Bihar: A New State of Mind

I have been meaning to stay a lot more connected to my hometown. Despite intentions though, physical visits have been few and far between. Thus, it was a direct call to action when the W alerted me to my expected housebound status for the next few weeks. I planned a trip in a jiffy, managing to cover Patna, Muzaffarpur, and our ancestral village — all in the space of one weekend.

Hurried as it was, the trip's mood was ponderous, and overall much upbeat. In fact, I came away with my intent to travel Patna-wards markedly stronger. This reinforcement, admittedly, is partly on emotional counts. Yet, Bihar's near-unique socioeconomic theatre too contributes to my renewed resolve.

For the record, I have long believed my beloved native state (often including Jharkhand in the bargain) to be a microcosm of India at large. Indeed, its fertile Gangetic plains or mineral-rich badlands present, firsthand, a quintessential paradox: penury amidst plenty. Of late, in Bihar, like in India, nature's bounty has fought and lost a daily battle with the grime and toil of life in poverty. Equally (and perhaps inevitably), beyond the obvious despondency and squalor, a subterranean strife constantly tested the overt social détente, the undercurrents often erupting in murderous class wars.

Talk history, and the microcosm argument is actually an understatement. Bihar's leadership — in thought or worldly terms — is sans parallel. Yet, some years ago, an otherwise discerning (non-Bihari) friend had scoffed at my assertion that Patna (Patliputra) was the capital of 'India' longer than any city but Delhi. For Doubting Thomases such as he, try googling the following to get a sense of what I say: the Buddha, Mahavir, or Guru Gonind Singh; Balmiki, Vishwamitra, Aryabhatt, Panini, Gargi, Maitreyi, Vatsyayan, Banabhatt, or Chanakya; and certainly the Guptas, Mauryas, Ashoka, or Sher Shah (the list is by no means exhaustive.)

I believe too that there was more to my aforementioned friend's mirth. The unfortunate, but undeniable, truth was that Bihar had simply lost the plot over the years. Always in the news for the wrong reasons, it was tough to associate glory or excellence with the state. Appreciate too that through the 90s and this millennium's first few years, the Indian nation was burying its Nehruvian policy overhang in favour of globalisation and the free market. As sarkari sloth made way for private enterprise, the air was rich with the promise of prosperity, not hollow socialist shibboleths. In this period, the land of Nalanda and the Lichchhavi republic — which gave India its first coinage, trade arteries, and Arthashastra — was going the other way. As if under a sorcerer's spell, Bihar turned into a family's fiefdom, discovering new heights of lawlessness, negative growth rates, and wanton polarisation of an already fractious society.

At another level, with liberalisation, cable TV came to town. Likely looking for comic appeal, the media lapped up Shri Laloo Prasad and his country bumpkin caricature. Bihar's strongman readily obliged, with bytes or antics more befitting a Bollywood comic than otherwise. Arguably, this was deliberate: playing up his rustic roots for lowest common denominator appeal. Regardless, he made a virtue of the ludicrous. With a clear development-is-anathema stance (discordant with the rest of India) and longevity in power, this perpetuated a rather sorry image of Biharis: buffoons who wouldn't know (or didn't deserve) any better.

For most of this period, I was still deeply rooted in Bihar, yet spent significant time outside the state. At its worst, I felt my compatriots had given up hope; that the pithy but patently unfair caricature had grown larger than life. Bihar had gone from being a state to becoming a state of mind.

I hoped, too, that some day, regardless of the dispensation's colour, my home state's fortunes would rest with a believer in a progressive political agenda. Bihar would then feel the difference, reward the change, and break the defeatist psyche. On this trip, driving on a new rural road as an alternative route to my village, I felt my idea's time had come (much better than merely talking of Nitish Kumar and Elections 2010; equally hoping that having reaped benefits, the NDA regime will push for more in Round 2). Its zindagi mili hai dobara!

Cinema Cinema

I love movies. At the risk of jeopardising domestic bliss, I can add that I haven’t seen enough lately. Lest I be misunderstood — IPTV is a godsend — but in a weekend I'm perfectly capable of watching two to four, maybe more — a prospect at which the W isn't exactly chuffed. Again, it is not as if good cinema is my sole preserve in the household. The difference lies entirely in my preference for remote control-driven (some may aver it’s the couch) variety versus the more social cinematic experience in a theatre.

