Kandar Anubhuti

What Vel Began with the second crowing of the cock

(Till Simoniac Simon drilled Christ's rock)

& was ended by Longinus's lance

Muruga! Never thy peacock's dance.

Note- 

Vel Began was the ruler of the mountainous kingdom of Aykudi mentioned by Kapilar & Paranar. It may be that he deserted his wife- as Kovalan did Kanagi.

Jozef Beck & the fall of Poland

In 1938. at Munich, Czechoslovakia was split up. Hungary & Poland eagerly joined Germany in gobbling up portions of that unfortunate country. The Czechs had a pact with the Soviets but that was conditional on France honouring a similar commitment. Still, the Soviets did declare their willingness to send troops but Poland & Romania would not allow them passage. That was the end of 'collective security'. Henceforth, the big fish would eat the little fish before turning on each other. 

In 1939, it was Poland's turn. Germany, the Soviet Union & Slovakia divided up its territory. Britain & France declared war on Germany but did nothing very much to help Poland. It was taken over by Stalin over the course of the War and its immediate aftermath.

Why did the Poles not see this coming? How could they have been so blind?

Hitler had ended his non-aggression pact in April after the Brits said, in March, that they would give military assistance to Poland. Hitler had taken Lithuania's one sea port and hoped to blackmail Poland in a similar manner. In return for Poland becoming a satellite and joining the anti-Comintern alliance, Hitler would extend his non-aggression treaty. 

The Poles firmly believed that the Soviets & the Nazis were ideologically too far apart to ever ally together to gobble up Polish territory. However, it should have occurred to them that if a battle between Hitler & Stalin was inevitable, then they would rather duke it out on Polish soil. At the very least. they would want territorial buffers between each other.  Poland's peril was extreme.  Moreover, the gravity of the situation was known to its General Staff. This was because its codebreakers had cracked the German Enigma cipher & were aware of  menacing German troop movements. Yet, Poland refused to enter bilateral negotiations with the Soviets.They refused permission for Soviet troops to cross their territory despite pressure from UK & France. Their Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły famously said that while the Germans might take Poland's freedom, "the Russians will take our soul." 

On August 22, diplomats in Moscow became aware of the non-aggression pact between Hitler & Stalin. At that time, the Soviets & Mongolians were still fighting the Japs and thus it was not blindlingly obvious that the purpose of the pact was to carve up Eastern Europe. Still, the Poles were gambling on the Western powers being strong enough to deter not just Hilter but also Stalin. This was utterly mad. 

On 23/24 August 1939, the Nazis & the Soviets secretly agreed to divide up Poland and other territory in the region. Within hours of the pact being signed in Moscow, Hans Herwarth von Bittenfeld (a German diplomat opposed to Hitler stationed in Moscow) leaked the full text of the Secret Protocol to Charles Bohlen, a diplomat at the U.S. Embassy, who immediately cabled the details to Cordell Hull & thus FDR. Some say that FDR did not pass on this intelligence to the Brits so as to preserve neutrality. Others say that Soviet moles in the British Embassy in Washington suppressed it. It may also be that Britain wanted 'plausible deniability'- i.e. didn't want to know what they already suspected. After all, they had been careful to put in a secret clause in their pact with Poland which bound them to declare war only on Germany not the Soviet Union if it joined in. 

One reason to suppress the truth of the Molotov Ribbentrop pact was what Jofef Beck- the Polish Foreign Minister- had told the US ambassador that Polish morale would collapse if they thought the August 23 pact was a partition plan. The Allies wanted Poland to fight even if they didn't think fighting would do them any good. Moreover, it was helpful if the Western Leftists believed that the Soviet Union was only pretending to help Hilter. It was actually moving its own troops into position and would strike against the Axis when the time was right. 

A week after signing the pact, on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. On 17 September, one day after a Soviet–Japanese ceasefire came into effect after the Battles of Khalkhin Gol,[13] and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union approved the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact,[14] Stalin, stating concern for ethnic Ukrainians and Belarusians in Poland, ordered the Soviet invasion of Poland. By October 6, the Polish army had been defeated though a substantial resistance featuring the 'cursed soldiers' continued even into the first couple of years of the Soviet occupation.

It seems odd that nobody told the Poles of the threat they faced. Their Military Intelligence did not anticipate a two front war. Indeed, the Poles accepted at face value the Soviet's deceitful offer of help. Yet, alarm bells should have been ringing in Warsaw, when the UK formalised the March mutual assistance pact on 25 August, but with the inclusion of a secret protocol obliging them to fight only Hitler, not Stalin as well. 

Sadly, neither UK nor France could or would do anything to help Poland. Instead, they got them to delay mobilization by a day or two (though Poland had done a stealth mobilization) which appears to have materially weakened them. 

Some blame Poland's unpopular foreign minister- Jozef Beck- for Poland's woes. He was Pilsudski's man in Budapest, during their first war with the Soviets, and he laid the foundation for an alliance with Hungary- a revisionist power.  What this meant was that Czechoslovakia became vulnerable. If its neighbours took big bites out of it- which is what happened in 1938- then all borders became contestable. Interestingly, Horthy helped the Poles in some small ways when Hitler invaded. Sadly, both countries had doomed themselves. 

 As military attache in Paris in the 1922-23 Beck was suspected of being a spy. What was certain was that he was an obnoxious, abrasive, fellow with a prejudice against the French. Indeed, it is said, they asked him to leave. Ten years later, after he became foreign minister, the French continued to view him with suspicion & he continued to alienate everybody. His territorial claims against neighbouring countries caused them to distrust him.

At the time, many thought that the Poles were relying on the Kasprzycki–Gamelin Convention- a mutual defence pact- signed in May 19, 1939. According to this view, the French stabbed the Poles in the back by failing to put pressure on the Germans (apart from the useless 'Saar offensive'). But the agreement was full of holes which, the French Foreign Minister said, was designed to commit France to nothing substantial. Beck- always suspicious of the French- appears to have been somewhat gullible believing that French 'military honour' would oblige it to do something substantial. Sadly, France had no fucking military honour.

Perhaps, the Poles hoped that the Brits would twist the arm of the French & get them to go on the offensive. Sadly, Churchill, disgusted at his gobbling up a piece of Czechoslovakia had said in Parliament- :

The British and French Ambassadors visited Colonel Beck, or sought to visit him, the Foreign Minister, in order to ask for some mitigation in the harsh measures being pursued against Czechoslovakia about Teschen. The door was shut in their faces.

The French Ambassador was not even granted an audience and the British Ambassador was given a most curt reply by a political director. The whole matter is described in the Polish Press as a political indiscretion committed by those two Powers, and we are today reading of the success of Colonel Beck’s blow.

I am not forgetting, I must say, that it is less than twenty years ago since British and French bayonets rescued Poland from the bondage of a century and a half. I think it is indeed a sorry episode in the history of that country, for whose freedom and rights so many of us have had warm and long sympathy.

 The British foreign office- represented by Sir Howard Kennard- considered Beck to be too clever by half- i.e. a self-defeating intriguer- and distrusted the Polish Sanation elite as being proto-Nazi in their thinking. Ultimately, of course, Russia- however it was governed- had to be Britain's ally even if the gallant Poles paid the price. Still, some particularly stupid Britishers may have believed Stalin would respect the British interpretation of the Sikorski–Mayski pact- i.e. Poland mught get back its pre-War borders.  Within less than a year, in April 1943, Stalin used the pretext of the Polish government requesting an independent Red Cross investigation into the Katyn massacre—where Soviet secret police had executed over 20,000 Polish officers—to cut off ties with the Govt. in exile & build up an alternative Communist administration. Again and again, the 'cursed soldiers' (non-Communist Polish resistance) would be lured to their doom by false amnesties and other such tricks.  Stalin's combination of deceit and utter ruthlessness left him the master of Eastern Europe.

