Strange Debate on India-China 1962 Secret War Report

That the only Henderson Brooks-Bhagat report in existence, on the cause (and lose) of China-India war of 1962, is secret is well know. There have been numerous calls over the past five decades to declassify the report with the governments at the time whether Congress I or NDA - NDA's Fernandes, as rakshak mantri, seems to have tried hardest - ending up not declassifying the report.

Usual interpretation on why the political and defense establishments refuse to declassify the report is that they do not want to embarrass Nehru, star of Congress I and most left wing historians, or Indian armed forces. But a more bizarre narrative is being developed by analysts who are calling for the report's declassification, including Neville Maxwell who actually saw the report, apparently unauthorized, that somehow the document would enable India and China to their settle border dispute with India agreeing to China's claims that India is at fault on the border dispute. It is the most stunning argument we have heard on the declassification argument!

In his view, India’s unwillingness in the 1950s and 1960s to negotiate a border settlement with China — which [Neville] Maxwell [who wrote India’s China War, a book critical of Nehru] cites as the root cause of the war — can be traced to a failure of post-colonial India to “rethink how the legacy of British India had distorted strategic thinking and the national interest.” Freed from “nationalistic myth-making”, the definition of “national interest” could be tweaked, he reasons. “National interest can be redefined as ‘making territorial concessions (of claims, rather than of de facto control) for the sake of international goodwill and friendship with neighbours so long as the people directly affected (on the borderlands) are consulted’.”

But will such a ‘concession’ — even if it’s only of Indian claims — be received by the Indian public, without accusing its leaders of “selling out to China”? In [Prof Dibyesh] Anand’s estimation, the public can be “persuaded either way if the political leadership shows signs of moving beyond unhelpful nationalist myth-making.”

These analysts seem to disdain "nationalist myth-making" of India as if China does none of that and as if nationalist myth-making is wrong. It is a worrisome turn of the debate on India-China border dispute.

Marginal Is Everything - 2009 Indian Elections

We happened to read Ashok Malik new Yahoo politics column. We saw a repeat of the analysis of 2009 election during which Malik quotes from Amit Verma's column which was attributed to analysis in Business Standard by Devangshu Datt. While Amit himself agrees with Datt analysis - which seems to take a wrong conclusion from marginal shift in electoral alliance of population towards Congress I and away from BJP. (While Malik disagrees with Amit's agreement with Datt, he himself had to nothing say about actual number of electoral shift to the two national political parties.) Here is what Amit says, from Malik's quote, quoting Datt's analysis:

...the vote share of the Congress went from 26.5% to 28.6%; the BJP dipped from 22.2 to 18.8: not a seismic shift at all. That the UPA gained so many seats is because of a number of diverse reasons, such as the changing pattern of local alliances that split the opposition vote in many places, such as in Maharashtra.

We are sure the reason for UPA seats gain may have been due to diverse reasons, but the way to look at marginal change is not to look at absolute change. It's always useful to look at marginal change in terms of the change itself.

An increase of Congress I vote from 26.5% to 28.6% is not an increase of 2.1% but an increase of 7.9%! Similarly a decrease of BJP vote from 22.2% to 18.8% is not a decrease of 3.4%, although itself significant, but a decrease of 15.3% - a significant loss of marginal electoral! When one looks at the difference between the electoral gains of Congress I and electoral loses of BJP, it is a swing of 23.2% of marginal electoral vote. Now that's significant number for Congress I and BJP.

Whether it was the media, choice of alliances, coherence of Congress I and incoherence of BJP, faces of Manmohan Singh and Sonia verses face of Advani (may be it was the bread of Singh and white skin of Sonia vs the wrinkle, still white, face of Advani that won the election for them), or simply silliness of Bharatiya voters (after all Congress I won the seat of the worst terrorist attack on 26/11, in South Mumbai, despite display of utter incompetence by Congress I state and central leaders), the win was a decisive win for Congress I and decisive lose for BJP.

Making The Case for Vedic Harrappans

It's unfortunate how a name sticks. So is the name Harrappa - which was part of the original name, Harrappa and Mohenjo-daro, give to ruins that were known, but systemically studied by Imperial British and later Indian (and world) archeologists since 1920s. The extent of the ruins of that ancient civilization are vast, which while is now called Indus civilization, is really Saraswati Civilization because the ancients did not refer to Indus but to the now-dried up mighty Sarawati river.

The debate between pre-Islamic historians is whether the Saraswati civilization was different from our Vedic civilization or a whether the Saraswati civilization continuation of the Vedic civilization. Here Dr. N. S. Rajaram makes the case for Saraswati civilization being a continuation of our Vedic civilization. The speech was given at MIT in US to Samkruta Bharthi audience. While the videos on youtube themselves is of amateur quality, the talk gives an excellent overview of Dr. Rajaram's thesis.

