How Not to Interview Joseph Stiglitz

The interview of Joseph Stiglitz aired by CNBC TV-18 on 14 January belongs in every Journalism School's How Not To Do It List.

Stiglitz, perhaps the most intellectually stimulating economist since John Kenneth Galbraith, has been travelling through India. He began by saying what he found interesting in his forays through the coutryside: it was peaceful, "bucolic," but man and beast were in "confrontation". There was a considerable increase in prosperity.

The interviewer flashed a grin and ignored those observations.

Obviously going down a pre-written list of questions, she asked about the slowing growth of Indian GDP, the level of government deficit spending, the wisdom of official "big ticket entitlement programmes" like the one offering a minimum guarantee of employment to the rural poor, the Eurozone problems, and the state of the American economy.

To each question, Stiglitz offered a comment that merited further discussion, but the interviewer seemed not to understand what he was saying. He was firmly in support of the rural employment guarantee scheme; she did not ask why.

It was like watching a journalistic version of Johnny Depp's Ed Wood, the director who produced what is widely recognized as Hollywood's very worst films. She went cheerfully down her list of questions until time ran out and the interview ended abruptly. With a farewell flash of teeth she wished him well on his trip through India.

Perhaps I exaggerate how bad the interview was, but having just returned from a two-week trip through India that allowed a glimpse of the reality that Stiglitz was exploring, it seemed to highlight the generally mindless quality of much of Indian journalism.

My trip to Bangalore, Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Varanasi and Goa was purely as a tourist, but on view everywhere was the stark inescapable reality of massive poverty, almost chaotic disorder, and conditions of filth that indict those of us who are educated and well-off of basic political incompetence.

It was infuriating at one level, ennobling at another. There is nothing worse than seeing little children beg, or working at menial jobs. How could so many of our so-called leaders and minders steal the money meant to help them, as indeed, they have been doing for over six decades? It is a crime worse than any other in our statutes, yet those responsible are allowed a pretended honour.

What was humbling was that poverty lay so lightly on people, that they had a grace I have not found anywhere else in the world. In affluent countries the poor are wretched, degraded. In other poor countries, whether in Africa, the rest of Asia or the Americas, the endurance of the poor is bitter; in India, they seem to have a glow of faith, a connection with divinity that uplifts the observer.

It would have been interesting to hear what Stiglitz had to say.      

The Strongest Lokpal

Anna Hazare and Team have confused and confounded discussions about the proposed Lokpal by equating its strength with executive independence and authority.

They have talked of “wiping out corruption” by enabling the Lokpal to investigate all branches and levels of government, including the Prime Minister and the judiciary, and giving it the power to suspend officials on its own findings, before conviction in a court of law. To give clout to that unconstitutional combination of police and judicial functions, Team Anna wants to put the Central Bureau of Investigation under the Lokpal.

No other country has such an institution. In fact, there is only one parallel in all of history: the Grand Inquisitor of the Catholic Church who loosed murderous persecutions on the hapless people of medieval Europe.

Unlimited and fawning television coverage of Team Anna has prevented anyone from questioning its fundamental premise that a “strong” Lokpal requires a new overweening power centre within the constitutional structure of the Indian State.

Such a power centre would be prone to corruption, and if the Lokpal turned out to be an ambitious and unprincipled individual, it would open the door to an entirely new level of evil, subverting the democratic system.

The strongest Lokpal could be one with no executive, police or quasi-judicial functions, but one empowered to investigate, report and recommend action on any matter under the purview of the State.

Appropriately staffed, such a Lokpal would have enormous moral power. Every other organ of government, every official, would feel the pressure to be honest. Far more than an institution that joins in the scrum of power, such a Lokpal would be an effective check on corruption.

India's Post Colonial Overhang

Just as government spokesmen voice the suspicion that foreigners are behind the Koodankulam anti-nuclear protest, comes the news that the rules restricting foreign investment in Indian media organizations are to be relaxed.

Will the real Government of India please identify itself?

