions of small companies where the directors or majority partners siphon money out at the expense of minority shareholders and employees, as the Satyam issue showed us.
4. And culturally, it’s not like Indians resent highly paid CEOs. They want to be highly paid CEOs. The mango man’s reaction to high pay is aspiration, not envy. So what vulgarity?

Forget all that. Even if Indian CEOs were paid obscene salaries, and Indians resented this, and Salman Khurshid wasn’t a sanctimonious arsehole living off the public trough, this is India, where we outperform the rest of the world when it comes to innovation in corruption and fiddling accounts. If there’s a salary cap on CEOs, does he really think companies won’t find a way to get the money to the CEOs off the books anyway? Gah.

Searching for a reason for this utter lunacy, I’ve come up with:

• Salman Khurshid is a moron. This explanation has the benefit of fitting Hanlon’s Razor.
• Salman Khurshid wants CEO salary to start getting paid out in black money and lots of manipulation in IPO issuing so that the amount of black money in the economy increases. After all black money is the lifeblood of the Congress party.
• Salman Khurshid is trying to raise money from Indian businesses ahead of the Haryana and Maharashtra elections. “Nice salary package you have here. Shame if anything happened to it.”
• The whole thing is not for the benefit of Indian CEOs, or the media, but for Sonia Gandhi, who Salman Khurshid is trying to impress by showing how quick he is to catch up with American trends.

Anything I’ve missed?

(Pssst: Sainath gets into the act too, and manages to not mention Vidarbha or the HDI. There’s hope yet.).

written by Aadisht \\ tags: ceo compensation, executive pay, his son is an arsehole too, hypocrisy, laissez faire, liberal, lutyens bungalow zone, madam, market rental, pay package, resentment, salman khurshid, sanctimonious bastard, sanctimony, sonia gandhi, vulgar

Neel has a blogpost which talks about IIT-D designed board games that incorporate elements from traditional Indian stories into their design. He also laments that most Indian design and architecture does very little to showcase heritage, and picks on malls, airports and railways stations as being the worst offenders. I had some scattered thoughts about this which were too long for a comment, so here they are:

1. One of the big problems with incorporating heritage into any venture these days is that you put yourself at grave risk of Rajan Zed issuing press releases that you are offending Hindu sentiments. In fact going by past experience it could be not just Rajan Zed but Rajput associations, Jain associations, Sikh associations, ad nauseum.
2. Railway stations – depends on what you’re defining as heritage. When the British were building stations, they they built gorgeous facades which mixed up Mughal design elements (arches and domes), continental European decoration (the gargoyles at the station formerly known as Victoria Terminus), pre-Mughal construction (red sandstone), and some stuff which was entirely fresh from the architects’ perspective. I think that railway stations in princely states may also incorporate local architecture. It’s probably construction in post-independence India that gave us the horrible concrete blocks with no aesthetic appeal – the same applies to most of the airports.
3. Airports – we seem to have moved from a situation where there was one single design of ugly concrete blocks being used for every airport to a situation where one single design of curved beams and glass walls is being used. Personally, I find the new one more attractive; but Neel’s point about it not having many Indian elements is valid. Delhi’s airport has made an effort with interior decoration for Terminal 1D, but this The Delhi Walla blogpost seems to suggest that it’s half-hearted.
4. Malls – yes, these are the most egregrious offenders when it comes to cookie-cutter design and absolute lack of architectural imagination. I think that this is because somewhere there is a design handbook for malls which lays down points on laying out a mall to maximise retail sales which is being followed religiously without either any attempt to run local experiments to see what works better or imagination by architects on how to make it look cooler. [rant done] But even if architects did want to come up with cooler designs, would builders and tenants pay for them? Hm.

