Monopolistic Competition in the market for Political Religion

In the standard economics, monopolistic completion is one of the prominent structures of the market in which product sold is differentiated in the sense that the product brought into market by a particular producer is differentiated from the product of others in the same market by of changing, say, its appearance without any substantive change in the quality or ingredients of the product. Firms, therefore, incur enormous amount in the form of advertising expenditure to promote their product and thereby enlarge their customer base. Examples are soaps, soft drinks, tooth paste etc.

A close look at the enterprise of political religions in vogue today reveals that an analogy can be drawn between this enterprise and monopolistic competition. At the very outset let me make it clear that by the term political religion I mean those folks or groups who are out there in the street to mobilize innocent common man  under the banner of religions often misconstrued in a manner to serve their either political or economic or personal agenda. In other words, the term political religion has nothing to do with those people who have inculcated the true spiritual and moral spirit of religions as a means of enlightenment, salvation, brotherhood, self-purification and thereby cracking the mystery behind the universe etc whom we will not see in the streets and on the dais.  

Before justifying the analogy I have drawn here, it is interesting to reflect that ‘political religion’ is a normal good. Economists define normal good as a good for which the demand increases with increase in the income or purchasing power of the people. Thus, political religion or the products they try to sell in the religious market can be said to be a normal good implying that with the increase in the standard of living or general material prosperity of the people today, the demand for their product has been witnessing increased demand. For instance, the number and frequency of religious sermons or electronic and digital varieties of religious programmes has witnessed an unprecedented increase in the recent years. Nobody will contest the view that the number and frequency of religious maneuvering like gathering staged mostly on the streets and bazaar or products like CDs in the past was not as much and frequent as it is today. That is, with increase in the well-being today, people can financially afford to enjoy such religious products or services in complete contrast to the past when people were even struggling to find food, let alone CDs. Also it is much more interesting to observe the fact that how modern economic and commercial principles and strategies have deeply influenced the forces behind this political religiosity. For example, the external cover of products like CDs marketed by such forces reads like this: ‘coming soon to the market’ signaling to their customer base that a new product is in the offing and hence be prepared to purchase it. This sort of marketing strategies are extensively found in our day-to-day life in the form of display of canvass or flex board which reads ‘opening shortly’ in front of commercial shops looking forward to commence their operation soon.

Now coming to the task of justifying my analogy, let us first consider the concept of product differentiation which is the hall mark of monopolistic competition and illustrate it with the previous example of electronic product like CDs. A close observation of such products reveals that they are all concerning various topics under the broad umbrella of a particular religion sold by either one individual or a group of individuals like firms in a monopolistic competition. Thus, the act of producing such products concerning various topics under a particular religion is the example of the product differentiation in the market for political religiosity. Along with this, we must take the fact into consideration that each  religion   is highly divided between various inter and intra groups and sects indicating that there exists tremendous competition among themselves to both maintain their prevailing customer base and expanding their customer base to others, if possible. Essentially it is this high competition prevailing among various individuals and groups and the resultant fear of being ousted from the scene or market or leadership in the face of existing or fresh competition, inspire them to keep on producing new products and services like CDs concerning various topics (product differentiation) and selling it in the market with enough advertisement either through local news papers, visual media, announcement at religious centers, organizing formal display of such products at related gathering etc. To strengthen my argument I would like to draw the attention to the fact that the same market would certainly have dealt with such products concerning the same topic by someone in the past. If these champions of political religiosity are sincerely interested in the propagation of the religion as called upon by their supreme leaders, they, instead of bringing their own version and product from time to time , must have alerted the common man of the existence of such products and services already in the same market and avail its service. Instead they find it as an opportunity for a fresh niche market to sell their differentiated version of the same debate.  Apart from this, the product differentiation also sometimes takes the form of pinching the old dogmas with latest wisdom and knowledge. For instance we can see a tendency on the part of these political religions to relate their ideas with the scientific revelations of the modern scientists in an effort to increase the scientific acceptability and validity of their dogmas.

Thus, let me conclude that political religion today is a monopolistic competitive market in which political theologians (firms) sells ‘differentiated normal goods’ namely political religiosity in the form of CDs, Sermons etc.