Interestingly, I grew up to almost no moviegoing, nor much interest in films. Through school, cinema was regulated like fresh air on a chilly winter night — kept out if possible, or heavily rationed at least. I reckon this was mostly in keeping with a general bias towards discipline in our upbringing (to which I owe a number of my latter-day milestones). Economics may have played a part too (thrift is good); concern over my grades most likely did. Thus, I averaged less than two films a year in the 'hall' (as we called them) in this period. These too were mostly thanks to a friend who consistently planned one as his birthday outing; and the rare parentally endorsed gems (Dweep Ka Rahasya was one such — I loved it).

Of course, I caught a few on TV (courtesy neighbours, till we acquired our own in '84) but this too was not without a twist. Given that staying out late was not an option, several of these films were incomplete, missing the 'climax'! I vividly remember the festive air in our middle-class community too, when Doordarshan decided to telecast movies on Thursday evenings, thus doubling frequency to a joyous twice weekly (the first such offering was Vachan, and I believe I have good reason to forget all about it, save the name). In short, the uninspired offerings and fragmented viewership did little to stoke my cinegoer buds — though an ill-understood Achanak and half-seen Ittefaq did plant seeds of love for the crime-mystery-thriller genre that I have been unable to shake off since.

Later, the VCR came to town. It brought with it a rudimentary element of choice. Grainy picture quality (not that DD was much different) was a small price to pay for the ability to watch what you wanted, when you wanted, and how you wanted. Naturally, video libraries, parlours etc mushroomed all over town. At home, the Pater made decisions of his own though (likely inspired by my not-always-inspiring scholastic record) and this contraption only entered the Jha household once the son had been packed off to college!

Most of my movie-on-video, thus, was with friends. I emerged much enlightened from these soirees (I can hear your wicked smile, reader!) not the least of which was exposure to cinema beyond mainstream Hindi (a Khamosh or Prahar amidst The Godfather and The Medusa Touch). Not entirely unrelated, this included QSQT, a milestone in the sense that I saw it and understood it (ah those vague, innocent, vicarious pleasures)!

Come college. My means stayed modest but the joys of freedom more than made up for it, strained only by early stirrings of a sense of responsibility. Films played a part in this general process of self-discovery as always — occasionally as input, but often as a companion in the journey. The plot stayed true at B-School too, save for a mild sharpening of the pen.

The intervening years have taught me how much I delight in having (almost one too) many balls in the air. As in life, so in movies — or literature and friendships — eclecticism reigns supreme. Yet, I can watch almost any film once, and a few many times, to this day. And hence, the sovereign power of the remote control.

Asleep at the Wheel

One of the most telling descriptions of the bureaucracy in the 1970s went thus: "if you can, don't move; if you must, move slowly; if pushed, move in circles; if cornered, appoint a committee!" One can say this most certainly of our economic policy. Despite years of evidence, governments in India hung on to an anachronistic Nehruvian model, mouthing hollow garibi-hatao type slogans, till being forced off our backs two decades ago. Few know this better than our venerable PM. As a key apparatchik in the erstwhile growth-sapping regime — something Congress propagandists wantonly gloss over — Dr Manmohan Singh wilfully fashioned policies that eventually had us staring down the barrel of a gun in 1991.

Should it, therefore, surprise us that, when the bottom falls off the Rupee, or GDP growth plummets to its lowest in almost a decade as it has today, the GOI is a deer caught in the headlights? Dr Singh would have us believe this is all thanks to the global economic slowdown or Eurozone woes (external locus of control; not leadership). Notably he calls out the RBI's tight-fisted monetary stance even though structural problems need a fiscal and not monetary response. Indeed, the central bank has little elbow room in the face of oil price risks or the current account gap (widest since 1980). I would argue, on the other hand, that the RBI is doing its damnedest to keep inflation in check.

In context, it is important to peel the onion (!) on our inflation problem. Food is a structural shortage story. Agricultural growth at 4-5% is simply inadequate to meet the demands of a burgeoning 1.2B population with real incomes rising 5%. Next, MNREGA pushes up rural wages (10% YOY in Jan 2010, accelerated to 14% now) to unprecedented levels as GOI continues to dole out money with low to no link to productive use. Then the government raises MSP adding further fuel to the fire. Consequent rise in rural wages soon translates to urban wage inflation — via construction and informal workers.

