Last week at the State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama waxed eloquent as he spurred his countrymen on to embrace what he referred to as this generations Sputnik Moment.
Thousands of miles across the Atlantic a different set of people seem to have picked up the drift. As tens of thousands of frustrated youth throng the streets of Cairo and Alexandria demanding the ouster of their leader, Mubarak's silence is indeed deafening. The Egyptians demands are as genuine as the Tunisians. Corruption, joblessness and a whole host of other ailments that have been simmering over the past 30 years are now coming to a boil on the scorched crowded streets of Cairo.
It is however interesting to note the caution with which world leaders are treading.
Firstly, President Hosni Mubarak has NOT addressed the nation yet. Of course, it is assumed that as the crisis worsens, he would eventually make some sort of televised address. For the moment though, he chooses to live in ignorance. He is biding time hoping that sooner or later the mobs will get tired, and the protest would loose steam. In fact, in some circles he is even being termed as "arrogant" by announcing the post of a vice president when the country is screaming for his head. Like a poker player he is holding his cards close to his chest and waiting for the other players to call!!
The other player at the table is the US. At stake is a strategically located ally headed by a more-or-less puppet regime which gets 2 Billion dollars in aid receipts annually. Why risk a known friendly neighbourhood dictator for an unknown liberal with an unknown agenda? America has enough on its hands with Iran and Afghanistan. So while America may pay lip service to democratic ideals, secret parleys with Mubarak are certainly underway to untangle the crisis.
Nearly 10 years ago, in 2002, Professor Amy Chua from Yale University published her first book "World On Fire", against the backdrop of the riots in Indonesia against successful ethnic Chinese by a more than a few truckloads of jobless islanders. She made a few valid points about some of the undesirable aspects of Democracy and Globalization at a time when the likes of Thomas Friedman were singing its praises.
Democratic uprisings often place tremendous power and leverage in the hands of rampaging mobs that desecrate everything in their path with impunity. The case of Iran stares glaringly in ones face as an uprising turned sour. Isolated from the International community and a source of constant tension in the middle east, Iran were clearly better off with the Shah, but the Iranians didn't clearly think so.
However in this case, the uprising isn't religion based. The other party at the table, the Muslim Brotherhood is tactfully circling the skies waiting for the mobs to clear the streets in order to swoop down and lay claim to whats left of the revolution.
The 4th player on the table, the one with the most visible might is the army. Loyal to President Hosni Mubarak for all these years, the army has done a u-turn and refused to clamp down on the masses. This has allowed the protests to gather more steam. If at all any party can grab the reins here and set the tone, it is indeed the army.
Between all these players, lie the legitimate cries for regime change. The once timid Egyptian public has finally arrived at the table are anxiously waiting for action. The players are however nervously passing the buck for everyone else to make the first move in order to retaliate. In such an environment predicting the end result becomes a Permutation formula.
Things however may not go as badly as one thinks. Egypt is after all fashioned in the similar mould as Turkey is with a large liberal base. Most Egyptians do not favour a return to war with Israel (a scenario that may happen if the Islamic Brotherhood comes to power and decides to scrap the peace accord). A smooth transition by the army to a new administration may yield the much needed reforms needed to boost growth.
Egypt could still stake its claim amongst the most successful yet liberal Muslim nations of the world such as Turkey, Malaysia, etc .. but this certainly will not happen overnight. On the streets, the last tyre is yet to be burnt and the shutters are still half open. The smell of change is ripe in the air. This may after all still prove to be the Saracens Sputnik moment.
Dear Bill,
I must admit it sure isn't easy being in your shoes. I remember curled up in my study room arm-chair in my final year of post graduation more than a decade ago on a hot Sunday afternoon reading the cover story from one of India's premier business magazines - "Business World". The article was about the global IT behemoth Microsoft and how its reach was not only all-pervading but also all-throttling. Those were the days when all you feared was the odd anti-trust case, especially whenever you tried those marketing gimmicks to corner more of your existing marketshare.
That article also had a smal little snippet about how some evangelical Christians had begun to consider you to be the much feared anti-christ. Conspiracy theories were in the air predicting that you and your all powerful juggernaut would ride into power and usher in a new order with the mark of the beast.
A few years after I graduated, the heir to your throne - Steve Ballmer donned your mantle. Now!! Here was a marketing whiz, with no technical experience whatsoever who would spread the brand of Windows to the ends of the earth and thereby cement Microsofts position as IT chieftain for decades to come.