(I have written these personal views in an academic spirit and  in no way I have meant to hurt the religious sentiments of anybody)

Economics has to be redefined

Let us start with the general definition of modern economics. It is defined as a study of how efficiently scarce resources can be utilized in the process of production, consumption and distribution and market is projected as the effective mechanism to achieve this goal of efficiency. Here two concepts - scarcity and efficiency- are at the root of study of the economics and thereby market. Scarcity implies that supply of resources is limited in terms of their wants or use. Therefore, resources are to be used efficiently implying that as much as possible should be produced with available limited resources. Thus it is clear that the emphasis of the modern economics is on the quantity as more and more quantities are produced with limited resources at your disposal, efficiency is said to have achieved and such an outcome is said to be optimum or welfare maximizing.

However, in the backdrop of two developments the prevailing approach and thereby the prevailing general definition of economics is under threat. One such development is the admission of the proponents of the same economics that market is bound to fail in its pursuit of efficient allocation of resources.  A major source of market failure is information asymmetry and consequent issues like adverse selection and moral hazard extensively found in the market like credit markets. If we dig further into these issues, we can realize that the ultimate problem is trust-deficit wherein, say, lender cannot trust the borrower in the absence of perfect information about the credit worthiness, background and commitment to use borrowed money of the borrower. Hence such market is said to be imperfect and therefore bound to suffer from market failure as mistrust will deter the lender having enough fund to be lent from lending even to most deserving (productive) borrower causing inefficiency in the allocation of resources. And if we look at the business of economics through such a perspective today, we can see that ‘trust’ is at the centre of it. For instance, if trust or mistrust is not involved, what is the relevance of laws such a ‘labor laws’ passed in the modern welfare societies specifying rights of the employee from employer or land acquisition bill recently passed by Indian government which stipulates the dos and don’ts in the context of the acquisition of private land by the government. This kind of laws is passed under the presumption that interests of the stakeholders will be hurt which is literally violation of the trust or contract entered into either implicitly or explicitly between concerned parties. However, such laws did not exist in the past during the era of feudalism or slavery as the power relation was unidirectional and therefore, the plight of the serfs were taken for granted and coerced to suffer and in such an environment it does not make sense to indulge in an academic debate over the relevance of trust or irrelevance of mistrust. Like this almost all matters in the realm of economics can be associated with trust or social or individual bond as economics is ultimately dealing with the behavior of social animal - human being. Thus, what concerns economics mostly today is not simply scarcity of resource; rather it is concerned about scarcity of trust between economic agents.  Therefore, out of two important concepts in the very definition of modern economics that received major attention, scarcity of resources, is under threat. Critics of this view may raise here the question of perennial poverty and misery found in the various parts of the world today. In my view, it is not the scarcity responsible for this as world is rich enough to cater to the decent need of the human being. This kind of problems exist simply because we concentrate our attention rather excessively and strategically only on the efficiency at the production disregarding efficiency at the distribution of so produced pie as a result of which a major section is still deprived of even basic amentias of life.

Second thing is impact of modern economics on the ecology of human being. Unbridled pursuit of modern economics to find optimality conditions has taken its toll on the very health of ecology in various forms like carbon emission, consequent climate change and environmental degradation like pollution, global warming etc. Now at least from some quarters we here exhortations like- reduce industrial production like automobile- is just contrary to what we were told just decades before as to produce as much as possible so that you will be an efficient producer.  It is worth mentioning here Chian’s recent decision to ban purchasing of car simply to address the problem of environmental pollution caused by the automobiles. Similarly the rhetoric heard from developing countries in connection with the debate over the issue of carbon emission and subsequent climate change is also similar to this no-more-production advocacy. Developing countries have accused developed countries of being responsible for bulk of the carbon emission and therefore, they should reduce it rather that victimizing developing countries for their mistake. This otherwise means that let developed countries shut their polluting industries or find better eco-friendly technological alternative which is undoubtedly time consuming. In short, there is unanimity of opinion today among global community that minmum production is the efficient outcome.

Above mentioned two developments in the field of economics amply makes it clear that economics should be redefined as a study of how to produce necessary goods and services within the limits of trust–deficit.  This definition of economics replaces the old concepts, ‘efficiency’ and ‘scarcity of resources’, with ‘necessity’ and ‘scarcity of trust. To realize the underlying importance of this definition of modern economics, we have to foray into what went wrong with economics in the past that led to a situation warranting even the re-definition of the very subject.  For this we have to introduce here another familiar concept called ‘equity’. While the proponents of efficiency advocated that the pie should be enlarged as much as possible, champions of equity advocated that such a large pie should be sliced between stakeholders equally without allowing it to get concentrated in a few hands. Thus, the proponents of equity advocated for a fair-deal to the larger section of the society with a normative perspective over the positive perspective of the proponents of efficiency.

