Enhancing India’s soft power – by M Vidyasagar

[prasadr]

This is to all Pulkas who were questioning what Modi's recent US visit achieved.

https://dynastycrooks.wordpress.com/2019/09/29/guest-blog-enhancing-indias-soft-power-by-m-vidyasagar/

 

(1) Significantly boost the Division of Overseas Indian affairs
(2) Fund NRI lobbies that can influence foreign media
(3) Codify the meaning of Hinduphobia and lobby relentlessly to stigmatize Hinduphobes
(4) Dual Citizenship for Indians abroad and their descendants
(5) Influence Hollywood the way China does
(6) Tourism!

I will touch upon each of the items on this list at various points in the article.

The question of enhancing India’s soft power can be divided into the two overlapping topics, namely:

II. How can we turn India into a country that merits admiration?

III. How can the projection of India by various individuals and entities be made to reflect the reality?

I will discuss each topic separately. But why is the list starting with II? What is Item I?

I. Why is India at present not worthy of admiration?

We need to be frank and admit to ourselves that the reality of India has NOT been anything to admire until recently, and even now, we still have a long way to go. There are many reasons for this, and I will touch upon only a few of them.

I-A. Internal Colonization and a Lack of Commitment to India’s Welfare

When I was a graduate student in the USA, during the second half of the 1960s, I coined a phrase “internal colonization” to describe what I saw as the situation prevailing in India at that time. My meaning was this: On August 15, 1947, the white colonizers left, and were promptly replaced by brown colonizers. When it came to NOT caring about the welfare of Indian society as a whole, or looting the national wealth to the benefit of a small privileged ruling class, the new dispensation was no different from the old. Nehru had utter contempt for India and Indians, as has been amply documented elsewhere. He undoubtedly saw himself as a continuing the “white man’s burden” of bringing the great unwashed masses of India into something resembling what he saw as “civilization.” Towards this end, he perpetuated the upward-looking ICS (though he changed the name to the IAS).

The manner in which the British set up the ICS was quite different from the way in which they set up their own civil services, or the civil service in countries that they did not consider to be inferior, such as Canada. I have lived in Canada for nearly twenty years, so I can speak with some authority to the fact that Canadian civil servants DO specialize in one topic, and stay within that for the duration of their tenure. In contrast, the emphasis in the ICS was ensuring that the administrators did not get too chummy with nor sympathetic to the “natives.” So they were transferred frequently, and did not specialize in any one thing. The ICS was a tool of subjugation, not administration. The renowned journalist Sir Mark Tully has pointed out that, when the British drafted the Indian Constabulary Act to set up the IPS, they did NOT model it on the British Constabulary act, which was meant to administer themselves. Rather, they modelled it after the Irish Constabulary Act, because in both instances the intent was to subjugate the local populace. The ICS/IAS was no different. Even today the IAS has no intention of actually serving the public, as we have all noticed.

 

During the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the members of the Indian Civil Services (IAS, IFS, IPS) had ZERO commmitment to the growth or welfare of India. I can attest to this from personal knowledge. Their main priority was to use their privileged position to settle their children abroad, and then join them after retirement. When the ruling classes have no interest in the growth of a society, how would the society prosper?

I-B. Lack of Accountability

Even after 2014, when India has been transforming itself under the able leadership of PM Modi, the old power structures have remained intact, and Modi has shown very little inclination to dismantle them. Oh, we can talk about a handful of IAS babus getting forcibly retired at age 50, by invoking a provision that has always been on the books but never enforced, or the half a dozen “lateral inductions” at the Joint Secretry level. But no one will be able to argue that, under Modi, the babus are feeling a pressure to perform.

Just today the IIT Council voted out the system of faculty getting permanence after just one year of service, in favor of a US-style tenure system; I am all for this change. So why are bureaucrats guaranteed a lifetime job (with time-bound promotions for the first seventeen years irrespective of performance)? Does Modi have the guts to tackle the situation? It is not so difficult if he really wants to do so. All he has to do is to say that those who are already in service will have the old rules, but new entrants will have a different set of rules. But does Modi has the commitment to make such a fundamental change? Time will tell.