Why China Will Be Great Power and Bharat Not

Atanu Dey, on his blog Deesha, while writing about his admiration of Sri Lee Kuan Yew, former ruler and current chief mentor of world's most significant city-state Singapore, declares him Confucius genius. Atanu's has link to the transcript of Sri Lee's speech in US few months ago. We have seen Sri Lee interviews (link to our old blog site) and his speech itself is not so remarkable for those who follow global geopolitics. But we did find one sentence that was remarkable that could help explain the future trajectory of China and India.

Unlike other emergent countries, China wants to be China and accepted as such, not as an honorary member of the West.

This to us is the most significant statement of his speech. Bharatiya elites and self-proclaimed liberals whose understanding of India comes from the west's interpretation of this country - not a new intellectual phenomena by any means - need to chew on this statement.

Note: Sri Lee talks of developing East Asia, presumably including India, as restoring a global balance to pre-European-imperialism globe, significantly ignores largely Islamic west Asia. It is perhaps time to create a separate continent splitting continental Asia near the west of Pakistan along with western border of China and southern border of Russia and give the west Asian Islamic world a new name and leave them to themselves.

Revival of Sanskritum

It's paradoxical, but not really, that even as the elites of the country focus on English as their only language of communication, in country that only about 7-8% can speak and read decent English, that Sanskrit as a language is being revived too. It's not really paradoxical because that's the end result of free and open economy - more and more people can afford and have time to pursue their interests whether it's arts, languages, or sports, along with entrepreneurial ventures and make a career out of their interest.

Pallavi Singh describes the revival of Sanskrit in Uttarakhand from two sources - Uttaranchal Sanskrit Academy and Uttaranchal Sanskrit University.

Since then, both institutions have consulted historians and linguists on the language to arrive at a vast compendium of subjects Sanskrit can address: botany in the Vrikshayurveda texts, Varahamihira’s Brihat Samhita for scientific theories on earthquakes and ecology and the calculation of planetary movements and preparing perfumes, Panini’s Ashtadhyayi for mathematics and Kautilya’s Arthshashtra for political and economic organization.

Then there are plays in the language by various local theatre groups. Sudha Rani Pandey, vice-chancellor of Uttaranchal Sanskrit University, argues that the cultural history of the language runs deep. “The 18th century play Sabha Bhushanam, and Navya Bharat Natakam, Naranarayanabhyudaya Natakam, Ajeya Bharatam developed in the 20th century speak well of the richness of Sanskrit,” she says.

But the task is slow and arduous.

With difficult grammar rules, verb and noun formations, and many more tenses in Sanskrit, the learning curve itself is pretty steep and intimidating for most. From 49,736 speakers in 1991, the number of speakers of Sanskrit dwindled to 14,135 in 2001.

"Good View of Torry Pines"

Stuart Hart who focuses on Sustainable Enterprises at Cornell University writes about his professional interaction with C.K. Prahalad.

CK remained true to his nature to the very end.  My colleague Ted London and I are working on a new book focused on the future of BoP business and CK was one of the key contributors to the effort.  Knowing that he was in a fragile state, we gently inquired as to the status of his chapter for the book.  One week prior to his passing he emailed: "You have probably given me up for dead. Yes, I was there... I am in ICU in Scripps for the last 16 days and I am now stable but not recovering fully yet...Good view of the Torrey Pines golf course and ocean from my room.  I do not know whether you still want my piece.  If you go forward without it, I will understand.  But if you change your mind, I need the help of a scribe.  Let me know.  Warm regards, CK."

C. K. Prahalad, Dead At Age 68

C. K. Prahalad, a great management guru died at 68 in San Diego, US - too soon, I think.

Hailing from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, Prahalad did his graduation in Science from the Loyola College in Madras (now Chennai) and did his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

After his doctorate from Harvard Business School, the well-known corporate thinker had been associated with the University of Michigan.

C. K. Prahalad coined the phrase "core competency", a standard in business operations around the globe now, which allowed lot of business revival in India (and in the west prior to that), when it opened up from its staleness of socialism and statism. In fact, one can trace the entire outsourcing based industry, IT and BPO, that India benefits from, from that management concept of focusing resources on core competency. Prahalad provided a management concept around that principle.

Prahalad also encouraged entrepreneurs to not just focus on the rich and raising middle class in poor countries, like India, but to build symbiotic businesses that provides goods and services "profitably" to the poor around the world, so that poor also have access to goods and services that they normally don't have.

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Revised and Updated 5th Anniversary Edition: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits by C. K. Prahalad (Hardcover - Sept. 3, 2009)

This is, of course, different from the cacophony of self-serving NGOs, not all of them but many, the charity model, and only government can provide model that continues to be in vogue to help the poor live a decent life.

And he contributed plenty more to the study of management and he for good business management and governance.