Well, somehow that hasn't really happened yet now, has it !!
In fact you seem to be preoccupied these days with the Melinda Gates foundation, concerned about issues such as Polio eradication in 3rd world countries and curtailing the spread of AIDS. The evangelicals have, as expected, abandoned your candidature for the antichrist and are shortlisting other suspects. However, the nimble powerhouse that you once built now seems tottering like the old elephant IBM once was.
To start with, did you see Steve's keynote address at CES 2011? I thought it was anything but stellar. Does one use primetime on an event as large as CES in taking the audience on a flashback tour of Microsoft's 2010 products!! This is CES, where people are hungry for new technology and new devices. While anxious visitors were eyeing the new smartphones and tablet PC's on display, all that Microsoft could showcase was vague prototypes !!
The Wintel alliance that has lasted Microsoft for decades now has run truely its course. The CISC Architecture worked perfectly with desktops and servers but not with the new range of long-battery life and user-interactive devices. You see, Microsoft needs more baskets to put its eggs into. The future seems (at this point of time) to be RISC based smartphones and tablets. Yet, Microsoft took nearly forever to get on ARM with unnecessary delays.
Windows 7 Phone has been delayed. We do not know when it would be released and even when it officially is, it would fall straight into a market already swamped with androids and iPhones. With all these unnessary delays you have gifted archrival Apple Computers an extra lap in the race, while you sit on the sidelines and toy with options on whether you would tweak Windows CE for Tablets or let Windows 8 rolls out first. I seriously doubt whether Microsoft is serious about the tablet/smartphone market or whether they have decided that the future instead hinges on the success of the other big story - cloud computing.
An article on the Cloud Computing marketplace last year turned up some rather strange leaders (see itweb's report). IBM and CISCO's solutions were among the top 10 cloud solutions listed but names such as Google and Microsoft were nowhere in the reckoning. Companies such as IBM and even Oracle have been in the Enterprise Applications space for a long time and have a wide range of tools at their disposal. Microsoft on the other hand has its successes mainly in the desktop segment with their MS Office toolkit, and even in the gaming segment with X-Box.
To take a step back, Microsoft's forte has always been the Operating system(OS) and productivity tools that revolved around it. As the OS now shifts from the desktop to the tablet/smartphone, I feel that Microsoft would be wise to remain engaged and competitive in its core segment. Trying to be a leader in all segments in an age where disruptive technologies arrive and disappear by the time one's windows PC boots up, is not the best of approaches especially since Microsoft is just not as dominant as it once was!!
So Mr. Bill, we miss you and your key-note addresses. Everytime you used to get up there on the dias, with your commanding presence and geeky spectacled grin and talk to us (IT developers) about technology (whether it was SOAP, XML or even Sharepoint), we knew you had a vision and knew where you were headed. Now we have to contend with a technically challenged Bozo who apart from chanting "Windows" is pretty much clueless as to how to keep a technical audience engaged.
We need you back at the helm Bill, either you or Paul Allen !! Someone recently said when non-economists start talking like economists, then something is really wrong with the economy. Likewise when non-technocrats start talking technology, then something is surely wrong !!
According to the Greek Philosopher, Plato's famous dialogue "The Republic", a persons' grooming for govenrment should happen over the due course of his lifetime. Children should be seized from their reluctant parents at around about the tender age of 6 and sent to school. This isolation is intended to prevent any kind of brainwashing or bias that parents normally feed their children's minds with. In school they would be given physical education and placed in a conducive environment where learning would take place. Learning will not be forced upon the child, instead it would be encouraged to explore areas of interest that it finds fascinating.
At the age of 20 the child would undergo a test which would be practical as well as theoretical. This would filter out the first lot of individuals who are not cut out for higher learning. They who pass out from this would be put through an additional 10 years of study. Those who fail would play their role in the economic development of the nation. They would find their calling in fields such as commerce, entrepreneurship, clerks, farmers and (more contemporarily) jobs pertaining to the salaried worker of today such as clerks, BPO associates, etc .. (today's MBA's would swoon upon reading this!!)
At the age of 30 a second exam would be conducted and this time those who pass would be set aside for the last lap of learning. The filtered souls would hereby be enrolled in the government in service of the nation. They would serve in areas such as defense, the navy, etc ... This is truely a far cry from the world of today where many (not all) enlist in the miliatary as a means to make a living where none seems possible.