I-C. Lack of discipline and commitment to the rule of law

In many ways ths is a consequence of I-A. If Nehruvian socialism has taught us anything at all, it is this: IT DOES NOT PAY TO FOLLOW THE RULES! During my childhood and beyond, law-abiding citizens were left behind as the privileged moved ahead. Even today our judiciary is capricious, arbitrary, unaccountable, and inspires very little confidence. It is only crooks like Chidambaram who go around mouthing platitudes about “having complete confidence in the judiciary.” This lack of confidence in the judiciary and police manifests itself DAILY in a variety of ways. To give just one example, one of the ways in which the old Shiv Sena got started in Mumbai was to act as a goon squad to evict tenants who refused to vacate. Of course, on paper there was and still is a procedure to get a tenant to vacate, but IT SIMPLY DOES NOT WORK! That was why owners had to employ goons to evict tenants. This kind of thing is applicable to practically every walk of our day to day life.

II. How can we turn India into a country that merits admiration?

Up until now this blog has been like a gripe session. Now let me start giving some solutions instead of just listing problems.

II-A. Dismantling overt signs of privilege

 

Dismantling the overt signs of privilege is one of the lowest-hanging fruits for the PM. Why should judges be exempted from paying tolls on roads? Why should a laundry list of major and minor “dignitaries” be exempted from being frisked at airports? And so on. The mere APPEARANCE of equality for all will go a long way to modify our behavior, AND that of the hitherto unaccountable overlords. Until and unless every Indian feels equal to every other Indian, we as a nation will not progress. With the appearance of equality, then perhaps some commitment to the rule of law would follow. Of course, a total reformation of the current “Collegium” system whereby judges appoint their own successors, without any administrative oversight, needs to be changed; but that would be a long-haul fight.

II-B. Improving India’s scientific and technologial prowess

We may like to think that India is a world leader in science and technology, but the sad fact is that it is not even close! Given the constraints, the IITs, NITs and other assorted engineering colleges to a decent job of educating aspiring youngsters. But the government does a truly miserable job of promoting innovation and the start-up culture. I will go farther than that. The government (including the present one) takes concrete steps to THROTTLE start-ups. Our taxation laws are openly hostile to start-ups and provide a massive disincentive for anyone to invest in them. This is not the place to go into details, but believe me, it is true.

While throttling our S&T capabiities, this government is busy pandering to the left-lib crowd by allowing it to encroach onto our S&T institutions. Again, just today the IIT Council enhanced the tuition fee for M.Tech. programs to a head-spinning TWO LAKHS PER YEAR! At the same time, stipends to M.Tech. students have been discontinued! Obviously this was done under pressure from the government. This is a stupid and short-sighted move. The M.Tech. programs at the IITs have been a way for intelligent students who just missed out getting into an IIT for the B.Tech. to improve their knowledge as well as their prospects. By enhacing the fees to an unnaffordable two lakhs per year (which is A LOT) while at the same time eliminating the M.Tech. student stipend forces all such students to fork out two lakhs of Rupees per year from their pockets. I cannot imagine a more effective way to destroy our S&T base. At the same time, the government has done NOTHING to the perpetual students at places like JNU. In reality it should be the other way around of course. It is the STEM students who should be paying just a few hundred Rupees per year, while perpetual students who want to pursue degrees in Garbage Studies should have to pay the full cost of their education.

Let me put it very simply. No country ever became a superpower without technological prowess. We need to go beyond paying lip service and take concrete measures. Thus far the government has NOT done so. Indeed, having a succession of poor HRD Ministers has been one of the worst aspects of the Modi sarkars.

The importance of this cannot be over-emphasized. By taking away the control of temple finances from the local devotees and placing it in the “Kabandha” clutches of rapacious politicians, Nehru effectively neutered the ability of Hindus to propagate their culture and their world view. Like any slow-actng poison pill, this act has now created a situation wherein PRACTICALLY ALL of the privileged members of our society have received an education that is either mildly or viciously anti-Hindu. Even now, an “English medium education” and a “Convent accent” are the passports to success, except in STEM subjects. In earlier years, Hindu temples used to feed the poor, just as Sikh langars do now. But with their finances denuded, they cannot do so any longer.