This cycle of food and wage inflation combining to increase input costs for goods has turned our inflation into a structural one. It can, of course, be tackled. The path lies through supply chain efficiency and productivity. These, however, need a strong policy response, not today's status-quoist bias that is happier with incremental versus exponential change. Likewise, the GOI cannot print its way out of the quagmire, continuing to push populist policies in the run up to elections in 2014. With fiscal deficit spiralling out of control, there is only so much the RBI can do. If he is half the economic genius he is touted to be, then Dr Manmohan Singh knows this. The real question is will he act — will he bell the cat?

The Real State of Real Estate

I plead guilty to being less than laudatory of the Real Estate sector in recent posts. This comes partly from experience — investments where I was promised the Moon have yielded negative to negligible returns. Again, I understand the caveat emptor argument (my ventures being ill-advised, risk-reward equation etc). It could be sour grapes too — nerves made me sit out the boom years and now I am priced out. Yet, it remains true that many of us are wary of the sector and its general functioning in our country.

Logically, things ought not to be in a bind. The dictum of being in money when investing in mitti has been ancient wisdom. Further, India's long-term housing shortage story had its takers a decade ago. Little wonder then that, as friendly interest rates and rising household incomes fed core demand, realty prices pushed north. Investors attracted by a visible short-term price upswing (perhaps more than long-run potential) and overseas liquidity added to the momentum. Landowners made fortunes selling ancestral holdings in New India’s cities (NCR, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune etc). 'Buy pre-launch sell pre-possession' became the go-to strategy while a few risk-averse or financially constrained folks like I fretted on the boundary!

This is where it began to go crazy. Developers overleveraged themselves using all avenues under the sun to raise money domestically (banks, IPOs) or across borders (ECB, FDI, PE). In short order (unlike most parts of the world), this borrowing stopped funding construction. Instead we had a mad frenzy to build ‘land banks' driven by continuous new project launches, and realty valuations feeding off every cycle. End-users were relegated to the sidelines; investor mood swung into the high speculation zone. Fly-by-night developers sprang up dime-a-dozen in urban India, more than a few clearly headed towards a debt trap.

Enter GFC 2008. Liquidity dried up and demand, speculative or otherwise, was hit. It was mayhem. Buyers, caught unaware, were the worst off; New India was abuzz with protests against project delays or defaults. The response from even the most well-known realty names was not much to write home; dharnas and court cases became the order of the day. The government could finally not look the other way, virtually leaning on banks to go easy on real estate loans to stop the bleeding from getting worse.

Today, we have come off the crisis edge. Property prices almost regained their peaks last year (although 2011 appears flat). The fundamental issues in the sector, however, have not been fixed for good. Like much else in our beloved country, there is more to it than meets the eye:

• core demand stays strong, a good chunk unmet. It ought to rise over time for population and prosperity reasons (the good);
• scope for corruption is unabated, ranging from Money Matters borrower scam variety to land acquisition, clearances etc (the bad);
• cash preponderance makes it a money-laundering magnet. Shahid Balwa types shall fester, with vested interests from the powerful neta-naukarshah-businessman nexus (the ugly).

Clearly, the only way out of this jalebi-like mess is reform. A solution benefits all — the roti-kapda-makaan seekers; tony-neighbourhood-upgrade aspirants; and wannabe investors like I. Hope is at a premium mid-week, but I set some aside for this. And may be rethink those pesky Noida Expressway SMSs again.

Keep It Simple, Son!

History repeats, or almost. The story starts many moons ago, in a conversation between two highly unequal individuals. The first of them was first in many respects. An idol for many, he had chosen to strike out on his own despite not-so-humble moorings. Starting from scratch thus, he had risen through the ranks by virtue of sheer grit and effort, never compromising his values in the face of hardship or temptation. He would achieve a lot more in the years to come, but even in the times we speak of, was widely quoted as an example of integrity, determination, and commitment to professional excellence.