Another thing about heritage is that it’s desirable, but so are many other things (whether on pure functionality or for the wow-it’s-so-cool factor). So some of these are:

1. Is it functional, innovative, valuable? Neel cribs about airports, but the fact that Delhi’s new airport has inline baggage scanning delights me so much that I hardly notice the lack of heritage design elements.
2. Is it aesthetically pleasing? Everyone’s taste on what looks good will be different, so this is difficult to measure. But as an example, look at Jet Airways’ long-haul business and first class. Not much in the way of Indian design, but incredibly innovative and good-looking.
3. Is it unique? This ties in with the crib about all malls and airports looking like each other. On the one hand, using a standard design brings down costs and I think China has built dozens of new airports just by reusing the same design over and over. Delhi’s new airport terminal might be standard curved beams and glass, but that standard design allows it to function on natural light throughout the day and not turn on electric lights until night – which has its own functional and aesthetic appeal. Of course, poor construction of that design is probably what led to the same terminal being flooded during the rains.
4. Is it designed by Indians or an Indian company or even for Indian consumers? Even if it doesn’t reference existing heritage, if it’s iconic enough it could eventually become Indian heritage – like the Bombay Gothic buildings (good) or the Ambassador (bad). I know that Jagadguru has said that nationalism is the superset of religious fundamentalism which is itself the superset of terrorism, but I still think it is awesome if my national heritage is added to.

Another thing is that heritage doesn’t automatically provide quality. Air India paints Rajsthani chabutras on its aircraft windows but sucks as an airline. There have been so many animated movies about Krishna (Cartoon Network is running five this Janamashtami), but the dialogue and storytelling is usually terrible. 

So heritage is awesome, but only when the companies using it already have the capability to create great products; and also when designers and developers have the space to use their imagination.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: airport terminal, ambassador, animation, bombay gothic, cookie cutter, culture, design, hafeez contractor, heritage, Infrastructure, Jet Airways, marketing, product development, railway station, rajan zed, south bombay

I am reading The Game Changer by the totally bonkers Ram Charan and AG Lafley, the (former?) CEO of P&G. (Once I finish, I’ll be done with my to-be-read pile, hooray.) So far it’s been totally uninspiring – they seem to have taken a bunch of different products and processes developed by different companies including P&G, Honeywell and LEGO and used these as examples for an innovation framework which Ram Charan must have come up with. To me, it just seems that they’ve taken random examples of innovation and force fitted them to a nice sounding framework.

Gaurav is doing a business PhD and will point out that actually the thinking behind those examples and the framework could be pretty rigorous and analytical, but there’s no evidence of that in the book itself. It just states that these particular things are examples of the framework, and doesn’t bother to explain why this is so. Now of course putting that kind of rigour into a popular business book will make it difficult to read and unpopular, so it makes no sense. But if you don’t have that rigour, the book is practically useless as a manual. This makes the popular business book the most futile form of writing ever.

Of course, that assumes that the point of the book is to be a manual. What if it’s advertising? Anybody who reads the book realises that there’s more to it and calls in Ram Charan for a full consultancy. But… Ram Charan bills 20,000 dollars an hour. There’s no way every chhappar who buys The Game Changer at an airport bookshop can afford his services.

So the only thing that makes sense is that the book is still an advertisement, but it’s not an advertisement targeted to its readers. Instead, the fact that it has so many readers is the advertisement, which is then targeted to Fortune 500 CEOs – the pitch is that Ram Charan is a consultant whose book on strategy was a worldwide bestseller.

written by Aadisht

We now interrupt our current run of TV-blogging to abuse everyone involved in the Jet Airways fashla.

Jet Airways

What the hell went wrong? What were they thinking when they fired people overnight? The only possible answers are colossal stupidity or desperation.

Desperation – we know that they haven’t been paying their fuel bills for a while. And with eight months of running losses, banks were refusing to provide working capital. And with the financial crisis on, raising long term capital looks practically impossible. They’re bleeding cash, and firing their newest employees probably seemed like the quickest way to staunch the flow.