One of the most potent weapons used by Christian missionaries to convert people is to offer them a free education. They can do that not only because they receive huge funds from abroad, but also because they do not face any competition in offering free education from Hindu temples. I studied in the Sri Venkateswara High School in Tirupati, run by the TTD. EVERY poor child (irrespective of religion BTW — we had some Muslim students too) got a 50% rebate on the school fees, and if the student maintained some minimum standard, they got the other 50% also waived off. But this requires money — and Hindu temples have none nowadays.

One of the feeblest arguments advanced on this topic, even by some persons on this forum, is that “Hindus are not demanding it.” My retort would be: Is Modi a follower or a leader? If he were to do only those things that people demand, then he would be a follower and not a leader. If he has a civilizational vision, he should do things BEFORE people ask for them, and then explain why he is doing them.

III. How can the projection of India by various individuals and entities be made to reflect the reality?

While we strive to improve our country, in parallel we must strive to improve the perception of India by outsiders. There are many aspects to this as well.

 

This is Point No. 6 on Abhishek’s list, but I put it as my No. 1 remedy. Once a person has actually visited India, s/he cannot hate it quite so much. (Of course, Hinduphobic bigots are exceptions to this statement.) But let us face it, the contemporary India is NOT for the faint of heart! Our infrastruture is still quite pathetic. We may have world-class airports and world-class hotels at really cheap rates; but the roads betwen the airports to the hotels are pathetic. The hygiene in India also leaves a great deal to be desired. Can we find even clean toilets on a road journey?

All of these things need to be improved if we are to entice many more tourists. The point is that making India a nice place to visit, by improving our infrastructure, would also help us Indians to undertake “internal tourism” and boost the economy.

 

According to this tweet by Rishi Bagree, the number of tourists to India has gone up by 67% since 2011, while the per tourist expenditure has gone up by 50%. Almost all of the increase would have to be attributed to inflation. Historically India has attracted mostly low-budget tourists like back-packers. This needs to change. (According to Mr. Bagree’s figures, the average expenditure per tourist last year was Rs. 1.8 lakhs, a figure that I do not find credible, unless it includes air fare.)

A subsection of this is to promote visits by overseas academics, especially in STEM subjects. Deng Xiaoping started his economic liberalization of China in 1979. Starting in the early 1980s, China initiated a policy of inviting overseas academics and setting up joint R&D programs. This led to the generation of an ENORMOUS amount of goodwill for China. We are so far behind that it is not funny. We MUST relax the restrictive provisions that require ALL visits by foreign nationals to be approved by the GoI, in case the visitor is a STEM academic. Of course it should not and cannot be relaxed to embrace ALL so-called academics! Many “Garbage Studies” professors are quite hostile to India. Simultaneously we must invest a great deal more money into bilateral and multilateral R&D programs, visiting Fellowships, and the like, once again, restricted to ONLY STEM subjects. If we can give a billion dollars to Russia, we can surely invest $100 million in bilateral STEM R&D!

III-B. Understanding what motivates our enemies (and understanding that our biggest enemies are within!)

Why get all excited about Imran Khan lambasting India at the United Nations General Assembly, when he was actually quoting the politicians of the INC? Why criticize some foreign “journalists” for writing hit pieces on India, the BJP, or Modi, when there are “Indians” like Rana Ayyub who would do gladly do the same? Any attempts to improve India’s image abroad would be fruitless until our RNIs (Resident Non-Indians) are neutered. Whether it is America, France, Japan, or even Pakistan, the journalists of each country are fiercely loyal to their countries. India is quite unique in having so many enemies within.

Perhaps the government is complacent, thinking that such negative articles would not have much effect, given the low esteem in which MSM is held by people in Western countries, especially by the “right-leaning” public in those countries. But that would be a dangerous course to follow.