The other party to the conversation was young — in fact, too young to have any worldly standing. Imbued with the precocious confidence of youth, he ventured an opinion on the quality of the elder's published output. Of course, he had no credentials whatsoever to comment on its technical or pedagogic merit. Neither did he have any justifiable claim to pontificate on its literary value. In fact, the little exposure he had to the Queen's was due to a love for the word, engendered and facilitated by this very conversation-partner!

Fortunately, the older man was characteristically large-hearted. He understood the recklessness of youth. Perhaps he gave some leeway to the innocence of the boy's intention too. As it turned out, he took the cheeky attempt to critique his body of work in his stride. Notably, the advice ran thus: the language ought to be simpler, the sentences shorter, and words commonplace. History has it that the elder smiled and the young boy came away feeling on top of the world, an emotion of exaggerated self-importance of the kind one experiences on making an unexpected contribution in a chain of events.

The years rolled by — the boy turned into a young man and more, though the elder remained first. One day, the historical conversation was relived. The not-so-young man asked for the elder's opinion on his limited oeuvre. The shoe, as they say, was on the other foot! Yet, with his usual humility, the older man read through the younger's outpourings, half-smiled, and nodded. Presented with what was clearly mild approval at best, the son took recourse to boyish petulance, and pressed for more pointed feedback. The father replied: "It is good, but you may consider making it an easier read, lest the message be lost in the medium". It was not a comeback — just the truth, resonating with what many others had said earlier — which in that one moment had turned the idea into an imperative!

Thank you and happy 16 June :)

Text-Me-Not

I would stop short of calling myself a gadget geek. I do, however, have a deep-rooted belief in Technology's game-changing abilities — at work and otherwise. This, coupled with a proclivity towards things new, often leads me to an early adopter posture toward techie products and concepts. One such acquaintance I made in the late 90s was text messaging. In fact, I evangelized its discreet convenience, referable memory, etc — compared to here-and-now voice calls to anyone who cared to listen (in context, it helped that it was free vs steeply priced airtime!), and remain an above-average user to this day.

I must add that I did not register in the first wave of DNC, even if sympathetic to the indignation on unwanted calls. My reasons were largely professional. At its root, the credo of open communication (read: taking calls from unknown numbers) was an occupational hazard. In reality, it was a goldmine of information - it helped me get bad news (the variety you want to know ASAP) promptly more than once, plus rudimentary competitive intelligence; not to forget insights best derived from listening to the occasional irate customer. All of this strengthened my resolve to stick it out amidst the onslaught of sundry telemarketers.

Unfortunately, it seems to be going from bad to worse. It is almost an incipient reality of modern life that text-messaged advertisements carpet-bomb your Inbox every day. Pesky calls too, after an initial decline, have reared their head again. The vanguard is clearly SMS though, and the biggest violator real estate firms and agents: I am subject to a dozen messages daily, in complete disregard of my tenuous pecuniary state! The bulk of these supposedly fantastic property deals are in assorted parts of Delhi NCR; but interspersed are offers from Jaipur's Tonk Road, plots in the Uttarakhand hills, down to faraway Mysore and back-of-beyond. It makes me wonder if only geographic bounds have been transcended or those of sanity too. Or perhaps it is my middle-class upbringing that limits me to imagine an investor class that takes realty, or similar sizeable, investment decisions based on an SMS exchange!

The uninvited texts wear other colours too. In fact, had it not been for the glaring segmentation error (maybe they score intention, not ability, as an explanation for ignoring my financial position) in real estate ads, or those ridiculous friendship helplines, I would have thought a grand design in peddling me travel packages, hairfall cure (ouch) or zero-effort fat-removal therapy (I even got one for a 10 yr US visa in 10 days for 10K from some random Churchgate agent last week). Frankly, if only less prolific, it would have been funny.

When viewed within a broader context, the apparent helplessness of the Indian consumer to overcome this mess only adds to the general scam-season discontent. True to form, an irresolute UPA-2 has shed hardly a tear for the revised-twice-yet-missed 31 Mar deadline. Strangely, their blundering ways have come to their rescue. With public attention on other more ignominious spectacles, they have actually been able slip by without saying almost anything.