The cream that survives these 3 decades of learning will then be set aside for the study of philosophy for the last 5 years. At the end of this they would be cast headlong with no mercies whatsoever into the real world. Here for 15 long years they would work alongside their countrymen in the economy, and even toil with their comrades in the army. At the ripe age of 50, after having walked with all manner of men and putting their higher learning ideas to the test, they would be ready to govern the nation.
Well thats putting utopia it in a nutshell !!
How well would 2 of today's leaders fare in this system?
Lets start with Uncle Sam. The incumbent President Barack Obama, would have passed all three rounds with flying colours. If one were to study his history, one would truely admire the guy for the challenges he has surmounted in order to get to the whitehouse. He is surely no stranger to the harshness of life. Apart from teaching in Harvard, he also worked in community centers over the years and as far as education is concerned, he did after all graduate from Harvard Law School.
Obama's legacy, one may argue is still being written, but an immediate snapshot of the battlefield shows a picture full of woes. With much fanfare he arrived, and with a harsher knock on the elbow his party received a drubbing in the mid-term elections. No doubt he came in on the wane and has restored some amount of sanity to the nation but with unemployment nearly touching double digits, his work is far from over.
Obama, like most philosophers clearly has his own ideology. The problem here is like most philosophers, one tends to cling on to their pet theories in pretty much the same manner that damp clothes cling on to the body of a drenched pedestrian. His stubborness with pushing through the healthcare bill in congress at a time when he should have been working with the opposition to boost the economy is a case in point. In fact, to corroborate this, Obama has even gone on record stating that he is willing to become a one term president on this.
Secondly, Obama has indeed had field experience, but not really the type that gives you a 360 degree view. His 180 degree view on a plethora of important issues has resulted in him virtually offering himself up as the whipping boy of the Republican right. Consider this: There are no leading executives from America's Premier Corporations (Otherwise known as "Big Business") on his cabinet, not even as advisors. He came down heavily on CEO over-compensation (which the hardworking laid-off middle class and union workers secretly approve of more than they would choose to publicly admit) with the Frank-Dodd Bill and introduced legislation to bring the shadow banking industry into the fold of regulation.
Obama's cabinet is packed with theorists. In fact it is sometimes felt that even the presence of a few business icons on board may have indirectly conveyed corporate America's seal on his reforms. Needless to say, the opposition have latched onto this vacuum and have painted him as anti-business (see poll taken). His experience in law school and the community service he did, didnt really make up for his absence of training in the corporate world. Master Yoda from Star Wars would have likened the same to a Jedi who has abandoned his Training midway to engage with a Dark Lord.
Back home in India, the incumbent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is the next leader we turn our attention too. To start with, his titles and academic achievements could fill up an entire page.
Here is a man who went entirely from the annals of academia into Government. It almost seemed that he was destined for the top job. He began with a stint with UNITAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), and was consequently elevated to the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. This was followed-up by a slew of other prestigious posts such as Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission and not to forget his crucial role as the Finance Minister in the Narasimha Rao cabinet of 1991 who liberalised India's economy.
He may have not been tested with the riguors of the maketplace but his training did indeed hold him in good stead when India needed an expert at its helm to open up the economy. His tactful art of diplomacy has benefitted India on many fronts. For the sake of the nation, he put his party's political alliance and his future on the line to seal the historic Nuclear Deal.
However, his inability to be decisive when it matters has recently dented much of his reputation in the eyes of the public. With every new scandal that rocks the nation, more people have begun to view him as limp-fisted and unable to crack the whip when required. His pandering to the congress party bloodline has not helped his image either. He now leads a government that appears to be pulling itself equally in different directions between an white-haired environmental saviour minister and a few ministers who want the country Industrialized at breakneck speed.
When the 3 Big scandals of the year broke out recently:- (The 2G Scandal, The Commonwealth Games Scandal and the Mumbai Adarsh Housing Scandal), he seemed completely clueless as to how to handle them. In almost all cases he got into the game late only to promise a speedy investigation. This somewhat limited hands-on/hands-off approach has led to the oppositions continued frustration which eventually caused the parliament shutdown.
Unlike Obama however, Manmohans job is relatively easier. He heads a booming economy and doesnt need to worry about unemployment, but he needs to be more decisive, even if it may mean taking a strong stand in the party that may not seem accomodating, a leaf he can possibly take from "Obama the Philosopher's" cap.
