The black blot on democracy

The year 2020, for me, ended on January 6, 2021, the day the world bore witness to a spectacle that was unimaginable till it happened. An insurrection bid in the oldest democracy of the world. The sitting President of the USA trying to overturn his electoral loss through a coup in a desperate last ditch attempt to hold on to the Presidency. The Capitol building being raided and under siege by Donald Trump’s supporters in response to his call to help him cancel the results of what he called a rigged election. But the seeds of the chaotic day were sown much in advance.

In the months leading to the Presidential election, Donald Trump had started spreading the wild conspiracy theory that the election would be rigged for him to lose. Maybe he knew after all that he would lose. Anyways, taking this as a cue, all his supporters voted en masse for him. When he still lost after garnering a whopping 75 million votes, he claimed that no one can get more votes than this and used it as the premise to establish that the election was indeed rigged. When a lie is repeated consistently over a period of time, people start believing & buying into it. Trump has clearly exploited this gullibility among his supporters. Every time he stood his ground on his lies when his claims were dismissed it strengthened the belief among his supporters that he has won the election. He only exhorted his supporters to assemble at the Capitol building, gave them no instructions & left it to them to decide further course of action. Since he kept saying to save America he has to remain President, people decided to take things into their own hands. Simply put, he tried to engineer a coup without explicitly inciting it.

A fluttering Indian flag in the midst of the protestors raised intrigue and consternation among Indians the world over, the fallout of which continues on social media. Among the group of Indian migrants who are Trump supporters and affiliated with the Republican party and were part of the protest was one person from my home state and an alumnus of the engineering college where I had studied who brought the flag to the protest. Once it was determined that he is a Christian there was even more confusion. After India’s PM had openly endorsed Trump in his reelection bid, doubts had creeped up about the involvement of Hindu migrants who support Hindu nationalism in the protests. Indian flag amongst the protest can be easily construed as India’s participation in the coup attempt. Moreover Indian migrants who are now US citizens carrying Indian flags into a politically charged situation internal to the US is atrocious and can have consequences. As the FBI identifies the protesters and especially the ones who barged into and pillaged the Capitol building, there will be more clarity on whether there were any sinister motives in breaking into the building and if the lives of the senators assembled inside were under threat.

After 4 years of allowing Trump to post his whims and fancies and brainwash his supporters with his narratives and rhetoric on social media, Facebook and Instagram have finally suspended his profiles till his Presidential term ends and Twitter has suspended his personal account permanently. He has actively used social media to propagate his Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideology and to brainwash his supporters into believing that him being President is the only way to save American democracy and regain America’s lost glory. This mirrors exactly how the Indian PM has won two terms in office in the name of protecting Hindu religion and regaining the lost glory of Hindu culture. Trump is an authoritative billionaire businessman who wound his way into the President’s chair. Antagonizing the most powerful world leader who doubles as a billionaire businessman would have been literally impossible for the social media companies.

As the US Senate contemplates impeachment proceedings against Trump to remove him from office immediately especially in the light of him still having access to America’s nuclear codes and barring him from holding a public office in future, I believe any action taken against him now will only bolster the belief in his supporters that he really won. Letting him go without repercussions will be as dangerous as shutting down his voice & jailing him for sedition. Add to this his white supremacist support base & the long standing gun control issue in the US. Looks like the country is descending into dark & dangerous times. Biden’s call for the country to heal may not be heeded after all.

US Presidential Election from an Indian perspective

Democracy is a concept born from thousands of years of monarchy and kingship to free ourselves from the shackles of being ruled and progress towards governance. Constitution contains guidelines on how to set up a democratic system. But it is the practices we follow that creates the environment of democracy. In a way, democracy is like religions. Having holy books has never resulted in the creation of religions. It is the practices followed that has created religions and set apart one religion from another. Though a democratic system ensures that monarchy does not take roots again, it leaves the door open for authoritarian rule to take hold of countries. The fact that the world’s oldest democracy has been in the clutches of an authoritarian leader for the past 4 years and the world’s largest democracy has been under the sway of an authoritarian leader for more than 6 years bears testimony to this.