Which is the most infuential country in the world today? Almost everyone would agree that it is the USA, for a variety of reasons: It has the best universities and the best scientific research. It is a technological leader and has a vibrant start-up culture. It is also a “soft power” leader with its entertainment industry. OK, so which is the SECOND-most influential country? My nominee would be … Saudi Arabia! It does not have even a single one of the attributes that I cited above in favor of the USA. But it does have lots and lots of petro-dollars that it uses very, very wisely to turn things in its favor. Already Western feminism has turned into a wholly-owned subsidiary of Islamism. You will never hear a Western feminist condemn FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), or polygamy, or instant divorce, etc. But they are ever-ready to pounce on the perceived “patriarchy” or “mysogyny” of everything associated with Hinduism.

 

Take something that happened just yesterday. There are lots of wannabe Wendy Donigers, including a wannabe “brown Wendy Doniger” in the form of Devdutt Pattanaik. Another aspirant is Audrey Truschke, a faculty member at Rutgers. Until now she had limited herself to writing apologia for Aurangzeb and bashing Hindus. But yesterday she was found outside the UN building, stridently supporting Pakistan! What would be her motivation? I am hard-pressed to say. Could it be that Pakistan, bankrupt though it is, still spends whatever little money it has supporting the Truschkes of this world?

To understand such people, we need “think tanks” that analyze such people and such incidents in depth. Unfortunately, if the BJP were to start “right-wing think tanks,” there is a danger such think-tanks would immediately get filled by a few “right-wing intellectuals,” who are interested only in getting for themselves the same cushy and accountability-free existence that is currently enjoyed by “left-wing intellectuals.” Such persons would not be of any use in understanding why people like Audrey Truschke seem to hate Hindus so much. Instead of having professional bloviators, we need a lot more involvement from hard-working professionals who are willing to donate their time. Take our beloved blogger. He is a first-class mathematician who nevertheless finds the time to blog on the important issues of the day. Such people will, in the long run, benefit society and “the cause” far more than self-important windbags even if they pretend to be pro-BJP.

 

One of the worst things to have happened to India starting in the mid 1980s is that Dawood Ibrahim has completely taken over Bollywood and turned it into a Jihadi factory. I can understand that it had to do with securing financing for movies, but by now it should be totally obvious that unless we neuter the current version of Bollywood with its relentlessly negative portrayal of all things Hindu, we cannot hope to improve India’s (and Hindus’) image abroad. The marketing of Bollywood as being representative of India was initiated during the UPA era, for reasons that are easy to guess. Right now it is like an out of control monster that needs to be slayed. Even people who PRETEND to be pro-Hindu like Akshay Kumar will betray Hindus for a price. Look at his stupid movie about the Mangalyaan mission (made with funding from Qatar) where there were so many mis-portrayals of the female ISRO scientists. I don’t know HOW this is to be done; but without this step all other steps would be useless. This is a variation on Abhishek’s Point No. 5.

I think this is a good place to discuss Abhishek’s Point No. 3. Undoubtedly there is a great deal of Hinduphobia promoted by persons within India and outside. A casual slur like “cow-piss drinker” can be tossed off by anyone without any consequences whatsoever. I guess I am not persuaded that trying to play victim constantly, as Muslims do, is the right course for us. I really don’t want people to feel that they cannot criticize Hindus if they believe that the criticisms are valid. Rather, we should strive to change world opinion by osmosis so to speak. The process is slow but more certain. Having said that however, I am ready to concede that others may hold a different view.

 

III-D. Co-opting overseas persons of Indian origin as advocates of India.

Let us face it, until late Sushma Swaraj-ji became the External Affairs Minister, Indian Missions abroad used to treat people like $hit. It was only due to her untiring efforts that every overseas Indian felt that the government was wholly behind him or her. The reason for the earlier discourteous behavior was the sense of entitlement of IFS people, which is a part of my point I-A and I-B above. I hope the new Minister, Mr. Jaishankar, continues the example set by Sushma-ji. This speaks to Abhishek’s Point No. 1.

Aside from this aspect, merely making India a country to be admired if not envied would AUTOMATICALLY take care of this aspect. I note that some of the commentators have cited their overseas relatives as being “beyond repair.” In my observation of nearly sixty years (my family and I moved to the US for the first time in 1960), this is a function of their age. Those who went abroad when India was a hopelessly lost cause have internalized being apologetic about being Indian. A large fraction of them are actually upset at India’s new-found prosperity, because they see it as robbing them of their special status. But for the most part, young Indians abroad are quite proud of being Indian. Hence, so long as we stay the course on achieving technological growth and attracting FDI, this aspect would take care of itself.

