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This episode of The Scene on the Unseen is brought to you by Intel.
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There is this old cartoon that I remember from time to time.
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It features two wolves and a lamb arguing about what to have for dinner.
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Guess what the wolves want?
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When they can't reach a consensus for which lamb would agree to be eaten, one of the wolves
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says, let's vote and go by what the majority wants.
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Remember two wolves, one lamb.
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Now this is why a democracy needs to be about much more than just voting.
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You need to have a vote, but you need to protect the lamb.
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In theory, our constitution does this, though my constant lament is that it protects the
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state from the individual more than the other way around.
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In theory also, our institutions and processes do this.
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Our parliament, after all, is there to help keep a check on the government in power, to
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keep it accountable, to help it do its job well.
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But is it like that in practice?
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I'm pessimistic about some of these questions, but my guest today is an optimist.
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More than that, while I am an armchair pessimist, he is an on-the-ground optimist.
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He gets up in the morning every day looking forward to how he can make our democracy function
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And I think I might become a bit of an optimist myself because of people like M. R. Madhavan.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
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Please welcome your host, Amit Verma.
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Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen.
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My guest today is M. R. Madhavan, who left a thriving corporate career a decade and a
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half ago to set up PRS Legislative Research, which aims to make our legislators better
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informed about issues that face India.
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If you think about it, this was a gap in the market.
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Our legislators come to parliament after they have become experts in the art of winning
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But for no fault of their own, they may not know much about governance or the complex
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policy issues that they suddenly have to vote on.
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Madhavan and its PRS co-founder, C. V. Madhukar, decided to fill this gap by creating research
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that would educate parliamentarians and help them make good decisions.
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To their delight, they found that there was a market for this and many parliamentarians
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Since they started in 2005, they have also come up with other initiatives such as the
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LAMP Fellowship that strengthen our democracy.
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I was delighted when Madhavan agreed to join me on the show and I wanted to pick his brains
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on subjects that I've been thinking about and exploring on this podcast for a long,
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I love this conversation and I hope you do as well.
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Before we get there though, let's take a quick commercial break.
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Everything needs a foundation.
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If you build a house, the unseen part below the ground is what makes it stand.
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If you want to learn a new subject, you start from first principles, from root causes.
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And the internet, this wonderful creation that keeps us talking to each other, laughing
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and living together, learning all the time, the internet also has a strong foundation.
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Madhavan, welcome to the Scene in the Unseen.
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There's so much I want to talk to you about and some of those like constitutionalism and
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the state of our republic are subjects that I have continuously explored in this episode
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with other guests to the point that some of my questions will actually seem a cliche to
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But you know, before we get to those heavy subjects, you know, this is the first time
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I want to start off by getting to know you a little better.
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So tell me about your life.
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You know, where were you born?
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Early life, fairly boring.
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So I'll just keep it very short.
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My dad was a mid-level bureaucrat, not an IAS.
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And I grew up in Delhi, a bit in he decided to retire and go back to his hometown.
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So a bit of the schooling in Palghar.
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Then the usual thing that people of my age did in those days, if you were good in maths,
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you tried for engineering, so I went to an IIT, did four years of IIT, largely played
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bridge there, decided not to continue engineering.
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So default option, go into an MBA.
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So I went to IM Cal, did my MBA, worked for a year, thought that I wanted to get into
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academics at some time, I had missed the usual deadlines for applying to the US and one of
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my professors at IM Cal was calling me.
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So went back to IM Cal, did a PhD, mainly in operations, but my secondary was finance.
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And in fact, I had got some good advice.
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There was none of these logistics companies and Uber and all this stuff.
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So the advice was that you might like doing quantitative methods and operations, but there
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So do something which is related to either marketing or finance, because you finally
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you need to make a living.
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So that was my secondary.
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Finished that, landed up in Bombay because jobs are in Bombay, got a job with a company
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called ICICI Securities, or it was called ISEC then in the market side, started in equities,
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At that time, ISEC was a joint venture between ICICI and JP Morgan.
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The joint venture broke, the JP Morgan took away the debt team largely, and I was looking
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at banking and the economy.
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So they moved me to the interest rate side.
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So I was doing interest rate research there.
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So I was in ISEC for about four and a half years.
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Then I moved to Bank of America in Bombay, similar stuff, interest rates and currency.
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Moved to Singapore in early 2004, was there for a year doing Southeast Asian currencies.
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And that was the professional part.
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Parallel what happened was, in 96, which is when I joined ISEC, I met a person called
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Madhukar, who was flatmates with a colleague of mine, and Madhukar had started in ISEC,
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So we used to hang out and Madhukar had started volunteering with Pratham and started full
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I used to hang out with the Pratham gang, I guess you know Pratham, one of the largest
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Prathams, they were very small then.
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And of course, we were in touch, we used to share a flat for a while.
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Then I was doing my banking career and Madhukar decided to move full time into the education
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And he moved to Premji foundation.
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And he was pushing for the they were actually trying to get the right to education, constitutional
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When they discovered that MPs have no research support at all, because they were trying to
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talk to MPs and many of them.
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So Madhukar came up with this idea of PRS, and he was bouncing it off me.