However, it is here economics went wrong. In the pursuit of ensuring that all get fair slice of pie, including scientific innovation discovering new technologies under the patronage of the political class (the survival of which always depends upon the appeasement of the people irrespective of the fact that such an appeasement is bane or boon) to expand the pie (industrial production) so that all can be catered and thereby fair-deal can be ensured. However, what was missing fatally in this process was ensuring a fair-deal to the ecology. In other words, the zeal to ensure fair deal to concerned socio-economic stake holders cast a shadow over the necessity of ensuring a fair-deal to Mother Earth. As the limits of the tolerance on the part of ecology crossed, it began to respond with fury pushing even the very existence of the humanity into danger zone. Let us recollect the fact that thousands of billions of years old ecology of human being is under threat simply because of the pursuit of the so called development models over just two hindered years of industrial revolution.  Thus, today we are forced to cut carbon emission and other pollution to save ecology and thereby human being. Thus, the failure of the development models otherwise remind us how inefficient has been our efficiency in the past.  At the same time, the new definition of economics reminds us to live a contented life with necessities inculcating the spirit of brotherhood, humanity, harmony and social bonds. 

Anonymity: Origin of the Corruption, Violence and Inefficiency in the Society

Today ,as in the past, one of the major concerns of the society as whole is the alarming level of the corruption at all walks of life that  remains to be a stumbling block in the pursuit of development  especially in the third world countries. Corruption in all its forms like economic (bribery), social (crime against women) and political (scams) or even religious for that matter can be summed up with the term ‘inefficiency’ in the system as it results in the wastage of valuable resources like money, time, physical and mental effort of human being and even natural resources which can be otherwise effectively utilized for the overall development of the society.

In the recent past all over the world including India has witnessed conflicts and pretests against the raging corruption. And in that backdrop world has also seen debates regarding why corruption takes place and how it should be tackled. Generally, such discourses were narrow both in its approach to the tracing the origin of the corruption and suggesting remedial measures as well as they were treating corruption simply as social or economic or political issue without digging into the origin of the menace which involves the analysis of the very nature of human being. That is why the remedial measures were also fully either economic or social or political in nature in the form of appoint of Lokpal in India or sentencing women molesters to death or downsizing the government and thereby encouraging private sector as suggested by Washington consensus to get rid of the menace of corruption in third world countries. Of course, I do not advocate here that these are all little importance to tackle corruption as the policy makers will be often compelled to take such pragmatic measures out of the pressure of the situation comprehending the complexities of the social system which is far more complex that writing essays on it.

Instead, my contention is that root of the problem lies with the very nature of human being and therefore, any effective solution to the problem of corruption and thereby inefficiency should take this kind of dimension into account. First, let me describe how corruption is related to the nature of human being. Human being is fundamentally selfish and what we see today in the open is a society constituted by such selfish human being individually and at the same time, covering up their selfishness when it comes to the totality of the society as a whole. In other words, human being will always have a temptation to give vent to his/her personal selfishness with respect to his/her economic, social, political matters or any other matters in the realm of life and he/she will conveniently cover up or ward off this temptation when it comes to common interests of the society unless until it has received the general societal sanction. It is here society as a whole uses the principles of the religion, morality or even fairness to either voluntarily control the temptation of the selfishness at the level of individuals or forcefully impose these principles upon others by the apparatus of state or religion to control them. Therefore, it is the design of the structure of the social life with complete information about each other and thereby known to each other that helps the society as a whole to reduce the menace of the corruption. It is worth emphasizing here that the familiarity between members of the society is highly dependent on the time and space as people from faraway places need not be known to each other as well as people who were known to each other years before might have forgotten each other.  Thus, it is the non-anonymity or familiarity between members of a society which basically binds them together without pulling their legs each other. The familiarity between members are maintained through place of birth and residence, personal names, family name, residential address, countenance of face etc.   Of course, there can be true saints or sufis who are essentially engaged in training them remaining away from the reach of society to become fully non-selfish following the principles of afore said institutions with a sole aim of  immersing themselves in the ultimate truth of this miraculous and mysterious universe. 