Sadly, it must be said, Poland's Jozef Beck bears some of the blame for this horrible outcome. 

Tarski's just semantics

The word 'Semantic' was coined in French (sémantique) around 1883 by linguist Michel Bréal- a student & translator of Bopp. It derived from the Ancient Greek word sēmantikos (significant), from sēmainein (to signify) and sēma (sign).

Breal's student, Sassure, profited from Buhler's work on Bhratrhari's Vyakyapadiya (metaphyiscal semantics) as opposed to the prakriya (algorithmic word formation) aspect of Vyakarana. Crucially, Bharthari's concept of 'sphota' informed Sassurre's structural approach to linguistic. This was either onomatodoxologically soteriological (nadabrahma- the name is higher than what is named) or a psychological/aesthetic 'holophrases' or 'epiphany', or else was metaphysical in an idealistic manner. However, it was perfectly possible for it to be part and parcel of a purely pragmatic, or materialist, hermeneutic (which, arguably, is what purva mimasa is). 

Coupling Bhrarhari's 'sphota' with Abinavagupta's theory or 'dhvani' is sufficient to undergird French Symbolism which, in English literature, informs Symons, on the one hand, &, more suggestively, the Celtic twilight, on the other. 

Meanwhile, the logicism- or anti-psychologism, of Frege, Russell, Witless & so forth- soon stumbled upon its own aporias or unrestricted comprehension- or took a cropper upon the ha-has of its own self-deluding seamlessness. 

Russell- a Whig grandee by birth and a master of English Prose- turned to politics & social reform. Whitehead moved towards a 'process' philosophy congenial to the idealistic British Hegelian.

Meanwhile, the Poles were influenced by Husserl's Logical Investigations- in particular his notion of 'semantic categories' which Tarski further developed and his "pure morphology of meanings' which sought to establish a priori laws to dictate how different linguistic categories (such as names, propositions, and logical connectives) can be combined to avoid nonsense (Unsinn) and build structurally well-formed expressions. There was also the concept of "fulfillment" or "satisfaction" (Erfüllung) used to bridge meaning and truth which is common to Husserl's phenomenology & Tarski's semantic notion of truth. It is said that Brentano influenced Polish logical philosophy & this explains its commonalities with Husserl. From the Indian point of view, Husserl's 'reine Formenlehre der Bedeutungen' is like Yogyatā (logical compatibility) and Ākāṅkṣā (mutual syntactic expectancy) in Nyaya & Vyakarana. Husserl's later transcendental idealism- which views pure consciousness as the absolute foundation that constructs and gives meaning to reality- looks similar to Bhartṛhari  Śabda-Brahman. However, Husserl's work is mainly compositionalist whereas Bhratrhari was a radical holist (Akhaṇḍa-vākyavāda) & mystic.

Tarski- the father of Model Theory- wrote as follows in his seminal 'The Semantic Conception of Truth: and the Foundations of Semantics'

THE MAIN PROBLEM-A SATISFACTORY DEFINITION OF TRUTH.

At a later date 'satisficing', in Econ, would be the polar opposite of 'optimisation'. What is satisfactory is merely what is sufficient for a particular purpose. I was a 'satisfactory' student of mathematics, for the purpose of becoming an Accountant. But it isn't true that I know math even if, for professional purposes, I use it just as well or as badly as my colleagues. 

What is satisfactory, is a matter of Economics- Supply & Demand. If the supply of good mathematicians into Accountancy rises, I would no longer be considered satisfactory. I would be considered an innumerate lump of shit who should be sacked at the first convenient opportunity.  

Our discussion will be centered around the notion of truth.

There are many such for different purposes. Around this time, Mahatma Gandhi was doing 'satyagraha'- 'struggle for truth'- which consisted of doing stupid shit in the belief that stupid shit has magical powers.  

The main problem is that of giving a satisfactory definition of this notion, i.e., a definition which is materially adequate and formally correct.

Tarksi, Godel, Turing, Church, Gentzen et al. were first class thinkers and innovators. They may not have got everything right but- like Brouwer, Weyl, Heytig etc.- their work was very useful in a manner few ordinary people, like me, could have anticipated even four decades ago

But such a formulation of the problem, because of its generality, cannot be considered unequivocal, and requires some further comments.

How to 'restrict comprehension' so paradoxes don't arise? You can rid yourself of a notion of Truth Simpliciter with reference to some language of your own invention- with respect to yourself alone. But, if the thing can be used by anybody, you can't prevent the thing coming back in one form or another.  Obviously, if you take care to make it useless, nobody will fucking use it. But if it is useful enough to do addition and subtraction, some fucking Kripke will invoke the Knaster-Tarski fixed-point theorem on a set-theoretic metalanguage to bend things towards Brouwer & Heytig and so as to make it more useful yet. 

order to avoid any ambiguity, we must first specify the conditions under which the definition of truth will be considered adequate from the material point of view.

Tarski was at the forefront of his field and what he considered 'adequate' would be more than enough for most people. 

The desired definition does not aim to specify the meaning of a familiar word used to denote a novel notion; on the contrary, it aims to catch hold of the actual meaning of an old notion.

Which had been greatly clarified by mathematical logic. 

We must then characterize this notion precisely enough to enable anyone to determine whether the definition actually fulfills its task. 

We may be content to treat crucial concepts as 'primitives'- i.e. leave them undefined. Mathematicians must be stricter. 

 Secondly, we must determine on what the formal correctness of the definition depends.

It depends on our determination. Tarksi showed that first order logic can't have unicity (categoricity) but second order could do so by quantifying over every possible subset of the domain, it binds the induction principle to the literal power set of the domain. This leaves no room for non-standard, rogue elements.

On the other hand, categoricity shifts the emphasis every from meaning to structure. This begs the question, if the structure is the same, does it really matter if meanings are different? Isn't this 'just semantics?' In Hindu thought, we have something similar. Does it matter that 'matam' (dogma) is different, if the vigyan (praxis/science) is the same? Tarski's recursive definition of satisfaction was in terms of a structure satisfying a formula. A theory T is a set of sentences. According to Tarski, a "model" of T is any structure \(\mathcal{M}\) where every sentence in T evaluates to true If a theory is κ-categorical (cardinality k), then for Tarski's semantics there is only one possible way to construct a universe of size κ that makes the axioms true. The Łoś–Vaught test  is a criterion for a theory to be complete, unable to be augmented without becoming inconsistent. It states that if a first-order satisfiable theory is κ-categorical and has no finite model, then it is complete. Thus, categorical uniqueness at size κ forces observational (elementary) equivalence across all sizes. A denotational semantics where denotational equality perfectly matches operational observational equivalence is called fully abstract. This has given rise to the notion of full compeleteness. It appears that game semantics can provide a unifying mathematical framework for natural & computer languages, by modeling communication as an interactive, multi-player game. This helps logicians and computer scientists understand the underlying rules of meaning in both human discourse and software systems. 

Everybody else had always understood that meaning was about gaining the means to get cool shiny stuff. It turned out computers can help in that department. Tarksi wasn't a useless tosser after all. 