Obama on the other hand could learn the art of "Respecting the Opposition" from the Indian Prime Minister. Manmohan has been the PM for close to 6 years now and still has a relatively clean image. He even recently compared himself with Caesars wife (to be above suspicion). The opposition have found it a tough job to make personal attacks on him prior to these recent scandals. Manmohan uses the "Silence" technique rather effectively. He allows critiques to go on ranting about him while he takes the high ground out. It has paid.
While these 2 emperors of the 2 biggest democracies in the world continue to find their paths in the labyrinth of 21st century politics, its amazing to see how some of the traits described centuries ago by a greek philosopher still hold good.
Today, Greece's economy is in shambles. They have gone with their begging bowls to the IMF. Unrest is on the rise in the streets even as the government implements harsh austerity programs meant to reduce their debt.
Plato's famous statue in Athens sits still amidst all this unrest, wisdom has truely abandoned its nest.
From Julian Assange to Niira Radia, this "new age of espionage" has been lifted to stratospherical levels unseen of since the idiot box appeared in our living rooms. We have the Press to thank for this, alongside ample backing from the liberal activists.
With an approximate 250,000 US Embassy cables containing classified American opinions and sometimes coffee table humour about world leaders going public, the world, let alone America has ample reason be embarrassed. Of course as claimed by Wikileaks, "this is only the beginning (of sorrows)". As more and more documents enter public domain it remains to be seen the extent by which this (malicious) content would further rupture any of the existing political fault lines.
What is really unique is that these disclosures come at a time when the American juggernaut is down to its last bout of steam and is choking for want of more coal($$). Its economic power now is but a shade of what it once was just a few years ago when it could muscle its might around any high table with impunity. These days in a desperate attempt to portray its relevance to the changing world scenario, Americans are being seen a lot more in forums they used to once pay little heed to such as ASEAN.
In this light, the wikileaks episode however reveals nothing staggeringly earthmoving about American foreign policy. In fact, it serves to corroborate what most of us have known about the inscrutible Americans and their policies for quite sometime, whether its Karzai's paranoia in Afghanistan, Ahmadinejad's Hitler like attitude or Chancellor Merkell's lack of creativity. Most world leaders have however been mum in their condemnation of these leaks and there are very strong reasons for this.
Firstly, by knowing America's fundamental stance on various global issues they can devise more room to manoever or take up negotiating positions to their benefit. This would simply throw years of American diplomacy and deal-mongering out the front door.
Secondly (or should it instead be said as more profoundly), most Governments in the world know that the same cables could have so easily been planted in their own backyard and they could have been caught with their pants down. Silence on their part is a matter of paying lipservice to free press while secretly acknowledging that the game has been changing and that they still need to find their footing.
Back home in India the CEO of the TATA group (Ratan Tata), one of the most reputed Industralists on Indian soil has been caught in a similar kind of imbroglio for having liaised with an independant lobbyist (Niira Radia) to plead on its behalf for certain advantage when the 2G Licenses were being awarded. Transcripts of private telephone conversations with Niira are now commonplace in the center pages of "India Today" or "Outlook" weekly magazines.
Ratan Tata, the soon to be retired incumbent scion is pulling out all stops to ensure that his legacy isn't torn into shreds by an overzealous media that have already played their part in one of the key ministors (Telecom Minister Raja's) resignation. Ratan Tata has tried to move the court on a motion to prevent the tapes between him and the lobbyist from being aired on Primetime TV.
The Press's argument is nevertheless crystal clear:- The telephone conversations were intended to influence a cabinet minister in power and to secure an uneven advantage for a specific business group. This constitutes corruption and hence being a democracy the contents of the tapes are an offence and hence do belong in public domain.
The public in India has been rather taken by surprise to see one of its finest industrialists being dragged through the grovel of the glare. Unfortunately the slide for Ratan Tata and the Tata group is just about to begin. Only time will tell as to whether the damaging disclosures wreck havoc on their stock price (these days the measure of everything), their Brand Image or worse still, both.
All said, humanity will sweep these wire-taps under the carpet for the common good as the alliance between greenbacks and power is as old as the dollar itself. Issues of Individual Privacy take a back seat as far as lobbying or the affairs of state are concerned. No one can and should be allowed to hide behind the bench stating legalities.
Activist journalism has however begun to get a whole lot of bad press when Expose's happen, for all the wrong reasons. The sheer magnitude at which they are happening these days should make one question the system and not the methods. The Press is a necessary evil. The Unnecessary one being corruption!!