Thus, any sort of corruption mentioned above, which is mostly individual in nature, takes place when individuals involved are in a situation in which they are anonymous to each other both individually or socially. For instance, many people can be heard of complaining about taxi drivers charging more than what is the actual charge which is simple example of the corruption. Why a taxi driver behaves like so? Can he afford to do so consistently to his neighbors or his friends? Generally, the answer will be No because they will be known to each other and he will be sure that it is not fare to charge excessively not only from the rational point of view of economics as he will lose the customers if he does so but also he will be conscious of the fact that he will have to interact with them in the future also. At the same time, if both traveler and driver are unknown to each other, the economic selfishness of the driver prompts him to charge more as he is away from the information scanner of the general society as driver is pretty sure that he is not going to meet the customer anymore. I still remember my harrowing experience I had at the Secunderabad Railway Station in Andhra Pradesh in 2008 where I aboard a auto rickshaw to go to a place which is not more than two kilometers away from the railway station. After having got down at the destination, driver asked me Rs 100 which was about 900% higher than the actual charge and even threatened me of manhandling if I did not pay it. I was sure that he behaved like that simply because he came to know that I am not a citizen of Andhra Pradesh as I was not able to speak Telegu which prompted his evil economic greed to exploit such a situation. Not only that, when I took up this matter with people around then, they also did not pay heed and, I think, they did so partially  because they also realized that it not worth intervening in the matter of a stranger as I was talking to them in English. At the same time, till now I have no single experience of such a wanton behavior from the taxi drivers in my locality simply because, I believe, that they wanted to be fare to me as we are all known to each other.

Take the case of bribery by government officials which is a matter of grave concern everywhere. How many government employees known for bribery has worked in their own hometown demanding bribe from his/her-own countrymen? If at all, such cases will be isolated. Most of bribe taking government employees prefer to be employed in offices away from their familiarity. As a result, they can enjoy the fruits of anonymity as he/she will be a stranger in the society he works. How many of us know the name, place, family of the village officer in our locality? Very few as it is not relevant from the point of view of the service he is expected to discharge. It is this anonymity that basically prompts as well as buttress the government officials to demand bribe in exchange of their service.

Even the wide spread atrocities against women can be generally traced back to the concept of anonymity as evidenced by the molestation efforts in public spaces like bus, trains and cities the culprit and victim would not be familiar to each other. Of course, isolated incidents of even close family members trying to exploit women sexually are found which is undoubtedly either caused by the influence of intoxicants or some perverse mental problems. A close look into the inherent message to treat all women as sisters will reveal this. What does it mean to ask you to treat somebody without any proximity of blood as your sisters or brothers? How such people will become your sisters and brothers?  The following interpretation can also be attached with such a call to treat everybody as sisters or brothers. That is, treat them as if they are known to you or living in your neighborhood as is the case with your natural brothers and sisters whom you did not attempt of molest. This kind of an approach to ensure dignity of women is the only possible measure as I mentioned above that the tool of familiarity is highly time and space specific implying that it is physically impossible to make sure that each and every individual in a country or in the world can be acquainted to each other so that mischief such as corruption or molestation can be wiped out. Therefore, what is then feasible is to try to generate an impression among the people that all are sisters and brothers and thereby implicitly convey the message that all are members of the same family of society known to each other so that tendency to exploit anonymity can be reduced.

I think it is not required to explain further how big scams that the country as well the world has witnessed in the past is closely associated with the proposition I have outlined above. Here, there can be a slight difference from the instances of inefficiency outlined above which is mostly individual in nature whereas often the menace of large scale corruption in politics or in the affairs of the state could be in the form of maneuvering of limited number of people who do not know specifically whom they are cheating and those who are being cheated do not know who are cheating them. In other words, public scams arises in the dealing of public properties like 2G for which the claimants are not as specific as it is in the case of private property. As a result, the above mentioned problem of anonymity arises as it is ambiguous who owns what? Of course, there can be critics saying that it is the people who own public wealth. Such tenets in a democracy are often a working arrangement to run the large complex system. How many Indians were informed or aware about the sale of 2G spectrum before this scam was brought to public notice? That is why there are instances of corruption of greater magnitudes than  2G scam which are neither reported nor going to be reported. Thus high profile corruption episodes takes place in a realm of obscurity as this obscurity helps those indulge in corruption to fix the deal favorably and get away with deal later without being caught as they have fixed the deal in the darkness.