 Thus, we must specify the words or concepts which we wish to use in defining the notion of truth; and we must also give the formal rules to which the definition should conform. Speaking more generally, we must describe the formal structure of the language in which the definition will be given. The discussion of these points will occupy a considerable portion of the first part of the paper. 2. THE EXTENSION OF THE TERM "TRUE." We begin with some remarks regarding the extension of the concept of truth which we have in mind here. The predicate "true" is sometimes used to refer to psychological phenomena such as judgments or beliefs, sometimes to certain physical objects, namely, linguistic expressions and specifically sentences, and sometimes to certain ideal entities called "propositions." By "sentence" we understand here what is usually meant in grammar by "declarative sentence"; as regards the term "proposition," its meaning is notoriously a subject of lengthy disputations by various philosophers and logicians, and it seems never to have been made quite clear and unambiguous. For several reasons it appears most convenient to apply the term "true" to sentences, and we shall follow this course.5 Consequently, we must always relate the notion of truth, like that of a sentence, to a specific language; for it is obvious that the same expression which is a true sentence in one language can be false or meaningless in another. Of course, the fact that we are interested here primarily in the notion of truth for sentences does not exclude the possibility of a subsequent extension of this notion to other kinds of objects.

You can avoid 'intensional paradoxes' by making sure extensions are well defined. But this means that whereas first order semantics is complete, second order semantics is not. Truth outruns proof. 

3. THE MEANING OF THE TERM "TRUE." Much more serious difficulties are connected with the problem of the meaning (or the intension) of the concept of truth.

It has been shown that Liebniz's L2 is like modern second order semantics (which uses Liebniz's law for identity) except that it is intensional (appealing to a notion of containment) rather than extensional simply. 

The word "true," like other words from our everyday language, is certainly not unambiguous. And it does not seem to me that the philosophers who have discussed this concept have helped to diminish its ambiguity. In works and discussions of philosophers we meet many different conceptions of truth and falsity, and we must indicate which conception will be the basis of our discussion. We should like our definition to do justice to the intuitions which adhere to the classical Aristotelian conception of truth-intuitions which find their expression in the well-known words of Aristotle's Metaphysics:  To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, is true.

Tarski could have a great impact on American thought precisely because he appealed to the essential continuity of Western thought and gave a young country- thrust, against its will, into the leadership of the 'free world'- the confidence to side-step philosophical paradoxes and aporias in a pragmatic manner. 

If we wished to adapt ourselves to modern philosophical terminology, we could perhaps express this conception by means of the familiar formula: The truth of a sentence consists in its agreement with (or correspondence to) reality. (For a theory of truth which is to be based upon the latter formulation the term "correspondence theory'' has been suggested.) If, on the other hand, we should decide to extend the popular usage of the term "designate" by applying it not only to names, but also to sentences, and if we agreed to speak of the designate of sentences as "states of affairs," we could possibly use for the same purpose the following phrase: A sentence is true if it designates an existing state of affairs.6 However, all these formulations can lead to various misunderstandings, for none of them is sufficiently precise and clear (though this applies much less to the original Aristotelian formulation than to either of the others); at any rate, none of them can be considered a satisfactory definition of truth. It is up to us to look for a more precise expression of our intuitions.

Since Aristotle, there was an awareness that 'akreibia- seeking greater precision than the subject matter allowed- was dangerous. Tarksi's 'economia' consisted in stiputlaing just enough precision to make everything more useful. This was not C.S Pierce's view but Tarski credited him with laying the foundations for the theory of relations (logic of relatives).  

More impressive yet was Tarski's embrace of Henkin who showed  categoricity in second-order logic is entirely dependent on how we define a "property" or "set." By changing that definition, Henkin stripped second-order logic of its unicity, collapsed it back into a variant of first-order logic, and sparked an ongoing philosophical debate about what "true" logic really is. Quine, always suspicious of second order theory as set theory in sheep's clothing, insisted that true logic must be purely structural and non-committal about the inventory of the universe (akin to first-order predicate logic). Because Henkin semantics relies on a comprehension schema that mimics the existence of sets (even if a restricted subset of them), Quine would still view it as bordering on set theory or higher-order mathematics rather than pure, austere logic. Tarski & Henkin developed cylindric algebra (algebraization of first-order logic with equality) Quine's Predicate Functor Logic was a "modification of Bernays' modification of Tarski's cylindrical algebra". which eliminated bound variables using predicate functors. However, the loss of intuitive cross-referencing made the thing too cumbersome to be useful. 

Let us start with a concrete example. Consider the sentence "snow is white."

It is false. Snow is translucent. 

We ask the question under what conditions this sentence is true or false.

It is false in general. However 'the snow I am looking at right now appears white' may be true.  

It seems clear that if we base ourselves on the classical conception of truth, we shall say that the sentence is true if snow is white, and that it is false if snow is not white. Thus, if the definition of truth is to conform to our conception, it must imply the following equivalence: The sentence "snow is white" is true if, and only if, snow is white. Let me point out that the phrase "snow is white" occurs on the left side of this equivalence in quotation marks, and on the right without quotation marks. On the right side we have the sentence itself, and on the left the name of the sentence. Employing the medieval logical terminology we could also say that on the right side the words "snow is white" occur in suppositio formalis, and on the left in suppositio materialis. It is hardly necessary to explain why we must have the name of the sentence, and not the sentence itself, on the left side of the equivalence. For, in the first place, from the point of view of the grammar of our language, an expression of the form "X is true" will not become a meaningful sentence if we replace in it 'X' by a sentence or by anything other than a name-  since the subject of a sentence may be only a noun or an expression functioning like a noun. And, in the second place, the fundamental conventions regarding the use of any language require that in any utterance we make about an object it is the name of the object which must be employed, and not the object itself. In consequence, if we wish to say something about a sentence, for example, that it is true, we must use the name of this sentence, and not the sentence itself. It may be added that enclosing a sentence in quotation marks is by no means the only way of forming its name. For instance, by assuming the usual order of letters in our alphabet, we can use the following expression as the name (the description) of the sentence "snow is white": the sentence constituted bg three words, the first of which consists of the 19th, 14th, 15th, and 23rd letters, the second of the 9th and 19th letters, and the third of the 23rd, 8th, 9th, 20th, and 5th letters of the English alphabet. We shall now generalize the procedure which we have applied above. Let us consider an arbitrary sentence; we shall replace it by the letter 'p.' We form the name of this sentence and we replace it by another letter, say 'X.' We ask now what is the logical relation between the two sentences "X is true" and 'p.' It is clear that from the point of view of our basic conception of truth these sentences are equivalent. In other words, the following equivalence holds: (T) X is true if, and only if, p. We shall call any such equivalence (with 'p' replaced by any sentence of the language to which the word "true" refers, and 'X' replaced by a name of this sentence) an "equivalence of the form (T)." Now at last we are able to put into a precise form the conditions under which we will consider the usage and the definition of the term "true" as adequate from the material point of view: we wish to use the term "true" in such a way that all equivalences of the form (T) can be asserted, and we shall call a definition of truth "adequate" if all these equivalences follow from it. It should be emphasized that neither the expression (T) itself (which is not a sentence, but only a schema of a sentence) nor any particular instance of the form (T) can be regarded as a definition of truth. We can only say that every equivalence of the form (T) obtained by replacing 'p' by a particular sentence, and 'X' by a name of this sentence, may be considered a partial definition of truth, which explains wherein the truth of this one individual sentence consists. The general definition has to be, in a certain sense, a logical conjunction of all these partial definitions. (The last remark calls for some comments. A language may admit  the construction of infinitely many sentences; and thus the number of partial definitions of truth referring to sentences of such a language will also be infinite. Hence to give our remark a precise sense we should have to explain what is meant by a "logical conjunction of infinitely many sentences"; but this would lead us too far into technical problems of modern logic.)