Colossal stupidity – is a stereotype that usually goes well with HR departments and senior managements. But in this case, it looks like they really weren’t thinking the consequences through. They now have Raj Thackeray, the CPI(M), and news channels baying for their blood. That will probably pass, but they’ve lost their reputation as a good employer. When the business cycle improves, they’ll have to deal with not being an employer of choice. (That assumes they’ll survive until then.)

Back in the last recession, there were a bunch of IT companies which made their layoffs/ salary cutbacks as painless as possible and got written up as case studies. I think Mindtree was one of them. Jet Airways didn’t learn. (But then Ajay Shah has written that nobody in India even understands that business cycles exist and a recession will eventually come along…)

Jet Airways Employees

OK, being told in the morning that you’re fired and you shouldn’t show up for work is definitely a shock. More so, if it happens to 1900 of your colleagues simultaneously. But if their sob stories are true and they are sole breadwinners who have taken out home loans and are worried about how they’ll pay their EMIs, then I have to say that they were idiots. They were on probation. They knew that they’d been hired for a one year period before being confirmed. They knew that house prices were higher than ever before. They knew that they were employed by an airline that was losing money and that job security apart, salary increases were probably not coming soon. And knowing this… they went into debt. FSM preserve them.

Hopefully, the ones shouting on TV about their EMIs were a small minority who the news channels picked to add to the drama.

News Channels

Dear news channels. This is not the largest layoff in India in the recent past. Banks have been shutting down their associated consumer finance/ small business loan NBFCs left right and centre over the past year, and the total layoffs in these have been much higher.

This is merely the largest layoff in India of attractive young people who speak good English. Please insert the appropriate disclaimers. And stop trying to project the temporary plight of young middle class Indians who are otherwise employable as the end of the world. Okay?

The CPI(M)

The CPI(M) is pretty much complicit in bringing Jet Airways to this state. All of last year, they sat in the way of price hikes for petrol, diesel and kerosene. So the oil marketing companies raised the prices of air fuel instead in an attempt to survive. And now Jet Airways is bankrupt and has to sack employees to survive. After this, Nilotpal Basu has the gall to go on TV and say that the CPI(M) won’t allow Jet Airways to operate from Kolkata.

Also, demanding reinstatement? Firing employees isn’t pleasant, but at least it does stem the cash outflow a little. If Jet Airways kept them on, then it would keep losing money until it couldn’t even pay the confirmed employees, who’d been on the payrolls longer. The CPI(M) seems more concerned about a thousand jobs today than twenty thousand jobs next year (and CEOs get abused for thinking in the short term!). (Related reading here.) Either the CPI(M) is (shock! gasp!) a run-of-the-mill political party, concerned only about the next election; or it doesn’t understand reality. Or both.

Oscar Fernandes

Because when he was asked for a soundbite, he smiled and said that he didn’t know anything because he had been at a junket labour ministers’ conference in Bali.

Praful Patel

OK, no abusing Praful Patel. Because he’s actually refused to bail anybody out, pointed out that this is to do with ATF prices, and has generally not played to the gallery.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: ajay shah, aviation, business cycle, cpi(m), debt, downsizing, EMI, hrd, hrm, Jet Airways, layoff, mindtree, mns, news channel, news cycle, nilotpal basu, oscar fernandes, praful patel, raj thackeray, recession

Along with mobile banking, another sector got a little freer this week. Foreign news magazines can now publish Indian editions:

In a significant further opening up of the print media, the Union Cabinet on Thursday approved a revised policy that would allow Indian editions of foreign magazines in the news and current affairs category.

…

The review of print media policy permits Indian publishers entering into such agreements to include local content and carry domestic advertisements, both of which were forbidden under previous guidelines.

(Financial Express)

Because I am an impractical libertarian I will now find fault even with this welcome opening up. As the Financial Express also points out, FDI is restricted to 26%, which means that the true benefits of foreign money coming in and setting up professional news organisations will be limited. (At this point, my skeptical alter-ego intervenes and points out that what with the currrent financial crisis, and foreign media organisations not exactly sitting on mountains of cash, there wasn’t going to be a huge amount of money coming in anyway.)