I think all most all instances of corruption, for sure not all, and thereby inefficiency in the system can be traced back to the concept of anonymity. Having said that, I must acknowledge that fact that any problem confronted by the society need not as simple as I have presented as society as a system is highly complex involving interface of various kinds of dynamics and forces simultaneously.  However, the upshot is that mischief like corruption, cheating etc confronted by the society is closely related to the nature of human being and therefore, any remedial measure to deal with such menaces will only be fully effective if we consider this kind of a dimension to the issue of overall inefficiency in the system. Mischiefs can only be wiped out in the ordinary situations if we appeal to the conscience of those who are indulging in it. The task of appealing to the conscience involves developing a bond either social or personal in which the element of familiarity or acquaintance or non-anonymity has crucial role to play as it enhances the degree of accountability. The only effective way of ensuring that no couples cheat each other in their bed and thereby maintains fidelity is to appeal to their conscience not to indulge in cheating of partner and thereby develop a sense of being annoyed by the prick of conscience if he/she is cheating their partner which can only be achieved if there is a strong personal bond between couples for which they must know truly each other. There must be an emotional relationship between them for which they must try to know each other’s emotions in its true spirit.  Thus, the point I am making here is that to address social mischiefs like corruption and atrocities against women, apart from trying to deal with such menaces by law in the short run, a lasting solution has to devised taking cognizance of the significance of reducing the anonymity and thereby enhancing mutual accountability of the members of a society in the context of their interaction and thereby developing a system capable of directly influencing the conscience of human being and thereby making them highly sensitive to the interests of others.   

Solution

Designing and developing clusters of the community of people of manageable size with each cluster equipped with all possible facilities, requirements and services like education, healthcare, shopping facility, agriculture etc, wherein members of the same community voluntarily engages themselves in the activities of the same community, could be at least a partial solution to reduce the menace of anonymity and thereby increase the trust among the people. Let me reiterate one thing that there must a deliberate attempt in the process of developing such a community to inculcate the spirit of the community life which I would like to term as “communitism” as nationalism so that each member would be proud of being a member of a community and strive to enhance the pride of his/her community in the best possible manner.  For example, community farming will help to reduce the danger of toxic pesticides along with making available quality farm products at reasonable price as this system get rid of the parasitical middle men in the existing system of market mechanism who are primarily responsible for charging high price.  Similarly, if a member of the same community undertakes the responsibility of a village officer, issues of minor bribery can be addressed to a great extent. Also, if the qualified members are appointed as the teachers of the students of his own community about which he is proud of, there would be a natural tendency to do his job most sincerely. The socio-economic basis of Self Help Groups (SHP) such as Kudumbasree or Grameen Movement in Bangaldesh under the leadership of Nobel Laureate, Muhammed Yunus, is this sense of cummunitism and consequent collective responsibility to each other. If a member of the SHG borrows money either from its own fund or a bank linked with SHG, it is the collective responsibility of each member that he/she did not default. What plays here all is mutual trust, mutual respect, mutual familiarity, mutual accountability etc.  Muhammed Yunus appealed to the conscience of the fellow citizens and successfully sensitized them about the predicament of their countrymen which became a phenomenon worth emulating all over the world when people espoused his appeal to join hands to ameliorate poverty. In this movement also we can see traces of above mentioned factors like familiarity, feeling of being the same and together either along the line of nation or community.   Of course, communistism is not a panacea and should not be, otherwise earth will be a haven!  

What Happened to Traditional Illam’s of Kerala?