To cut a long story short, a name is just a name, not the thing itself. You may cally your daughter Angela but she may be diabolical. We may give the name of truth to things which are anything but. This may be for a protocol bound reason. Thus, OJ was innocent of murder according to criminal justice but was guilty of murder according to civil law.  

5. TRUTH AS A SEMANTIC CONCEPT. I should like to propose the name "the semantic conception of truth" for the conception of truth which has just been discussed. Semantics is a discipline which, speaking loosely, deals with certain relations between expressions of a language and the objects (or "states of affairs") "referred to" by those expressions.

Semantics is 'sematntics' as people used to say back when I was young.  

As typical examples of semantic concepts we may mention the concepts of designation, satisfaction, and definition as these occur in the following examples: the expression "the father of his country" designates (denotes) George Washington; snow satisfies the sentential function (the condition) "x is white"; the equation "2-x = 1" defines (uniquely determines) the number 1/2. While the words "designates," "satisfies," and "defines" express relations (between certain expressions and the objects "referred to" by these expressions), the word "true" is of a different logical nature: it expresses a property (or denotes a class) of certain expressions, viz., of sentences. However, it is easily seen that all the formulations which were given earlier and which aimed to explain the meaning of this word (cf. Sections 3 and 4) referred not only to sentences themselves, but also to objects "talked about" by these sentences, or possibly to "states of affairs" described by them. And, moreover, it turns out that the simplest and the most natural way of obtaining an exact definition of truth is one which involves the use of other semantic notions, e.g., the notion of satisfaction. It is for these reasons that we count the concept of truth which is discussed here among the concepts of semantics, and the problem of defining truth proves to be closely related to the more general problem of setting up the foundations of theoretical semantics.

by 'just semantics'- i.e. nothing useful or true.  

It is perhaps worth while saying that semantics as it is conceived in this paper (and in former papers of the author) is a sober and modest discipline which has no pretensions of being a universal patent-medicine for all the ills and diseases of mankind, whether imaginary or real. You will not find in semantics any remedy for decayed teeth or illusions of grandeur or class conflicts. Nor is semantics a device for establishing that everyone except the speaker and his friends is speaking nonsense. 

Which is why the 'ordinary language' philosophers rebelled against Tarksi though he was perfectly happy to see natural languages as semantically closed. The problem is that his 'Convention T' seems useless or uninformative at least as far as human- or even LLM' artificial- intelligences- are concenred. However, Theorem Provers do use formal, truth-conditional, logic. Tarski, after all, was a mathematician first and last. 

Why was the Second Five Year Plan such a disaster?

Around Christmas, in 1954, Nehru visited the ISI campus. He made the following note-

I have been to the Indian Statistical Institute today and spent about two and a half hours there. I met all the foreign experts and statisticians who had gathered there in considerable numbers.

These included, D.D. Degtavar and MJ. Rubinstein from USSR- whose views Nehru largely adopted- as well as Charles Bettelheim, a French Marxist, and Richard Godwin, an American Leftist who had taken refuge in Cambridge. 

Professor Frisch was unfortunately unwell and in bed. However, I met him in his bedroom. So far as the others were concerned, we met in a group.

None of these 'foreign experts' knew anything at all about India. But neither did the Indians involved because they weren't business people or farmers. How could their Plan fail to fail? 

2. In the course of our talks various points were made. I am mentioning some here.

3. The principal point on which emphasis was laid was that it would not be possible for these statistical labours concerning the Second Five Year Plan to bear fruit during the next few months.

Because those involved knew nothing about the country except that Diarrhoea was a way of life there.  

They would require from twelve to eighteen months to produce any satisfactory result.

It did start in April 1956. Sadly, it was shit. A bunch of foreigners can't find out things about a country which its own people were almost completely ignorant of.  

Of course, some kind of very preliminary note could be prepared in the course of the next three months and they propose to do so.

Why not get preliminary notes from people who actually knew something about the country.  

But this note would only be a general indication of the lines of approach.

Based on ignorance 

4. Therefore, it was suggested that the preparation of the Second Five Year Plan, as a whole, should be delayed.

These guys were so clueless, they didn't have even a plan for a plan.  

For the present, an interim plan should be aimed at. This would be for the first year of the second five year period. Meanwhile, the fuller plan should be worked up.

Once you know your budget, you can make plans. It is wise to plan for different scenarios because there may be an unexpected revenue shortfall or a cost escalation. Nehru had brought in a bunch of eggheads who didn't know the country and who hadn't ever run an enterprise. They could come up with a plan but it was certain to be utterly crap.

5. It was important that the Second Five Year Plan should not be given any final shape till these social and statistical studies were completed.

If you don't have the resources to do 'social and statistical studies', just focus on budgeting. Fuck planning.  

Also, it was important that this Second Five Year Plan should not start off on the wrong foot.

That's what happened.  

If it takes a wrong direction, then it will be difficult to reverse it.

See above.  

It was also bad to proceed on some ad hoc basis or on guess work. Therefore, the direction should be right.

It was wrong.  

The interim plan for a year would give that direction and work would proceed while the fuller plan was in course of preparation.

What this amounts to is- do stupid shit for a year and, during that time, make plans for doing stupider shit in the following years unless you run out of money.  

6. This preparation of what might be called the real plan would require a great deal of help and cooperation from engineers, technical experts, the Reserve Bank, industries and national laboratories.

What about businessmen- i.e. guys who knew about planning and budgeting and how to turn a profit?  

The statistical group added, what was obvious, that it would be essential for them to have the closest cooperation with the Planning Commission.

Which ought to have been subject to the Finance Ministry because plans are what have to change when budgetary projections change.  

7. Everyone who spoke laid stress on planning being primarily on the physical level 

It was so shit that inflation rose 

and not merely to be an allocation on the financial basis.

When the money ran out, the Plan had to be scaled down.  

Finance, of course, counted. But it should come in at a later stage when the physical objectives were defined.

Let us first decide what to buy before we ask what price it is and how much money we have.  The problem with poor people is that they are obsessed with how much things cost and how little money they have in their pockets. That's the reason they don't have nice mansions or super-yachts. 

In fact, planning at all levels should be on the physical plane to begin with.

But budgets must be in money terms. Depending on how much money you have and how much things cost, you can make a plan to buy specific items or a reasonably close substitute.  

Planning, of course, would include all aspects, including special planning for manpower.

Why not have a special plan for Godpower? 

8. Great importance was attached to a full geological survey of resources and sub-soil riches.

That would take a lot of money. Multinational corporations might be willing to do the prospecting in return for leases. But what about the people living on mineral rich land? Will they be compensated? Or will they be resettled in a Gulag? Nehru hadn't waded through a sea of blood to gain power. He was a barrister who won elections arranged by the British. If he tried to collectivize land, the Army- composed of the sons of landlords & kulaks- would slaughter him & his fellow shitheads.  

It was stated by one person there that so far as his knowledge went, only five per cent of the area of India had thus far been fully investigated from the geological point of view.

The Geological Survey of India was founded in 1851. Nehru did put extra resources into it but completely drove out private capital- both domestic and foreign. The burden of finding, mapping, and mining minerals fell entirely on state-owned Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) and the GSI. This monopoly choked out the competitive, high-risk venture capital that typically drives mineral discovery globally. GSI did shallow drilling & was technologically backward. It had to prioritise ground water & coal verification for PSUs. 

This investigation should be undertaken by the State as foreign investigators or private persons might not like to reveal everything they found.

Why would anybody reveal anything to a confiscatory state? Even bureaucrats would under-report so as to avoid having more work to do.  