The USA has institutionalized corruption by calling it “lobbying.” Usually lobbying firms consist of former legislator and/or government officials, who are happy to sell “access” to anyone who is ready to pay them money — they are not too scrupulous about who the clients are. When Imran Khan was in the USA recently, he signed up some lobbying firm. I am not aware whether India has, or had in the past, engaged any obbying firms. This speaks to Abhishek’s Point No. 2.

India has also NOT been that active in inviting bipartisan delegations of US Congresspersons or UK Parliamentarians to visit India. There is clearly a leftward/Islamist lurch in both US and UK politics, whereby the Democrats in the USA and the Labour Party in the UK are now openly Islamist. Thus such an outreach program would be less effective than it would have been earlier. Nevertheless, we must make the effort.

Regarding dual citizenship, which is Abhishek’s Point No. 4, I do not have any hard feelings one way or another. Other than voting and seeking office, PIOs and OCIs can have all the privileges of Indian citizens. So I do not see a compelling case.

 

I might be deluding myself, but I would like to believe that for people in most poor countries in Africa, South America, and parts of Asia, it is India and not China that would be a role model. China’s infrastructure is not only miles ahead of India, but it is far better than in the USA too! But for all that, people in the countries mentioned above would admire India for the freedoms that we take for granted. We Indians tend to be overly conscious of what the US thinks of us. But Afghanistan has lots of minerals that we should tap!

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

Abhishek has done us all a huge favor by raising the issue of India’s soft power. Modi’s triumphant visit to the USA must be followed up and built upon. I hope we continue the discussion, and that we will all do our share.

 

 

 

[prasadr]

Mathukumalli Vidyasagar FRS^[1] (born 29 September 1947) is a leading control theorist and a Fellow of Royal Society. He is currently a Distinguished Professor in Electrical Engineering at IIT Hyderabad. Previously he was the Cecil & Ida Green (II) Chair of Systems Biology Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. Prior to that he was an executive vice-president at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) where he headed the Advanced Technology Center. Earlier, he was the director of Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), a DRDO defence lab in Bangalore. He is the son of eminent mathematician M V Subbarao.

His Erdős number is two and his Einstein number is three.

Awards and honors[edit]

Vidyasagar received several awards and honors, including:

• 1983: IEEE Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), at the age of 35, one of the youngest to receive this honor, "for contributions to the stability analysis of linear and nonlinear distributed systems"^[2]
• 1984: the Frederick Emmons Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education^[3]
• 2004: IEEE Spectrum named him as one of forty "Tech Gurus"
• 2008: the IEEE Control Systems Award^[4][5]
• 2012: Became a Fellow of Royal Society^[1]
• 2012: Rufus Oldenburger Medal
• 2013: John Ragazzini Education Award, American Automatic Control Council - for outstanding contributions to automatic control education through publication of textbooks and research monographs
• 2015: Jawaharlal Nehru Science Fellowship, Government of India
• 2017: Fellow, International Federation of Automatic Control
• 2017: Named as 125 "People of Impact" during the 125th anniversary of the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Wisconsin

Books[edit]

• 1975. Feedback Systems: Input-Output Properties. with C. A. Desoer
• 1978. Nonlinear Systems Analysis
• 1981. Input-Output Analysis of Large-Scale Interconnected Systems: Decomposition, Well-Posedness and Stability
• 1985. Control System Synthesis: A Factorization Approach
• 1989. Robot dynamics and control. with Mark W. Spong
• 1993. Nonlinear Systems Analysis, (Second Edition)
• 1997. A Theory of Learning and Generalization: With Applications to Neural Networks and Control Systems
• 2003. Learning and Generalization With Applications to Neural Networks, (Second Edition)
• 2006. Robot modeling and control. with S. Hutchinson and Mark W. Spong
• 2012. Computational Cancer Biology: An Interaction Networks Approach
• 2014. Hidden Markov Processes: Theory and Applications to Biology