When an Islamic nation was carved out of India during it’s partition in 1947, even though India adopted democracy and secularism as the pillars of it’s Constitution, the angst that India was not declared as a religion based majoritarian country formed and remained smoldering and deep rooted in the society for decades. Similarly, liberating black people from the horrors of slavery did not automatically create acceptance for them in the American society. The fact that a 4 year war had to be fought to end slavery bears testimony to the white people’s perspective about people of color. That perspective has endured to present times which is reflected even in Hollywood and in the fact that USA never had a president of color till 2008.

Be it based on religion or race or color, they created cracks in India and the USA for authoritarian leaders to exploit the opportunities and it was only a matter of time and circumstances before they got control over their respective countries. The primary difference between the two countries is, while Hindu nationalists have been scheming to restore upper caste hegemony and patriarchy and create Islamophobia for decades, Trump, by openly endorsing racism, white supremacy and Islamophobia has completely redefined what the Republican party stands for.

While it is not surprising that Trump became the Republican presidential candidate by pushing through his convictions and beliefs to the people, what is astounding is that after 4 years of him at the helm of governance and everything that has come to pass, he has still managed to garner more than 70 million votes. Never has a victorious presidential candidate managed to get so many votes, so getting 70 million votes and still getting beaten by 5 million votes is mind boggling. In no state has either Trump or Biden won convincingly or have trounced one another. The country has seen the highest voter turnout in 120 years. What is incomparable is the voter age population size 120 years back and now. It does look like there were no fence sitters and not many reluctant voters. Almost everyone seems to have taken one side or the other.

No wonder Biden has appealed to people to come together and heal. But Trump-ism, everything Trump has espoused and stood for is going to hold sway in American society at least in the foreseeable future. 70 million votes clearly shows how popular Trump is among the core Republican voters and they are not going to let go off Trump’s legacy so easily. This is why Trump is staunchly refusing to accept defeat in the election. All his accusations about voting fraud looks largely baseless but he has to fight to placate the millions who believed in him and voted for him. Biden seems to be focused on reverting many of Trump’s policies and restoring the ones from Obama’s time, but his most arduous task is going to be to play the balancing act, to position himself in such a way that his governance and policies appeals to both Democrats and Republicans.

Unlike India which is a relatively young democracy and looks likely to be under the throes of the current authoritarian onslaught and its after effects for decades, American society is far more mature, having embraced democratic principles for more than 200 years. This gives enough reason to hope that it’s people will reconcile and move forward. The first step towards it, though, would be Trump shedding all the acrimony over his defeat and exiting the White House graciously. I hope, for once, he would be able to keep aside his business tycoon mindset and think as a leader.

Presidential elections in the US used to have only lukewarm interest in India because no matter who becomes the US President and which party is in majority in the Senate and House of Representatives, American policies towards other countries hardly change. But what has changed in the recent past is Indian PM Modi overtly trying to establish more than official relationships with Obama and Trump, culminating in an Indian PM officially endorsing an American presidential candidate for the first time which was embarrassingly contradicted by the Hindu-American community in the US which chose to vote for Biden citing that Trump has failed as a leader. But now, all the attention is on Kamala Harris and her maternal family in India with the hope that it would probably help Modi foster relationship with Biden. Hindu nationalists would do well to remember that it was Biden who had stoutly refused to let Modi enter US till he became the PM of India.

Is the “Trump”et about to burst the Indian IT bubble?

When Mr. Trump blew his war horn on the outsourcing of jobs from the US, I believe it did not send any major tremors through the market and certainly did not surprise me one bit. I saw this coming way back in 2010 and the fact that it took 6 more years is quite a wonder. It wouldn’t be of any surprise to me either if the accumulated resentment of losing local jobs to foreign professionals start rearing it’s face in the coming times. It is easy to blame Mr. Trump but it is the same resentment that drove people to vote him to power and he has to uphold his poll promise to protect the job interests of fellow Americans.