No one has explained why foreign investment in the mass media is being  "liberalized" now. If it is merely to show that there is no policy paralysis in Delhi, it is ill-advised. Having foreigners in control of our mass media will unnecessarily complicate a task that must be taken in hand sooner or later: getting rid of the country's massive post-colonial cultural and intellectual overhang. It has remained largely unexamined, except in travelogues by people like Dom Moraes and V.S Naipaul.


The failure to address the issue is obvious in the embarrassingly low quality of our English language newspapers. (For some examples see here, here, here. here, here and here) It is also evident in the imported sewage spread 24/7 by "entertainment" broadcasters.

A quick scan of the Western films and television series on offer will show that I am not engaging in verbal overkill. It's mostly vampires, werewolves, zombies and serial killers (under which category I would classify the James Bond, Rambo, and other cowboy fantasies). These genres reflect the Western socio-economic experience (especially the relationship with the rest of the world), and have no cultural meaning for Indian audiences.

What pases for Indian cultural content on television is pitiable. There are soaps with lavishly overdressed characters, and low-quality retelling of stories from the epics. There is a cluster of channels providing wall to wall religion. There is the Cartoon Network with adventures of "Chota Bhim" and the blue boy "Kris." (This should effectively kill any possibility that the Indian devotional tradition, the sheet-anchor of our civilization over the millennia, will continue in the young.)

With the honourable exception of Aamir Khan's movies, most of the output from "Bollywood" is no longer "Indian" unless the term is stretched to include outright trash subversive of our cultural mores. (I have too little acquaintance with films in other Indian languages to make any judgment.)

As for "news," all the major English language broadcasters are hooked up to foreign companies and reflect their biases. Only Doordarshan tries to analyze international news but makes a hash of it, mainly because producers seem to have little knowledge of the subjects. (A talk show about the India-China relationship had as panelists a Chinese journalist spouting the Beijing line and a JNU academic who agreed with everything he said.)

The fact that nothing in our media environment provides an Indian perspective on the world is an untenable situation for a democracy with a growing role in international affairs. If the opening up of our mass media to foreign investment is intended to signal to the now dominant Western elite that India will be a team player and will not seek to have an independent view of things, it is extremely shortsighted.

The acute political, economic and environmental problems now threatening world order indicate that industrial Western Civilization is in a state of terminal crisis. India's traditional civilization, as Mahatma Gandhi pointed out in Hind Swaraj, offers a path of escape; in fact, it is the only one.      

Dim Witted Strategy

“Pragati: The Indian National Interest Review” is the publishing equivalent of the Flipkart.com commercial in which grotesque kids pretend to be adults.

Although it describes itself as “a publication on strategic affairs, economic policy and governance,” the contents of the monthly tend to be a strange muddle of right-wing ideology and – how can I put it kindly – stupidity. Much of the writing is by NRI academics in Singapore, Canada and Britain, and the funding of the evidently well-endowed non-profit is a mystery.

The magazine’s website currently has a piece that declares, “Food Security Bill and the Bhagwad (sic) Gita: There is a connection between the two.”

What is the connection?

It lies in a quotation from one Pratap Bhanu Mehta who in a 2003 book, The Burden of Democracy “identified” the following “trait” of the Indian State:

“The Indian state almost never evaluated policy by consequences, almost always by its own intent; if the tribunal of its own intentions had been satisfied, nothing else mattered. If it thought rent control helped the poor get housing, or curbs on investment were producing more prosperity, this was so regardless of whether it, in fact, did; particular projects were a success simply because the state had made an allocation for them, not because they reached their intended targets and beneficiaries. The habit of state officials to respond to every query — say why child labour exists — is simply to say that a law exists to deal with the problem. This is not just a last-ditch defensive gesture, it is symptomatic of the way in which the state can become oblivious to the concrete efforts of its own action or inaction. The state has internalized the message of the Bhagwad (sic) Gita: only intentions and not consequences matter.”