Also, the requirement of five years of prior circulation of at least ten thousand copies means that if News Corp decides to launch a new magazine worldwide, they can’t do a simultaneous launch in India. Oy vey.

It’s a start, though.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: fdi, Foreign direct investment, foreign investment, magazine, Media, news, News Corporation, priyaranjan dasmunshi, Publishing, rupert murdoch, you libertarians are so impractical

My learning for the day: Mastercard is headquartered in a New York town called Purchase. I suppose being headquartered in a town named after the service you offer counts as priceless.

A little Googling adds further information: the town was originally called Harrison’s Purchase, because it was established on land bought by a dude called John Harrison. His motivation in doing this is not clear. It is also in Westchester County whose most famous residents are Professor Xavier and the X-Men.

There doesn’t seem to be any information on whether MasterCard chose their headquarters on the basis of the name. Pity.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: cashback, credit card, Mastercard, new york, payment, priceless, purchase, Westchester County

Image via Wikipedia

Now that the snark is out of the way, let’s look at one of the most interesting documents in the history of Punjabi nationalism or secession: the Anandpur Sahib Resolutions.

The Anandpur Sahib resolutions were the Akali Dal‘s response to being wiped out electorally in 1971 and 1972. They decided to recoup by:

1. Getting the borders of Punjab redrawn to bring in more Punjabi speakers and Sikhs
2. Ramp up federalism in general so that the national parties would have less influence in Punjab, which would mean the Akali Dal would have a free run

The end result of this came in 1978, with a document called the Anandpur Sahib Resolution (ASR, for the rest of the post). It’s a fascinating mix of naked gerrymandering, federalism, religious fundamentalism, sound economic policy and terrible economic policy. You can read the whole thing by clicking through, but let’s look at the more interesting highlights.

First, the gerrymandering. There was this:

(a) Chandigarh originally raised as a Capital for Punjab should be handed over to Punjab.
(b) The long-standing demand of the Shiromani Akali Dal for the merger in Punjab of the Punjabi-speaking areas, to be identified by linguistic experts with village as a unit, should be conceded.

in the resolution itself. But the political resolutions preceding the ASR have this stunning stuff:

The fundamental policy of the Shiromani Akali Dal is to seek the realization of this birthright of the Khalsa through the creating of a geographical entity and a constitutional set-up of its own.

For the attainment of this aim:

1. The Shiromani Akali Dal is determined to strive by all possible means to:
(a) Have all those speaking areas, deliberately kept out of Punjab, such as Dalhousie in Gurdaspur district, Chandigarh, Pinjore, Kalka and Ambala Sada, etc. in Ambala district, the entire Ina tahsil of Hoshiarpur district, Shahabad and Guhia blocks of Karnal district, Tohana sub-tahsil, Ratia block and Sirsa tahsil of Hissar district and six tahsils of Ganganagar district in Rajasthan, merged with Punjab to constitute a single administrative unit wherein the interests of Sikhs and Sikhism are specifically protected.

But the political resolution also has a very strong and unambiguous call for federalism, which is practically revolutionary considering the Indian Constitution:

(b) In this new Punjab (as in all other stated) the Center’s interference would be restricted to Defense, Foreign Relations, Currency and Communications, all other departments being in the jurisdiction of Punjab (and other states) which would be fully entitled to frame their own Constitution. For the aforesaid departments of the Center, Punjab (and other states) would contribute in proportion to their respective representation in Parliament.