9. While the full plan for the second period would be for five years, there should be annual plans for each of those five years and there should be continuous checking of results and correction of plan from time to time from the experience gained.

The Second Five Year plan did set some Soviet style physical targets- e.g. for  Finished Steel it was 4.3 million tons. The actual outcome was 2.4 million tons. Steel has long gestation. Coal pretty much hit its target. There's nothing wrong with quantititative targets or the use of input output matrices & critical path analysis. But such things have no magical properties.

10. It was stated that techniques were now available for solving almost all the problems that arose in planning.

There is only one problem with planning. The future is unknown.  

But this required time and full help from all concerned.

If you give me a week and plenty of help from all the people of the world, I will be able to tell you what will happen tomorrow. True, you will already have known what I will tell you for six days but what's a few days between friends? 

Professor Frisch

who knew nothing about India 

welcomed the decision of the Government to nationalize the Imperial Bank and to extend its operations in the rural areas.[6] He said that good as this was, it should be supplemented by some organization which would be required to give practical help in the shape of advice in regard to accounting etc., to peasants, i.e., presumably that this rural banking system should have men especially to advise in a friendly way in all the rural credit and accounting problems. He attached great importance to it.

I hope Nehru advised Frisch on the advisability of educating Norwegian economists in a friendly manner on the inadvisability of stuffing herring up your anus as a means to gain nutrition.  

12. Professor Frisch was also of opinion that the entire system of taxation should be reviewed and varied. I cannot go into this matter because I did not fully understand all he said and I could not pursue our talk.

Frisch proposed a negative marginal tax rate (essentially a wage subsidy) to incentivize higher labor input and optimize production

But he seemed to think that income-tax should be reduced considerably and a number of other forms of taxation employed. This would not only bring in more money, but give incentives. He pointed out that the present system of taxation involved wastage. Business houses spent money so as to escape taxation.

Government should employ everybody & tax everybody so as to cover the loss made by doing so.  

13. Stress was laid on the importance of the role of science in planning. Our national laboratories were praised as Fine institutions not only in their equipment but also in the type of young scientists working there. But, it was pointed out that these laboratories had nothing to do with our planning, although they ought to be intimately interested in them.

The planning was shit. The labs weren't. Subjugate what was not shit to what was shit- that's Socialism- right?  

They lived in a kind of ivory tower thinking of odd experiments in research. There should be full interconnection between science and practice at all levels, and therefore, planning should be done with the closest participation of scientists and engineers at all stages.

Indian cooks made tasty curry. Why not closely involve them in planning in the the hope that curry turned to shit?  

14. It was suggested that after the Baroda Science Congress[7] there should be a special conference of directors of national laboratories and institutes to consider this matter and how to make systematic use for planning of research. Scientists, technicians, educationists, engineers, etc., should be given a planning orientation and should be made to think in terms of national development.

Also cows should be consulted. That will please the Hindoooos.  

15. Stress was laid on the great importance of decentralising industrial enterprises in the public sector. This is to say, these State enterprises should be given a good deal of freedom and should not be interfered with. It was pointed out by the Soviet representatives that in the USSR there was a great deal of decentralisation of this type.

Indeed, the reason so many people were trying to escape from the Soviet Union was because there was too much freedom there.  

16. It was mentioned that it would be necessary to have a great expansion of health and education.

paid for by what?  

17. A very brief reference was made to land policy and state trading, but there was no talk about it.

Because they knew nothing about it. 

18. The main concern of these people was that no commitment should be made on the old pattern of planning and that the whole subject should be considered anew.

Because they were novices in all matters Indian. To be fair, many had come to India believing that the quality of official statistics would be similar to that of Britain (because British civil servants had administered India). But such was not the case.  

Velupillai quotes Dick Goodwin- creator of the first input-output matrix for the Indian economy- as saying

Vlado Chernozemski- the guy who caused World War 2?

 Had Archduke Ferdinand been killed by a Muslim- Muhamed Mehmedbašić- rather than an Orthodox Christian Serb- there would have been no First World War because the Turks would have got the blame. Sadly, Mehmedbasic's nerve failed. He didn't chuck the grenade he had in his hand as the Archduke's car passed by. 

Similarly, if Vlado Chernozemski- a Bulgarian who killed the King of Yugoslavia in 1934- had not accidentally also shot the French Foreign Minister- Louis Barthou- maybe there would have been no Second World War.

This is because Barthou was negotiating the Franco-Soviet mutual assistance pact. After his death, the task of completing it fell to Pierre Laval- later executed for his collaboration with the Nazis- who had moved to the Right & who considered the Bolsheviks as a great threat to European Civilization.

De Gaulle would write '"Louis Barthou had thought of a return to the traditional system of Russian alliance. But he was assassinated, and from that moment on, the policy of abandonment prevailed. Our leaders, caught between the fear of war and the illusions of peace, surrendered themselves to the stream of events..."

Barthou had got the Soviet Union into the League of Nations and wanted a comprehensive multi-lateral 'Eastern Pact' to pen in Germany and preserve the existing borders. The Brits were suspicious of Barthou's plan but he was able to win over Stanley Baldwin causing him to say that Britain's frontier now lay along the Rhine. 

The Brits saw Laval as an opportunist but considered him to be pragmatic and transactional. Sadly, the Hoare-Laval pact (which sacrificed Ethiopia to Mussolini) provoked a backlash at home. Baldwin threw over Hoare & Laval, quite naturally, felt betrayed. 

Laval didn't believe that the Soviet Union had the military capability of Tzarist Russia. Though the Soviets were embracing mechanisation, he didn't believe there could be a 'Russian steam-roller'. Thus he ensured that the bilateral treaty agreement was strictly compatible with the multilateral provisions of the League of Nations Covenant and the Locarno Treaties. That in practice meant that military assistance could be rendered by one signatory to the other only after both an allegation of unprovoked aggression had been submitted to the League of Nations, and the approval of the other signatories of the Locarno Pact (the United Kingdom, Italy and Belgium) being attained. Even this was only agreed to by Laval after Germany announced its re-armament. Poland, however, reacted strongly. They refused to accept any scenario where Soviet troops crossed Polish territory. They considered the pact to be a betrayal of the 1921 Franco-Polish agreement. They sought to rely on their non-aggression pact with the Soviets (1932) and with Hitler (1934). Partly, this was because France had earlier refused to act jointly with Poland in a pre-emptive strike. De Gaulle, who had been an official observer during the Soviet-Polish war, had great respect for Pilsudski and favoured a more robust approach. But, as the Poles could understand, France needed Britain which now repented the harst peace terms imposed on Germany and which was in no mood for military adventures. Once Barthou established good relations with Baldwin- based on convincing him of the Nazi threat- it is possible that Poland would have revised its views. Sadly, the Brits were obsessed with the notion that Mussolini could be a counterweight to Hitler based on an exaggerated notion of Italian military strength. It may also be the case that Pilsudski's death meant Poland took a harder line not just against the Soviets but also the Czechoslovaks (Poland had lost some territory in the 7 day Czech/Polish war of 1919). Later, they would help themselves to a piece of that unfortunate country along side Hitler & Horthy .

Some historians- notably Robert J. Young- who wrote a biography of Barthou- & Jean-Baptiste Duroselle- considered a leading expert on the diplomatic history of the period- treats Barthou as the sole "hero" of French interwar foreign policy (vide his seminal work, France and the Nazi Threat: The Collapse of French Diplomacy 1932–1939.) 