If you had asked this question to great economist Joseph Shumpeter he would have suggested that they are the victims of the ‘creative destruction’. He suggested the idea of ‘creative destruction’ as the new technology emerges; old get replaced with new one. For example, before the advent of industrial revolution, British society was dominated by aristocracies and local elite whose main source of income was form landholdings. With the arrival industrial revolution, new system emerged with new workers, new output and life style which made agriculture less profitable as workers moved to industries causing wages to rise. Thus, they replaced with new system. Similar development can be seen in kerala also. With the economic prosperity brought about globalization and subsequent migration of labor to other parts of the world especially to gulf regions, considerable change in the socio-economic profile of the people occurred. This brought about a paradigm shift in the socio-economic perspective as well as attitude of the people in complete contrast with the era of Illams. For instance, while the vast stretches of farm land under the ownership of the illam in the remote areas away from the roads were considered to be a matter of prestige during the   glorious period of illams, today what matters is barren land often close to National Highways which can be used for realty business. This apathy to agriculture generated by the socio-economic freedom unleashed by the economic prosperity also made agriculture not only less economically attractive as happened in Britain but also made it tenuous to keep people under serfdom. In the past, while illams saved as much money as possible in their shelves and thereby saved for the future, today people are living with credit cards and thereby dis-saving for the future. Illams were not trained as well as accustomed to this type of socio-economic storm and therefore, they were sidelined. Of course, I do not believe that this destruction is fully creative, but partially as it enabled people to stand on their own legs, at the same time it has caused considerable destruction to the agriculture, health of the people and  as well as the ecology. Thus, illams are victims of a partially destructive and partially constructive destruction.  

The Reality behind Reality Show

Reality shows are one of the major items in the basket of numerous television channels today. A close look at this recent phenomenon shows how best arts, culture and politics can be effectively synthesized to mobilise required energy to land up in the profit maximizing landscape of economics. Of course, even though this kind of a marketing strategy need not be applicable to all television channels, some of them operating in the frontiers of Malayalam can be seen resorting to this kind of tactics. To be sure,  travel across Kerala and notice the ingredients of the tall advertising canvasses in major cities preferably in the head quarters of the districts regarding such reality shows,  you can very much convince yourself of this business strategy. The strategy is simple: choose candidates based on names, promote them during the show and market them according to the appeal of their names (culture) across the state so that you can indirectly increase your viewership by appealing the cultural sentiments of the viewers and thereby your profitability. For instance, select and promote a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian and erect tall advertising boards featuring the Hindu in the city of Calicut, the Muslim in the head quarter of Malappuram district and Christian in the district of Kottayam. Thus, the ongoing reality shows presents a classic example of using arts, culture and religion for the promotion of business motive, at least some of them in Kerala. This example shows not only the mindset of the business men but also it further sheds light on the mindset of the people as a  whole reflecting how divided they are. How many of the viewers are really aware of this kind of a naked reality of such reality shows?  

Politics of Lightning

According to recent statistics available, more than 100 people die on an average in Kerala every year as a result of lightning. However, what surprises me is not only the enormity of the catastrophe but also the apparent ignorance or negligence about this annual catastrophe in Kerala. If so one can justifiably ask a naïve question as to why this repeatedly happens and at the same time it did not attract required attention not only from the govt but also from the general public. Before coming to the possible answer this question, I would like to reflect on a possible criticism to be leveled against me for dragging govt and general public into this kind of a natural phenomenon which is beyond the control of human being. Obviously I am not contending that govt or general public must control lightning from happening as it is impossible. Instead, my contention is that both govt and people have a joint responsibility for not getting this kind of perpetual catastrophe the required attention so that, even though, we are not able to control lightning, we can reduce the extent of the causality as much as possible by adopting measures such as spreading the awareness of the extent of the problem among the people and thereby encouraging them to undertake precautionary measures as well as helping the people even financially to make adequate precautionary measures not to get electrocuted by way of installing available technologies capable of dampening the impact of lightening in the households.  