India has been the chief recipient of most of the IT jobs from the US. In fact, US IT jobs have become the monopoly of Indian MNCs. Not only have these companies set up shops all over the US and are fiercely competing with one another, on the fringe, body shopping companies have sprung up in thousands that hire people and contract out to other companies. This has resulted in Indians swamping the US job market in every possible ways. The US themselves needs to take blame for creating this situation. For the jobs that Indians have been lapping up, a similarly skilled American worker costs 4-5 times what an Indian gets payed. The difference in currency value between the USD and the Indian Rupee has been the biggest reason why outsourcing to India went into overdrive. After recession brought the world market down on it’s knees in 2008 and the supposed turnaround never materialized, it was quite evident that Americans would want to have those jobs back at any cost someday. Just commonsense and matter of time.

Add to this has been the blatant misuse of US work visas by the Indian MNCs. The work visas were designed with the interests of the US MNCs in mind. The objective was to do “brain drain” from India, get the best talents from India and move them to the US with the promise of lucrative jobs, big money and the fancy American lifestyle. The strategy worked big time till the Indian MNCs and contractor companies entered the fray. It was through them that Indian workers started flooding the US market. The strategy of hiring the best Indian talent got lost in the melee. At its zenith, employing people using visas defying the US labour laws and using forged documents and fake experience to get jobs in the US were the common norm. Work permit requirements keep increasing exponentially but visa utilization has been decreasing significantly, primarily because the overhead cost of Indian visa holders who travel to the US are made to be borne by the clients and post the meltdown of 2008, clients are increasingly wary of bearing any additional or unwanted costs. Moreover with the advancement in technology, even knowledge transfer is possible over mediums like Skype. I had thought of joining the exodus to the US briefly, but the main reason that held me back was I did not want to get lost in the midst of average and below average workers and the scamsters.

All of this outsourcing frenzy created a bubble in India called the IT industry. It was the next big thing when I was finishing my engineering and got sucked into the gold rush. When I got into the first outsourced project, it looked a little crazy because after working in IT datacenters, it is difficult to understand how the same work could be done remotely. But lots of work, more money, there were enough reasons to enamor and entice people. It took me a while to remember that all that glitters is not gold. Long hours of work started taking it’s toll on my health. I realized that in the long run, I would have to spend a lot more money on my health that what I was earning. Then, it was the same as driving through heavy traffic. Growth became stagnant and even a crawl became possible only with begging, fighting and most importantly by getting into the good books of the managers and bosses. To top this off there is a huge hidden trap. Get married then take housing loans to buy apartments, car loans and every other possible types of loans, then keep going in circles for the next 20-30 years to pay off the debts. People end up being slaves to the banks and to their jobs and strangle themselves with the debts. Companies are aware of this and treat employees with disdain by paying demeaning salaries and making them do irrelevant jobs which negatively impacts their careers.

Lastly, there is a big underlying problem with the IT industry. IT is another business enabler, just like finance, sales, marketing and other aspects of an organization. The key differentiation is in the fact that IT can be used to improve the functionality of every other aspect of organizations. Financial softwares, CRMs, etc are examples. But IT was never intended to grow beyond the business needs of clients and become an independent industry and it never did. Indian MNCs quickly learned to make more money by extending project timelines and by thrusting improvements and new features to existing software applications and IT infrastructure on to the psyche and budget of clients. The strategy worked but every time a client goes into consolidation mode, spending on IT is the first investment to be stopped. After 2008, this has become increasingly pronounced.