Another foundational giant of French international history, Pierre Renouvin, meticulously mapped out how Barthou was systematically pooling all the European powers threatened by the rapid revival of Germany. Renouvin’s analysis supports the idea that Barthou's strategy was highly cohesive—simultaneously locking in the USSR, securing British support, using Italy’s fears of an Austro-German union (Anschluss), and solidifying the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Romania & Yugoslavia) . Renouvin concludes that Barthou's sudden assassination shattered this entire interlocking system. 

Michael Jabara Carley, an expert on Soviet foreign policy and Franco-Soviet relations,  emphasizes that Barthou's approach was the only window in the early-to-mid 1930s where a genuine anti-Nazi containment front could have succeeded. Carley’s research highlights that Maxim Litvinov (the Soviet Foreign Minister) found a reliable, hardheaded partner in Barthou. He notes that after Barthou's death, his successor Pierre Laval allowed anti-communist domestic pressures to stall and dilute the alliance, transforming a potentially robust military guarantee into a toothless piece of paper. 

It is a silly to think some random French dude could have prevented a World War. The truth is, it was the Spanish Civil War which provided the template for what would come. There, the French PM- Leon Blum- initially tried to help the Republicans but internal opposition- as well as British disapproval- forced him to renege. In France there were those who said 'better Hitler than Blum'. Suddenly, every Nation State had to fear an ideological 'fifth column'. 

Still, if Barthou could have been Europe's saviour (just as the Archduke is sometimes seen as the guy who could have saved the Hapsburg Empire by giving the Southern Slavs a better deal), then it is significant that a Serb & a Bulgarian put an end to European hegemony thus laying the foundations for the rise and rise of the 'coloured' races. 

Dreze's jhollawallah econ

 How is it that I can eat an apple but an apple can't eat me. The answer, according to jhollawallah economics, is 'chance'.  It isn't the case that apple trees chose one evolutionary strategy- one whereby their fruits were edible such that their seeds would spread widely- and that human beings adopted another strategy- one which involved increasing inequality replaced increasing divergence in reproductive outcomes. In other words- when everybody was poor, inequality was about who had more descendants. Later, the tables were turned. The poorest would be the most fertile. 

Dreze asks why poor men, transporting illegally mined coal by bicycle in Ranchi, are worse off than guys with PhDs in Econ whose daddies had PhDs in Econ. 

How come they are in their situation, and I in mine?

They had little inherited wealth or human capital. Dreze had quite a lot. Productivity in Belgium diverged from that of greater Bihar around 1500, if not earlier. Western Europe did not go in for 'jholawalah econ'. It focused on raising productivity through better technology and mechanism design. 

The only answer I can find is: “chance”. Perhaps a few of them drank or gambled away their land, but most are in that situation for no fault of their own.

Their ancestors followed jhollawallah economics.  

They were born in a poor family of the wrong caste

& the wrong colour & the wrong continent. Get them a visa to Belgium & fortune will begin to smile upon them.  

suffered from undernutrition in childhood,

which is what happens when poor people have babies who are bound to be very fucking poor. 

did not get a chance to study, and so on. In a different environment, they might have become geologists, engineers, artists, or hockey champions.

or boring Belgian cunts 

But they never had a chance.

Because of jhollawallah economics 

In India, as elsewhere, the privileged tend to nurture the illusion that they “deserve” what they have.

Dreze nurtures the illusion that his arsehole is his own. It isn't. It is a place where everybody should be welcome to park their coal or their bicycle.  

This illusion, however, evaporates with even the most casual introspection.

It is mere 'chance' that you aren't a rent-boy or, indeed, a guy who pays money to have stuff shoved up his arse. Ergo, your arse must have stuff shoved up it by all and sundry. Such is jhollawalla economics.  

Sure, some rich people work hard  – but so do koilawalas, construction workers, and domestic helpers.

Sure, some rent-boys work hard attracting customers but Dreze too works hard in his own way. Why is his anus being denied vast injections of jizz? Is it because Narendra Modi is a fucking Nazi? 

What is jholawallah econ? It is a variation of begging-bowl econ. It is Amartya Sen's 'second order public goods' which involves saying 'we really ought to have more first order public goods'. Sadly, it demanding or begging for a thing is itself regarded as a good thing, then 'second order' talk crowds out first order work.

Dreze believes he is doing 'research for action'- i.e. explaining why money should be pissed against the wall in a manner which buys votes or enables leakages. 

First, action-oriented research is not a stand-alone activity.

Masturbation need not be solitary. Also, it can be integrated into a wider repertoire of equally boring shite.  

Rather, it is part of a larger effort to achieve practical change through democratic action, that is, action based on democratic means and institutions  – public debate, the media, the courts, the electoral process, street action, among others.

This is done by political parties. Academics are welcome to join one such or, indeed, create a party of their own. However, in so far as their discipline is positive rather than normative, they will be at a disadvantage because imperative, not alethic, propositions have a stronger tie to action. 

Dreze's book reveals his hatred of India as a Hindu majority country. It is his right, as an Indian citizen, to hate people of another religion. However, as his views become known to more and more Indians, his influence is likely to decline. 

Why Shruti can't be an Economist & India can't be independent.

 

When a small boy tries to imitate his daddy, he is likely to fail. Once he is grown up, however, he will have little difficulty emulating the work habits of his senior colleagues.

In a paper titled

Premature Imitation and India’s Flailing State  

SHRUTI RAJAGOPALAN AND ALEXANDER TABARROK

suggest that India tried to imitate more mature economies. This is not the case. India wanted to split up on the basis of religion and then pursue ideologies- e.g. Gandhian Socialism, Islamic Fundamentalism- which had no takers in more technologically advanced countries. 

The colonial authorities had begun promoting responsible worker's associaton from about the 1890s. The 'sweated labour' or 'unfair competition' argument was gaining currency in Westminster and the influence of Trade Unions increased. Interestingly, a Communist MP- Saklatvala, a cousin of the Tatas- was able to win elections by playing the 'coolie labour' card much to the disgust of Indian nationalists. Tory Secretary of States for India believed that by granting separate representation to Labour in legislative councils, the power of the Congress party would be diluted. 

Trade Unionism proved lucrative for politicians and lawyers and the tight labour market which prevailed during the Second World War created a bonanza for workers in the organised sector. After independence, Congress took some steps to curb independent Trade Unions but the inertial force of the British legacy prevailed more particularly because India was a member of the International Labour Organisation. 

This becomes obvious when you look at the timeline of Indian labour law.

1881 – First Indian Factories Act- restricted the employment and working hours of children while setting basic safety rules. 
1890 – Bombay Mill Hands Association: Formed by N.M. Lokhande, marking the emergence of India's first organized labor welfare and advocacy effort. Lokhande was an associate of Phule both of whom were promoted by the British as having a positive influence on the lower castes. In particular, the Raj wanted poorer people to focus on economic grievances rather than unite under the banner of religion.
1891 – Indian Factories Act (Amended): Expanded factory coverage, raised the minimum age and reduced working hours for children, and introduced a weekly holiday and midday stoppage for women workers. [1]

1901 – Indian Mines Act: Extended safety and labor regulations to underground and surface mine workers.
1911 – Indian Factories Act: Restricted working hours for men in textile factories to 12 hours a day and further limited child labor hours.
1919 – International Labour Organization (ILO) Formation: Established via the Treaty of Versailles; India became a founding member, heavily influencing subsequent domestic labor standards.
1920 – All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) Formed: Created as the first central trade union federation in India to represent workers nationally and globally.
1922 – Factories Act: Extended protections to a broader range of power-using factories and standardized daily and weekly work limits.
1923 – Workmen’s Compensation Act: Provided financial compensation to employees for industrial accidents and occupational diseases resulting in death or disablement.
1926 – Indian Trade Unions Act: Gave legal recognition and immunity from civil/criminal prosecution to registered trade unions.
1929 – Trade Disputes Act: Provided mechanisms for the investigation and settlement of industrial disputes through courts or boards of conciliation.
1936 – Payment of Wages Act: Regulated the timely payment of wages and prohibited unauthorized deductions or arbitrary fines by employers.
1946 – Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Act: Required employers in industrial establishments to formally define and communicate conditions of employment (standing orders).
1947 – Industrial Disputes Act: Replaced the 1929 act and established the primary framework for resolving strikes, lockouts, layoffs, and retrenchments. 