…

2. The Shiromani Akali Dal would also endeavor to have the Indian Constitution recast on real Federal principles with equal representation at the Centre for all the States.
3. The Shiromani Akali Dal strongly denounces the Foreign policy of India as framed by the Congress Party. It is worthless and highly detrimental to the interest of the country, its people and mankind at large. Shiromani Akali Dal shall extend its support only to such policies as are based upon the principles of peace and national interest. It strongly advocates a policy of peace with all neighboring countries, particularly those which have within their borders Sikh population and Sikh shrines. The Akali Dal is of the firm view that the foreign policy of India should in no case be one of playing second fiddle to any other country.

and look, gun rights!

6. The Shiromani Akali Dal is of the firm opinion that all those persons, including women, who have not been convicted of any criminal offence by a court of law should have the right to possess any type of small arm like revolvers, guns, pistols, rifles, carbines, etc., without any license, the only obligation being their registration.

Now the trouble with advocating federalism which is revolutionary in the Indian context is that if you have a ruthless dictator at the helm of things, she thinks you’re advocating secession. And the clampdown after that was so strong that secession actually became the nature of things. But I digress. The federal bits of the ASR itself are:

The Shiromani Akali Dal realizes that India is a federal and republican geographical entity of different languages, religions and cultures. To safeguard the fundamental rights of the religious and linguistic minorities, to fulfill the demands of the democratic traditions and to pave the way for economic progress, it has become imperative that the Indian constitutional infrastructure should be given a real federal shape by redefining the Central and State relation and rights on the lines of the aforesaid principles and objectives.
The concept of total revolution given by Lok Naik Jaya Parkash Narain is also based upon the progressive decentralization of powers. The climax of the process of centralization of powers of the states through repeated amendments of the Constitution during the Congress regime came before the countrymen in the form of the Emergency (1975), when all fundamental rights of all citizens was usurped. It was then that the programme of decentralization of powers ever advocated by Shiromani Akali Dal was openly accepted and adopted by other political parties including Janata Party, C.P.I. (M), D.M.K., etc.

…

As such, the Shiromani Akali Dal emphatically urges upon the Janata Government to take cognizance of the different linguistic and cultural sections, religious minorities as also the voice of millions of people and recast the constitutional structure of the country on real and meaningful federal principles to obviate the possibility of any danger to the unity and integrity of the country and, further, to enable the states to play a useful role for the progress and prosperity of the Indian people in their respective areas by a meaningful exercise of their powers.

Now all this sounds brilliant and federalistic. But that’s just resolution 1. The Akali Dal then issued 11 more resolutions which demanded that the Central government do a bunch of stuff, which sort of makes the whole demanding that it stay out of everything except Defense, Foreign Relations, Currency and Communications sort of worthless. But such is life. Some of the interesting demands were:

The Shiromani Akali Dal calls upon the Central government to make an international airport at Amritsar which should also enjoy the facilities of a dry port. Similarly, a Stock Exchange should be opened at Ludhiana to accelerate the process of industrialization and economic growth in the State. The Shiromani Akali Dal also desires that suitable amendments should be made in the Foreign Exchange rules for free exchange of foreign currencies and thereby removing the difficulties being faced by the Indian emigrants.

Capital and Current Account Liberalisation, in the early 1970s. Heh.

The Shiromani Akali Dal also calls for the rapid diversification of farming. The shortcomings in the Land Reforms Laws should be removed, rapid industrialization of the State ensured, credit facilities for the medium industries expanded and unemployment allowance given to those who are unemployed. For remunerative farming, perceptible reduction should be made in the prices of farm machinery like tractors, tubewells, as also of the inputs.

This was long before farmers were dying in Vidarbha.

This session seeks permission from the Government of India to install a broadcasting station at the Golden Temple, Amritsar, for the relay of Gurbani Kirtan for the spiritual satisfaction of those Sikh who are living in foreign lands.
The session wishes to make it clear that the entire cost of the proposed broadcasting project would be borne by the Khalsa Panth and its over all control shall vest with the Indian Government. It is hoped that the Government would have no hesitation in conceding this demand after due consideration.