Identifying business problems are like getting kicked on the shin. The shin hurts but the mouth cries out in pain. Business problems require smart, quick and effective solutions. IT cannot solve all business problems but that is how it has been made out to be. IT professionals believe they know how to solve business problems but they invariably speak the language of IT and think in terms of IT. This is what a life in IT does to people. I saw through this early but even after doing MBA, I am finding that some of the IT connections are still wired and are alive in my brain. One of the case studies I learned during MBA was about IT major Infosys trying to foresee their future. One of the strategies they came up with was to invest their huge cash reserve into India’s infrastructure. But ultimately, they chose not to and decided to focus on their existing clients and finding more clients from abroad. For me, this is akin to owning a farmland, not working on it, expecting to find work on the neighbour’s farmland and live off it my whole life. Times change and change is the only constant in the midst of all the chaos of the cosmos. Everyone questioned my logic in leaving the “lucrative” IT industry in 2010 to take up MBA. It has taken 6 years but none other than the President of the United States has answered to my detractors. Not bad at all. Is the Indian IT bubble about to go poof? Only time will tell, but one thing is for sure. Nothing lasts forever and what goes up has to come down sometime. Business needs will be perpetual but IT needs may wane because after all, the sum is always greater than the individual parts.

The triumph of Trump in the fragmented US

One the most anticipated Presidential elections in the US history finally ended today. For me it was the most vitriolic election I have ever come across. For the past many months, my Facebook feed has been getting increasingly filled up with some information or news pertaining to the election. But as the election date drew closer and once the final two candidates became clear, the posts started becoming vile and ominous as the candidates turned abusive towards one another and the attacks became personal and below the belt. For the longest time, I have believed that elections should be contested on the planks of growth and development of people and the society, but this election could be taken as an indicator that even though the US might still be one of the most progressive countries in the world her people and their representatives are on a morally regressive road. This is exactly what has happened to many ancient civilizations in the past and notable among them is the city of Dwarka in India, the supposed land of Lord Krishna which reached it’s zenith and then self destructed because people lost their morality.

What I could not comprehend about the election was the two candidates people finally chose to fight it out. If one was a millionaire businessman the other had the backing of most of the elite corporate world. So this was a tussle with the muscle of money. Was this an exercise to elect people’s representative or to elect a ruler who can lord over the country with money and power? What connection do they both have to the roots of the American society? What experience do they have in serving people from the grass root level? This is the sad part of all democracies. Leaders rise through the ranks of political parties and people have no choice other than to vote for whoever is before them. So where is democracy and the right to elect the representatives we want? That is just an illusion. Governments are elected to serve the needs of the corporate world and not of people. This is why many of America’s policies, especially foreign policies remain almost constant no matter who is at the helm. American soldiers are still fighting in distant lands and there is still no policy on gun control in the country. Both serve the needs of the powerful weapons manufacturing industry and it doesn’t matter if people are getting killed, both within the country and abroad.

It is so abysmally apparent that the country has been fragmented and torn apart between the two candidates, to the point that violence was getting reported from different parts of the country after the result was announced and supporters of both candidates were getting into fisticuffs with one another on the streets. A lot was being thrown at the public and highlighted in the media about Trump’s past. All of that may or may not define the man now but it is a reflection of who he is as a person and add to it the fact that he has absolutely no experience in governance and serving people. But still, if people have chosen him over Hillary, they have even stronger reasons to not choose her. Given the choice between the devil and the deep sea, people have decided to go along with the lesser of the evil at the moment and that was the best they could do. Now that the election is over and the verdict is out, it is better to accept the fact and look ahead. There is no point resorting to violence because what gets destroyed in the ensuing melee will be everything that has been built up with the taxes people themselves pay. Politicians and their masters in the shadows have only to gain by dividing people and keeping the society fragmented.

Here is an analysis of what happened in the elections yesterday.

http://mashable.com/2016/11/09/voting-poll-numbers/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-main-link#4Qv2DGhg8qq3

If the data is correct and 46.6% of the population did not cast their votes, then this is a clear indicator that all that Trump and Hillary have managed to do with their vitriolic election campaigns is to increase the size of the voter population that didn’t want to have anything to do with the election and spread disgruntlement towards governance and election process in the country.