After Independence, not imitation but instititutional inertia led to further legislation which, however, could be ignored with greater impunity by those who were politically connected.  

Post-Independence & Modern Consolidation
1948 – Factories Act & Minimum Wages Act: The Factories Act 1948 overhauled health, safety, and working hours, while the Minimum Wages Act mandated state- and sector-specific baseline compensation. 

Nehru was suspicious of the industrialists who had financed Congress. His Planning Commission, promoting nationalization as part and parcel of Socialism, created the 'licence-permit Raj' which hamstrung Indian industry. It must be said, labour militancy sponsored by Communists in West Bengal was even more successful in driving away industries. But the Commies were imitating Mao in an equally poor country. Unlike the West, where 'feminist' labour reform increased participation for women even in tough 'masculine' fields, India's paternalistic legislators tended to go in the reverse direction.  However, because most private sector growth was in the small scale sector (or in fields reserved for 'cottage industries) the percentage of the workforce covered by legislation tended to fall.

1991 – Economic Liberalization: Sparked widespread privatization and a shift toward contractual and informal hiring practices. 
2019–2020 – The Four Labour Codes: Consolidated over 40 central labor laws into four simplified codes—Code on Wages (2019), Industrial Relations Code (2020), Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code (2020), and Social Security Code (2020)—to streamline compliance and extend coverage to gig and platform workers. 

This wasn't 'imitation'- premature or otherwise. The truth was that, as a senior Economic advisor said, to comply 100 percent with labour law, you would have to break at least 20 percent of them. In other words, labour law was a vast thicket of self-contradictory laws and procedures.  

Shruti and Alex begin by quoting a West Indian origin economist who advised Nkrumah. He knew nothing about India.

'There is the same contrast even between people; between the few highly westernized, trousered, natives educated in western universities, speaking western languages, and glorifying in Beethoven, Mill, Marx or Einstein, and the great mass of their countrymen who live in quite other worlds. —W. Arthur Lewis, “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour”

In the West Indies, the majority of the population had been enslaved and transported from their native land. A few were able to hang on to elements of their ancestral culture and religion. Most- especially in urban areas- were 'mimic men' of the sort satirized by V.S Naipaul. 

But Tardean mimetics didn't arise in India- the truly rich and aristocratic made a point of not learning English-  save in so far as it involved imitating horrible dictators like Stalin or Mao. After all, India had cme under the dominion of Turkic/Mongol Eurasian warlords- which is what both Stalin & Mao were. But the Indian government never crushed the peasantry by licensing man-made famines of a vast scale. 

Lant Pritchett (2009) has called India a flailing state.

Indians called him a stupid cunt. Still, it is true that Manmohan was a 'prone' Minister.  

A flailing state is what happens when the principal cannot control its agents.

by shooting them or sending them to a Gulag? American voters decided that Obama & Hilary were 'flailing'. In 2016 they voted for an elderly billionaire who had never held any sort of elected office or, indeed, Government job.  

The flailing state cannot implement its own plans

because of budgetary constraints. But that was true of the Second, Third and Fourth Five year plan. There was also a Plan holiday in 1990-92. After that, there was enough money in the kitty but the private sector was taking the lead. 

and may have its plans actively subverted when its agents work at crosspurposes.

Nehru's mistake was to put planning above budgeting. He was a deeply silly man. It is fucking obvious that, for the poor, only budgets matter. Pigs can't really fly, though they may plan to.  

The Indian state flails because it is simultaneously too large and too small: too large because the Indian government attempts to legislate and regulate every aspect of citizens’ lives

No. There is an inherited inertia from the Bureaucratic Raj of the Windsor dynasty which persisted under the Gandhi dynasty. As in every other field, labour laws multiplied meaninglessly. There was 'rent seeking'- sure. But what defeats rent seeking is beating and extorting the rent-seeker. In other words, gangsterism has countervailing power over the politico/bureaucratic class. This is why so many legislators have criminal records. Admittedly, some of the charges are fabricated. Sadly, some have also been thrown out by the courts. Rahul didn't really rape a girl with the help of his foreign friends. 

and too small because it lacks the resources and personnel to rule according to its ambitions.

One might say this about the Second Five year plan. Back then, Nehru & Nkrumah thought that the Yanks & the Soviets would compete in building infrastructure and heavy industry essentially for free.  

To explain the mismatch between the Indian state’s ambitions and its abilities, we point to the premature demands by Indian elite for policies more appropriate to a developed country.

Indian elites aren't stupid. They weren't demanding that their own dividend income be cut so that workers could have a better quality of life. 

One could say- as Edwin Lim, of the World Bank, did- that Indian 'activists' get paid a lot of money by Western NGOs to indulge in virtue signalling and create road-blocks for development. But, it is easy to beat activists or just chase them away, That's what happened to Medha Patkar once the Gujjus got organised. They got their Narmada water and made very good use of it.  

We illustrate with four case studies on maternity leave,

The public sector gets 730 days of Child Care Leave (CCL)- a very valuable benefit. 

housing policy, open defecation,

which directly relates to health outcomes & the safety of rural women 

and education policy.

which is shit.  

We then conclude by discussing how the problem of limited state capacity

what limits power is countervailing power 

points to presumptive laissez-faire as a preferred governing and learning environment for developing countries.

Sadly, that involves getting colonised in one manner or another. Armies and Navies don't arise by the unfettered working of the market.  

Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett, and Michael Woolcock (2017) point to one explanation for India’s flailing state. In order to satisfy external actors, the Indian state and other recipients of foreign funding often take on tasks that overwhelm state capacity, leading to premature load bearing.

No. Foreign funded 'activists' can be a nuisance but it is easy and satisfying to beat them or just threaten them till they run the fuck away. Manmohan started the trend of going after the funding of these 'cockroaches'. He suspected that Western coal exporters, etc, wanted to prevent India exploiting its own mineral resources.  

As these authors put it, “By starting off with unrealistic expectations of the range, complexity, scale, and speed with which organizational capability can be built, external actors set both themselves and (more importantly) the governments they are attempting to assist to fail” .

No. The 'activists' just want money and fame by winning some sort of International prize & getting funded by foreign foundations.  

The expectations of external actors are only one source of imitation, however.

Tardean mimetics is about getting money and power by imitating those who were similar to you but who are now much better off.  

Who people read, listen to, admire, learn from, and wish to emulate is also key.

No. What matters is reinforcement. I imitate both Beyonce & a janitor. I get paid for the latter, not the former activity. That's why I am a full time janitor rather than a Beyonce impersonator.  

We argue that another factor driving inappropriate imitation is that the Indian intelligentsia

doesn't exist. The Dalit intellectual is different from the Muslim or RSS intellectual.  

—the top people involved in politics, the bureaucracy, universities, think tanks, foundations, and so forth—are closely connected with Anglo-American elites,

There is a circulation of elites. India is not synchronised with Anglo-America. Even if the CJP or CEA studied in the West, that was thirty years ago when a different ideology prevailed.  

sometimes even more closely than they are to the Indian populace.