An anonymous Pragati editor adds approvingly: “The NAC’s Food Security Bill is in total consonance with the message of the Bhagwad (sic) Gita: only intentions and not consequences matter. How can anyone ever argue with that? The NAC wins. India loses.”

I wonder how many people saw that bit of nonsense before it was immortalized online. Did no one object to the silly caricaturing of the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita, one of humanity’s grandest statements of philosophy and faith?

Austerity Measures Could Lead to Depression

Economic austerity measures imposed by governments could land the world in a Great Depression.

That is the unvarnished warning from two parts of the UN System that usually have very different takes on policy matters: the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In a new Policy Brief, UNCTAD has explained that warning. It noted that because of lack of consumer demand several advanced economies were “hovering on the brink of a second bout of recession,” but their “political attention" had "turned to ways to cut fiscal deficits and reduce the domestic public debt.” If they continued with that effort it would make it impossible for the private sector to grow and "de-leverage" its own massive debt.

Without “a rapid policy turnaround” said UNCTAD, the world is “in danger of repeating the mistakes of the 1930s.”

“During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the United States had experienced “two sharp downturns in succession.” Recovery from the “first wave (August 1929 to March 1933),” began “after President F.D. Roosevelt took office, in 1933. However, another severe downturn set in during 1937-38. That second downturn, UNCTAD said, was the result of “poor government policy, especially the decision to tighten up fiscal policy too early in the recovery.”

UNCTAD called on countries “threatened by recession and deflation” to “avoid intensified austerity measures because these are unlikely to produce the intended outcomes and could propel the world into a renewed bout of recession, or even into an outright depression.” (It did not address the possibility of hyperinflation if governments continued massive stimulus policies by simply printing new money.)

Given today’s highly integrated world economy, the “impact will not be limited to specific sectors or to well-defined regions.” Further, a “lost decade” for the world economy would “throw into question the ability of democratic governments to tackle the most urgent challenges of our age.”

Not to mince words, that is a warning that a Depression could bring fascist demagogues to power.

Kim Il Jong's Death

It is now eight hours after the North Korean announcement that Dear Leader Kim Il Jong died last Saturday. Since then, both BBC and CNN have suspended normal programming and broadcast nothing but analysis and commentary about this unexpected development. (Dear Leader was known to be ailing, but his death was generally supposed to be years away.)

Indian television broadcasters initially took note of the North Korean dictator's death in crawlers, then as a back item in the headline announcements led by cricket, and finally, as important news. I have yet to see any attempt to explain the importance of the news, so the higher billing was probably purely imitative of foreign broadcasters.

Why is the news important?

The primary reason is that it introduces a new level of uncertainty in a region of high and multi-layered tensions. Pyongyang has been given to a high degree of paranoia since the 1950-1953 Korean War, and in recent years it has repeatedly raised the spectre of war in response to what it sees as aggressive moves by South Korea and the United States. It has specifically held out the prospect of nuclear war, the capacity for which it has developed, along with missiles capable of hitting Japan, its other hated enemy in the region.

The "Great Successor" to the dead dictator is his son, the almost unknown Kim Il Un, reported to be in his thirties, with little experience in matters of State. His relationship with the military, the centre of power in North Korea, is unknown.

There are many imponderables in the current situation. What might happen if the Great Successor encountered challengers? How would China react if the ensuing power struggle threatened its strategic stake in the country?

What effect will these developments have at a time when economic factors are threatening to destabilize China itself? In recent years the number of "mass incidents" -- as Beijing describes widespread public unrest -- has been running over 180,000 annually. The sizable "village" of Wukan (population 20,000) in southern China has been on strike since September, and it has managed to drive out the local Communist Party functionaries. Throughout the once-bustling southern provinces the rage of workers has been erupting in increasingly larger demonstrations as factories close for want of foreign orders.

If Wukan sets the pattern for the national unrest that will be inevitable if the world dips further into a recession, we could be seeing events of earth-shaking significance. There are some 160 million migrant workers in China who have been deliberately kept as an underclass, without residential rights in cities and forced to live on hardscrabble wages.