Deadlines apart, given its declared intentions to snoop on all voice-data exchanges in the country (recall the BlackBerry tangle), the Government can hardly argue that policy formulation or erecting filter infrastructure are insurmountable asks. Likewise, allocating a special telemarketing code for landlines, or cracking down on rogue telecom companies that continue to sell bulk SMS deals should not be too tough to execute. Yet, the ongoing spectacle of DoT-TRAI ping-pong on the issue inspires little confidence in their appreciation for the task at hand or the seriousness of their commitment to it.

No one, of course, can fault the Government if it avers that implementing a foolproof DNC (or do-call) registry, including critical security pieces, is a complex exercise. I am just not sure why it should remain open-ended and a shifting goalpost (which sounds counter-intuitive in the context of technology). The nation needs a quantifiable plan. Or perhaps Mr Sibal needs to be text-blitzed to realise this...

Of Dreams and Skylines

Urban infrastructure in Delhi NCR is a question mark that lurks around corners, like a sly predator waiting to ambush you in an unguarded moment. Step into Gurgaon where I live, and it will be clear what I mean: global and gobar are concurrent realities that, despite the paradox, coexist peacefully in Millennium City. Its tall office towers with imposing green-glass facades, or glitzy spoilt-for-choice malls, may not be engineering marvels, but they veritably showcase New India's ambitious dreams. Soar high in their alluring promise and you are in for a rude awakening — the sickening grind of your car's underbelly being tested on sludge-filled, potholed dirt-tracks that masquerade as the city's roads. The contrast is telling — the government's criminal apathy in a revenue-rich district is obvious. Yet, it also betrays the resigned compromise its denizens have made with the contempt sarkari-tantra displays for its upkeep.

This dichotomous backdrop made a piece in HT Comments (Our Forbidden Cities, Francesco Giavazzi) on Monday especially interesting. Its moot point was that youth (bigger dreams, more energy to realise them) provide the power — and urban infrastructure the vehicle — for development. The logic virtually anoints cities as playgrounds for progress, with benefits that ultimately accrue to large populations. Giavazzi argued that such transformation, while difficult, is achievable, predictably citing Shanghai's example (I say ‘predictably’ without malice — a visit back in 2006 had convinced me that anyone struggling to grasp the meaning of ‘economies of scale’ merely had to spend a day in China's showpiece city). The part left almost unsaid in the article was how India does not really have much of a choice in the matter — at risk is the souring of our much-vaunted demographic dividend itself.

Going beyond Shanghai, the point is that better utilisation of scarce urban land can have significant economic and social benefits for our country at large. This is true in the sense of upgrading our Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns as well as replacing haphazard growth in larger cities with a more planned and sustainable one. On the first, consider how amenities — or even look and feel — in city #100 in the US compare with NYC (notwithstanding the scale) and see the gaping hole between even Delhi and Patna. I say this not simply enamoured of downtown skyscrapers in any American city of note, but of the economic realities that support such growth, and resulting quality of life for citizenry that results from it (including but not limited to impact on curtailing migration that seems to so upset the Sheila Dikshits and Raj Thackerays of the world, assuming they actually believe in their flawed diatribes).

Suggestions abound on the second aspect too, namely making the most of our larger cities. For instance, consider replacing Sarojini Nagar's ubiquitous sarkari structures with modern high-rise apartment complexes. An important point is that this model benefits not just the moneyed — its erstwhile civil servant occupants too would enjoy (at marginal cost) facilities they often bemoan 'overpaid MBA types' for accessing. Similarly, better intra-NCR connectivity can do more for Noida's realty prices than bombarding my highly-leveraged self with twenty unsolicited SMS offers a day (last I checked, the much-promised KMP Expressway was set to miss its fourth revised deadline). Nor is such lackadaisical execution a hallmark of the national capital alone — Mumbai's pride and joy, the Sea Link, is grossly over budget, behind schedule, and barely half complete.

No doubt there are other larger, more contentious issues. Land policy, the subject of a typically token recent demonstration by the ruling party's Gen Secy cum PM-in-waiting, is prime among them. The need to stamp out corruption in implementation has similarly hogged headlines. Yet, Gurgaon is living proof of the inadequacy of our urban planning policy — either non-existent or hopelessly delegated to private developers — to support the growth of infrastructure, let alone stimulate it; and an educated citizenry's failure to propel the government to action. I hope for our sake, and our children, that at least one of these changes soon.