 One might say this about both political leaders in the west. They are fighting yesterday's battles or seeking to revive ideas which passed their sell-by date fifty years ago. 

As a result, the Indian elite initiates and supports policies that appear to it to be normal even though such policies may have little relevance to the Indian population

fuck would these two cunts know about what is relevant to Indians? 

as a whole and may be wildly at odds with Indian state capacity. This kind of mimicry of what appear to be the best Western policies and practices is not necessarily ill intentioned.

India shouldn't have become independent. It's intention may have been good- it wanted to be a proper nation state- but it was misguided. Indians are shit. They should be ruled by White peeps not brown peeps imitating White peeps. 

Also, Shruti should kill herself. She is trying to imitate an Economist but can't succed because she don't got a dick. Sad. 

It might not be pursued to pacify external or internal actors, and it is not a deliberate attempt to exclude the majority of citizens from the democratic policy-making process. It is simply one by-product of the background within which the Indian intellectual class operates.

Intellectuals have never held power in India. True, Nehru wrote some books. Some may have thought this made him an intellectual. But he got to be PM because he was a Hindi speaking Brahmin who had put in enough jail time. Nobody thought the cow-belt dominated Indian politics because its people were smarter or better educated. Rather, it was because 'Pandy's rebellion' had succeeded. The littoral states benefitted more from overseas trade & thus might favour the revival of foreign dominated enclaves which might, once again, expand into the hinterland. Also, the Hindi speakers had shown vim and vigor in ethnically cleansing Muslims. They could come in handy at some future time. Niradh Chaudhuri, who had begged Whitey to come back to rule India, paid a back-handed compliment to the 'bhaiyyas' by pointing out their genuine loathing for Europeans. 

The Indian elites are more likely, because of their background, to engage with global experts in policy dialogues that have little relevance to the commoner in India.

Policy dialogues are shit- always and everywhere.  

In the next sections, we discuss the flailing state and the demographics of the Indian elite.

Back in the Fifties & Sixties, the State Dept (& the CIA) financed American Sociologists like Shils to gas on about native 'intelligentsias'. Then, they realised, it was a waste of time. Peasants, it turned out, were rational. Eggheads were addled.  

We then illustrate with case studies on maternity leave, housing policy, open defecation, and right-to-education policy how India passes laws and policies that

are populist. The hope is they will gain votes in the short run while becoming, or remaining, ineffective longer term. 

make sense to the elite but are neither relevant nor beneficial to the vast majority of Indians.

If they create vote-banks, they serve their purpose. Even if few gain a benefit- e.g. reservations in government jobs- the many will vote to keep that entitlement.  

We conclude with a discussion of the optimal governing and learning environment when state capacity is limited.

What limits state capacity is either the law- which totalitarian methods- or countervailing power of various sorts.  

The Flailing State In India, corruption often takes the form of circumventing the law. Some 30 percent of driver’s licenses are estimated to be fake (PTI 2016).

 Studies show that roughly 20% to 33.5% of college students in the US have used or owned a fake ID.

Of the licenses that aren’t fake, a large number of drivers manage to avoid taking the driver’s test, which leads to unqualified drivers and more accidents on the roads (Bertrand et al. 2007). It’s possible to tell a story in which these outcomes are a design from the top, but it’s more realistic to see them as a consequence of agents who do not obey principals—a flailing state.

The British inherited an administration where low-level corruption was the rule. The way to reduce it is to reduce State capacity- i.e. run a 'night-watchman' state. But, as Prasad told Gandhi, even paying for the village 'chowkidar' was considered onerous by the Bihari rustic. 

To eliminate corruption you need to pay a living wage. But, in that case, the threat of 'transfer' is meaningless. Politicians lose their own lever of power over government servants.  

This is a story about 'mechanism design', not agent principal hazard. 

In China, this kind of corruption leads to executions.

Sometimes & in some places. It is always possible to purge corruption at the local level without killing people.  

The executions don’t happen in India, one feature or bug of democracy, but that shouldn’t be taken to imply acquiscence. The top-level bureaucracy is of very high quality.

Really not. Good mechanism design is about subsidiarity & self-screening or self-certiification. It is in the interest of truck drivers that truck drivers aren't drug addicted nutters. Let them self-certify on a local basis. Different states can ban drivers from poorly self-policing regions.  

The rot in India usually does not come from the head (Vaishnav and Khosla 2016).

Sadly, the head does what the stomach wants it to do. Even in Singapore, there seems to be a problem of elite 'self-dealing'. 
Eight Singapore public officers have been referred to the police following a government investigation into claims that civil servants used non-public information to buy private properties near future Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) stations before they were publicly announced. 
The investigation was launched after a September 2026 working paper published by the US-based National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) alleged that Singaporean civil servants and their relatives bought an estimated S$270 million (US$210 million) worth of property near planned train stations ahead of public disclosure.

Since academic economists made this discovery, it must be completely wrong. 

Part of the problem is a simple lack of personnel.

No. Auxillaries can always be hired, or voluntary groups (e.g. Home Guard) can be expanded without creating a big pension & other welfare obligation. There is resistance to this, but it happens by default.  

India, for example, has surprisingly few government workers

depending on your definition of government worker.  

—about one-fifth as many per capita as the United States. The number of police per capita, for example, is only 135 per 100,000, one of the lowest rates in the world and far below the median (318) or mean (333) of police officers per 100,000 capita in the rest of the world (UN Office on Drugs and Crime 2017).

These figures overcount the populatiion & under count those who discharge police functions. Nobody knows how many Gram Chowkidars there actually are. Often, the post attracts no salary but comes with benefits in kind. 

Moreover, a significant number of the police are assigned to VIPs rather than to protecting the public at large (Vaishnav 2017).

About 66,000 police personnel were deployed to protect 20,000 VIPs. There are over 2 million police personnel. So we are only speaking of about 3 percent of the total. Moreover, there is a 'spill-over' benefit to the neighbours of VIPs (who tend to live in swanky areas) as well as increased confidence that terrorists and gangsters won't be able to capture the State. However, if there is an insurgency, extra-judicial killing on an industrial scale can be done swiftly and thoroughly. India is a 'hard state' because the Army is loyal. 

The number of judges per capita (12 per million) is far below the U.S. rate (108 per million), which helps to explain India’s enormous backlog of 32 million cases, millions of which have been in process for more than a decade (Joshi 2017).

Fewer judges would mean less backlog. India's problem is that the Judiciary doesn't believe in Res Judicata. Also, case management should be done by a separate agency.  

Although most of India’s governance problems can find links to the lack of manpower in state services, there is also the problem of regulatory overload.

Which is a much smaller problem in India than the US because the organised sector is 15 percent not 85 percent.  

The top levels of government impose a massive regulatory burden that is increasing each year, with little attention paid to personnel and state capacity. Many regulatory and civil offenses are increasingly categorized as criminal offenses and arbitrarily enforced (Rajagopalan 2017). India has essentially all the inspections, regulations, and laws a developed country such as the United States has, but at approximately $235 of federal spending per capita the Indian government simply cannot accomplish all the tasks it has assumed.

This silly woman doesn't get that there are no fucking regulatory tasks to do with the unorganised sector. 

Still, broadly speaking, Shruti is right. She should not try to imitate Economists because she does not have a penis. By regulating herself not to bleed from the cooch once a month, she is proving herself to be just as stupid and ignorant as the Indians who, with tragic results, started imitating White peeps who have proper Nation-States of their own