What effects such changes will have on South Asia are also completely up in the air. With Pakistan on a razor's edge and Tibet in a slow boil, the chances of conflict are high. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh might be right in his belief that China does not intend to attack India. But what if conflicts in South Asia persuaded Beijing that it had no choice?

The possibility of war is certainly on the minds of Chinese leaders. AFP reported on 13 December that Chinese President Hu Jintao, speaking to the powerful Central Military Commission, had "urged the navy to prepare for military combat, amid growing regional tensions over maritime disputes and a US campaign to assert itself as a Pacific power." The speech was posted on an official web site, so it is not a case of Western sensationalism.

Where the Moon Don't Shine

The Secretary-General of the United Nations is not required to be an orator, and none of the 8 men who have held the office has been an inspiring public speaker. However, all except the incumbent, Ban Ki-moon, have had the good sense to deliver professionally written speeches; although generally soporific they did not make audiences wince, at least not in print. Ban’s speeches, even in print – perhaps especially in print – are squirm inducing, for he suffers from the fond belief that he can write his own material – and that he is funny.

The UN Press corps, except for Undiplomatic Times, has been generally kind in taking note of the disastrous consequences, but now Washington Post correspondent Colum Lynch, who blogs at Foreign Policy, has posted a priceless piece about Ban’s efforts at humor. In “It’s OK, You’re Allowed to Laugh,” he strings together some of the unbelievably awkward things Ban has said in his efforts at humor. It’s definitely worth a click.

 As I have had occasion to note in previous blogs, Ban imagines himself something of a songster. When still a Secretary-Geleral-elect, he appeared at the annual UN Correspondent’s Association Ball and droned out “Ban Ki-moon is coming to town” to the tune of the Santa Claus song. Colum records a more recent attempt to escape the bounds of prose:

“In an Oct. 2008 speech before the United Nations Association, Ban took inspiration from rap star and producer, Jay-Z, who was being honored for his humanitarian works, and delivered a rap homage to the association's then-president, William Leurs. ‘I will try to be a bit courageous and creative myself,’ Ban said. ‘Since one of the honorees is my man Jay-Z, I think I'll try his language tonight. It is a foreign language to me, but one which I love, so please bear with me’."

Global Classrooms are a cinch
With the help of Merrill Lynch
When you put the org in Google
Partnerships go truly gloooobal.
There is hope for Earth's salvation
With the Cisneros Foundation
With Jay-Z there's double strife
Life for children and water for life
Human health will get ahead
With the valiant work of (RED)
For the poor and doing good
Stays the job of Robin Hood
UN stays on the front burner
Thanks to our champ Ted Turner
And whole revolutions stem
From the work of UNIFEM.
But tonight my special shout-out
Goes to one I can't do without
We have travelled up and down
Frisco, Atlanta, Chicago town
Yes, the king of all the doers
Is my trusty friend Bill Luers
Bill, I cannot say goodbye
So take the floor and take a bow.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Ambassador Bill Luers.”

 Colum's piece ends on a note of pathos only UN correspondents can fully appreciate:
“In recent months, Ban, who was reelected this summer to serve a second five-year term as U.N. chief, likes to joke about the lukewarm support he receives at home. This is clearly one of Ban's favorite jokes, and he's used it more than once. Speaking in August at the Denver University Korbel School's annual dinner, Ban recalled "I was deeply honoured that the General Assembly supported my re-election. The vote was unanimous: 100 percent. But then a Korean reporter asked my wife how she would rate my work as a husband and father, she said, ‘Well, I'd give him 70 percent.' So I lodged a protest -- a strong protest. I thought my daughter might support me. But she said, ‘70 percent sounds rather generous.' So I have decided that my first priority for my second term is not foreign affairs-- it is domestic policy!

 "Ladies and germs, he'll be here all week. Make that five more years.”