Now let us foray into the possible answer to the question as to why it did not fetch deserving attention both at the level of govt and at the level of the general public so far even after Kerala has been witnessing this catastrophe annually. Two factors are responsible. First, being lightening from the so called God, opposition parties cannot effectively blame the ruling party for this unfortunate event and thereby make political dividends based on this as they will have to blame the god for being responsible for this unfair practices which, for sure, instead of encouraging the people to rally behind such a leader, will force them to take him/her to the nearby rehabilitation centre for mentally sick. Second, we being reared in a democratic setting has got somehow programmed or habituated to be only concerned about large numbers or majority rule and therefore, the sporadic incidents of the lightening claiming life of individuals in a sparse manner often fails to make impact in a system which is already programmed and accustomed to the simple majority-rule in which what matters is large numbers rather than the least numbers. In other words, in the absence of any strong political compulsions and leverages like the killing of T. P Chandrashekhar, our society including the rulers of that society will close their eyes towards this kind of sporadic less politically compelling and appealing deaths. To make my point clear, let me draw attention to one illustration as the political storm that Kerala had witnessed over either the killing of Rajan in 1970s or the death of the people by consuming illicit liquor in the past.  Obviously, I have a question here why Rajan’s issue or liquor tragedy certainly killing people less than 100 made political storm in Kerala whereas loss of life to more than 100 people annually failed to elicit required attention. Again, my legs will pulled here arguing that Rajan’s issue or liquor tragedy was a political issue or a political killing and that is why it created political storm. In my view it is the cruelest interpretation of what is politics. Politics is not about killing. It is about the choice of the rules to govern the people for their welfare (if it is in a true democracy). Thus, instead of killing people under the aegis of politics, the true politics is all about saving the people from either being killed or being died prematurely.

The failure of the govt and people to give required attention to the issue of lightening-death will be clear if and if only if we look at this issue through the eyes of true politics I have described above, instead of looking through the troubled-eyes of killer politics. If you look politics with such a view, you will realize why Rajan’s case or liquor tragedies attracted political attention. For, it provided ample opportunity for blame-game for both opposition and ruling parties and thereby it provided a scope for reaping political dividends. If not, even a single death, let alone 100 deaths, as a result of the lightening should have received at least the same socio-political attention as did in the case of Rajan or liquor tragedy because for a single person his/her life is the precious one irrespective of whether he/she is getting killed because of bad politics or bad weather indicating that to attract required attention to this issue, you need not wait to get entire malayalees killed on account of lightening.   

Thus, the point I am making is NOT that the issue of death or killing should be judged along the principles of time, space and numbers, instead my point is that in a true democracy govt has to protect individuals not only from the detrimental effects of the actions or inactions of other people, but also govt has to protect people from the vagaries of the nature like lightening, Tsunami, Katrina etc. Thus, our rulers who are so keen to declare judicial inquiries to look into the death of a single fellow or few fellows or our rulers who persuade people through media to purchase a ‘karunya’ lottery for the social cause or our rulers who subsidize the solar panel to encourage the habit of using renewable energy must also apply their mind to the sporadic incidents of lightening causalities by way of increasing the awareness of people about protective measures or by providing protective tools to the people to protect them from this kind of shocking incidents.  Govt is not just about collecting taxes and distributing it to various departments mostly to be distributed in the form of salaries to the boot-lickers of the same govt. Govt  has to rule the people least and live among the people the most. However, let me reiterate here one thing that my criticism of govt or politics should not be misconstrued as if targeted only against a group of people like our professional politicians or trade unions. Instead, in my conception, the state or govt is the collective responsibility of each and everyone manifested in the form of useful mechanisms, systems, institutions, rules etc. Therefore, the failure of rulers otherwise indicates the failure of people or the behavior of the rulers is the reflection of the behavior of the people whom they represent.

Contrasting Industrial Economy and Knowledge Economy

As I mentioned in a previous post, world is drastically shifting to a modern knowledge economy from a traditional industrial economy in which the basic principle of economics remains intact. I pointed out then that be it industrial economy or knowledge economy, the underlying driving force of these economies is the selfishness of human being which appears in a contrary shapes depending upon the context. When it comes to industrial economy, people satisfy their selfishness by restricting others from sharing their assets like land, industry or gold whereas under knowledge economy, people satisfy their selfishness by sharing their asset - knowledge- with others. That is, what matters ultimately is the selfishness of the human being which is originally an outcome of their  realization and comprehension of the complex reality that they can’t eat gold they  have accumulated or they can’t swallow the vast stretches of land they have acquired or they can’t chew large piles of currency they have shelved and therefore, they were eventually developing a mental capacity to translate this physical inability to their  mental satisfaction by making use of accumulated assets to satisfy their selfishness. That is why people are vying with each other to accumulate their wealth. The more the wealth they have, the richest they will be not in their eyes because their stomach did not actually expand with the expansion of their wealth, instead they are richest in the eyes of  others (non rich) not in the sense that with the increase in their (riches’) wealth others (non riches’) stomach will be expanding, instead others (non riches’) stomach will be contracting which otherwise implies that the stomach of the richest will ideally be expanding implying that richest attains a distinguished  status in the society about which they are proud of and it is this proud that fuels them to carry forward their endeavor to become further rich and thereby much more distinguished. I am sure that at least few may disagree with me in this endeavor to analyze the relevance economics just based on the size of the belly of the people. Of course, they may appear to be sensible to another few who are opulent and since they are opulent their concern would go beyond stomach to Rolex, Ferrari, Johnny Walker etc whereas for a majority here still what matters is the expansion and contraction of their stomach. Given this, I think it is still sensible to evaluate the economics today based on the size of the stomach and the capacity to manage it.