I find this one particularly fascinating. It’s a mix of public goods financing, overwhelming licensing, and the inadequacies of technologies then – now, of course, this could be accomplished by just having a satellite uplink from the Golden Temple. Or even a webcast. The fact that technology, government control of broadcasting, and the particular politics of the period made this impossible is particularly poignant.

This mammoth gathering of the Shiromani Akali Dal strongly urges upon the Government of India to make necessary amendments in the following enactment for the benefit of the agricultural classes who have toiled hard for the sake of larger national interests:
1. Hindu Succession Act be suitably amended to enable a woman to get rights of inheritance in the properties of her father-in-law instead of the father’s.
2. The agricultural lands of the farmers should be completely exempted from the Wealth Tax and the Estate Tax.

Honestly, not sure how this would impact on the ground – I’m unaware of the debates surrounding inheritance law. But again – fascinating.

They had demands that make me cringe too:

The 18th session of the All India Akali Conference take strong exception to the discrimination to which the minorities in other states are being subjected and the way in which their interests are being ignored.
As such, it demands that injustice against the Sikhs in other states should be vacated and proper representation should be given them in government service, local bodies and state legislatures, through nominations, if need be.

…

The Congress government is called upon to vacate the gross injustice, discrimination done to Punjab in the distribution of Ravi-Beas waters. The Central government must also give approval for the immediate establishment of six sugar and four textile mills in Punjab so that the State may be able to implement its agro-industrial policy.

…

The Shiromani Akali Dal emphatically urges upon the Indian government to bring about parity between the prices of the agricultural produce and that of the industrial raw materials so that the discrimination against such states that lack these materials may be removed.

…

The Shiromani Akali Dal strongly feels that the most pressing national problem is the need to ameliorate the lot of millions of exploited persons belonging to the scheduled classes. For such a purpose the Shiromani Akali Dal calls upon the Central and State governments to earmark special funds. Besides, the state governments should allot sufficient funds in their respective budgets for giving free residential plots both in the urban and rural areas to the Scheduled Castes.

So the ASR as a whole is utterly fascinating. It starts out as a call for federalism – something I sympathise with hugely – but then reverses direction and starts demanding that the Central government do something. The two aren’t necessarily incompatible if you’re transitioning to federalism and still want to get Central support until you achieve ‘true federalism’ – but the ASR is a reminder of one of the biggest obstacles to federalism.

This is that states aren’t just competing with the Central/ Federal government for resources and power. They’re also competing against each other – for investment, for taxpayers, and for resources which the other states might have a hold on.  Which means that states are always going to have an interest in maintaining a federal government which they can milk. It’s comparable to the Prisoner’s Dilemma problem – everyone would be better off with no federal government interference whatsoever, but each state would be even better off if it manipulated the federal government into favouring it over the other states. This will play out in Tamil Nadu  – Karnataka disputes over the Cauvery, Punjab – Haryana disputes over Chandigarh, and Maharashtra – Karnataka disputes over Belgaum.

So states coming together and demanding power from the Centre will always be hijacked by one state which would rather have a powerful Centre to fall back on. And of course the Centre could cut quid-pro-quos; so that even something where there was no inter-state conflict like law-and-order could be bargained against infrastructure or tax sharing. Or plain old horse trading. So even if Narendra Modi is serious about making himself the saviour of the states and getting more power from the centre (can’t find the link anywhere, sorry), it’s not going to happen until a whole bunch of things get sorted out between the states first.

The gradual decline of the national parties will mean things will become even more complicated. Either things will be as they are now, even more so, with each regional party determined to prop up the centre in order to extract concessions from it, or a bunch of regional parties will get together and decide to emasculate the centre altogether and start transferring power to the states. I’m not sure how many regional politicians there are today in India who would actually think long-term enough to go after federalism – but it might just arise.

written by Aadisht \\ tags: Anandpur Sahib, Anandpur Sahib Resolution, Constitution of India, federalism, Prisoner's dilemma, punjab, Shiromani Akali Dal, sikh