What we have seen above is the obvious dissimilarity between industrial and knowledge economies in the form of restraining others from acquiring what rich has like land in the industrial economy while sharing with others what rich posses in the form of knowledge in the knowledge economy and also we have seen how this dissimilarity can be traced back to the original ethos of economics - selfishness. However, a deep look into the structure of past industrial economy and modern knowledge economy will also reveal an interesting similarity between them in the form of private property rights. As private property rights were used in the past during industrial economy and even today to restrict others from enjoying the benefit of your wealth, today in this knowledge economy too, a variant of the same property rights namely intellectual property rights (IPR) such as patents or copy rights are used to restrict others from enjoying the benefit of the asset you posses in the form of knowledge.  Of course, here we cannot argue that entire benefit is restricted to others in this knowledge era through IPR. Instead, here we have to make a distinction between past wealth and present wealth. In the past, wealth in the form of land, gold etc had only economic appeal or component compared to the modern asset - knowledge, apart from its economic appeal or component; knowledge has got an intrinsic appeal of enlightenment or intrinsic component of information. Therefore, while the modern owners of the knowledge restrict others from enjoying the economic component of their knowledge through IPR as did in the past, they share the appeal of enlightenment with others through, for instance, blogs or Youtube or books.

Again as I pointed out, this kind of division of what should be shared and what should not be shared is dictated by the selfishness of the human being. That is, in the case of knowledge, those who possess knowledge today come forward to share its power to enlighten people as a part of their selfishness that they can boast of the fact that others got empowered through his/her knowledge which will increase his/her image as a knowledgeable person attracting recognition from others. At the same, others are restricted to get empowered economically though his/her knowledge as he/she is aware of the fact it will ultimately boomerang on himself/herself as others will be economically empowered in due course of time if he/she share the  economic component of their knowledge  with others leading to his/her selfishness getting hurt as he/she would be, at best, one among many equals while his/her selfishness is so eager to put him/her on the top of the list as, for example, the richest person of the world. Thus, in no way, the modern knowledge economy undermines the traditional principles on which the discipline of modern economics is built, despite certain superfluous camouflage. 

It is here the practical long term global significance of the Joseph E Stiglitz’s view on the Intellectual property rights like patents, copy rights should be understood as he has sounded alarm regarding the detrimental effect of current system of patenting on the developing and poor countries in his book making Globalisation Work. His argument for a fare patenting regime was similar to what I have demonstrated here. Stiglitz argued the current regime of patenting dominated by rich countries should be reformed in such a way that it will help the poor or developing countries to benefit from spill-over effect of knowledge so that they will be empowered to innovate  on their own as  knowledge , innovation and technical progress are the result of a virtuous cycle of sharing and collaboration of the past wisdom with present across the spectrum and at the same time, the economic interests of the innovators in rich countries should be protected without getting their economic incentives for further innovation trampled upon. Stiglitz observed that IPR have both cost in the form of incentives for monopolization and benefit in the form of incentive for innovation and therefore, a well-designed IPR requires balancing the costs and benefits. This is what exactly I have described above. The economic component of modern knowledge should be protected to safeguard the economic incentives of the innovator; at the same time the enlightenment component of  the modern knowledge or innovation  must be shared between all so that those who are at the bottom of the innovation like developing countries can be empowered to move up to the top. Therefore, finally,  we will wind up this discussion reflecting on the importance of the democratization of the global politics which shapes the rules of the game at the global level so that a ‘give and take’ approach of collaboration can be carved out for a better world tomorrow because in the absence of a true democratic rules of the game at the global level, it is impossible to bring this kind of a structural change in the global politico and economic regime to the complete disregard of the plight of the helpless majority of the world.