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And of course, I mean, anybody, I mean, I am an MBA, right?
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So anybody asks advice on anything, I mean, I will give some random Gyan, so I was doing
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So over a period of time, I got intrigued, I got interested.
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And I had moved to Singapore, Madhukar had moved to the US to do a one year course at
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And then he was at the World Bank.
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And I had done a visit to the US as part of my job at Bankam.
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He was at Harvard then.
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I'd come back then one day I thought, okay, this sounds very interesting.
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This sounds worthwhile.
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I was also getting a bit by that time, I was getting intellectually bored.
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I mean, it was otherwise the job was good.
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I had got enough variety, but I was doing more versions of similar things.
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Okay, so I had done in because I cannot complain that in those almost in nine and a half years,
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I had actually started with equities, I had done power sector, banking sector, then interest
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rates, Indian interest rates, then Indian currency markets, then move to Singapore.
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Three other countries, so reasonable amount.
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But at the end of the day, if you had woken me at 3am and asked me, okay, what is the
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M3 growth of Indonesia in 1973, I probably would have told you and gone back to sleep
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because that is what I am doing.
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I thought, okay, this seems interesting.
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And it seems something worthwhile trying out.
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So I called him up from Singapore to US.
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Madhukar said, of course.
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I said, would you like me to join you?
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He said, are you serious?
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He said, okay, that will be great.
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So soon after I left my job, I came back to India, Madhukar had finished.
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And that is how we started of PRS.
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So that is the, in a way, the PRS thinking and bouncing of the idea started.
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I do not exactly remember when but must be 2002 to 2003 sort of a thing.
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There were some emails which I cannot find now because I used to use Hotmail then and
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So I cannot get those emails, but so I do not know the dates, but it was around that
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time and 2005 September is when we formally started in the sense the daily going into
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office started September 2005.
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So, yeah, and even I had a Hotmail account which no longer exists, it is like an artifact.
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So I moved house recently and we were unpacking everything and we decided this time, Bombay,
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you know, houses are small.
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So we decided we do not want clutter and we will discard whatever we do not use.
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But I realized that it can be difficult, like I found this first Nokia mobile phone I had
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with just buttons, obviously not a smartphone.
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And my heart would not let me kind of let it go, you know, so these artifacts kind of
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Which year did you pass out from IIT Madras, by the way?
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So that is fascinating.
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That means we were actually on the campus at the same time in the sense I visited Madigrayo
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festival in I think 89-90, I was in my first year of junior college then.
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I would have been there definitely.
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So we would have kind of I remember taking part in a few things.
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So and by the way, what was the M3 growth of Indonesia in 1973?
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It is 16 years since I decided I am not going to remember that.
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So I want to go back a little bit to that sort of world that there was then because,
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you know, there is a nice video of you online where you talk about the pre-liberalization
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years and how it was so dominated by scarcity and that scarcity is a scarcity, not just
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of goods and services, but also in a sense of the intellectual stimulation we get, like
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in terms of the books available to us, you basically read whatever you can, right?
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In terms of music, you know, just putting together a mixtape of new music could be such
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an achievement and so on and so forth.
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Tell me a little bit about your, the texture of your life outside of these biographical
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details, engineer, MBA and all, which by the way, in those days to do an IIT IEM combination
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meant that you were really super smart.
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That is how we looked at it back then.
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Today it is way more common.
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But I do not, you know, at that time I remember it as, you know, like you almost used to resent
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But tell me a little bit about, you know, the texture of your life in the 80s growing
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What would you do in your free time?
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Like today people do not think of me, you know, people think of me time as something
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that you have to make for yourself because otherwise we are looking into our smartphones
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and we are surrounded by things.
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We had a lot of boredom, right?
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I mean, now I think back, I think it was good that there was a lot of boredom.
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But I used to read a lot.
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Of course, I used to reread a lot simply because I did not have new books and we used to trade
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or starting with Amarchitra Kathas because that is the only thing.
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I mean, most of the kids around me, many of them did not read much.
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So on a trade, I could get only Amarchitra Kathas and not better books.
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But I think at least, I mean, you are, I guess, just, you said, just said that you were in
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So you are just a few years younger than me.
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So in, so 80s and I guess till mid 90s, we all had this, in India there are only a few
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Luckily, my school, very interestingly, had a very decent library.
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It was a small school in Delhi, RK Puram, Ramjas school, but the library was excellent.
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I do not know how that happened.
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I was there in 11th and 12th.
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They had the full Alistair Macklin.
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They had all the PG Wood Houses.
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So the stand, I mean, we all had the same books.
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And even during mugging up for my JEE, I managed to read about two novels a week.
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And it was, it was fiction.
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I mean, I did not read, at those days, other than textbooks, you did not read, I mean,
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I did not read non-fiction, but a lot of those and the librarian, librarians, I think like
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So officially the school had one library period a week when you went to get an issue, but
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I could walk in anytime and get a new book.
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So we have seen UI yesterday.
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I think that's actually the main predominant thing.
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And otherwise doing, I mean, errands, right?
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I mean, you have to go once in 15 days to the Russian shop, stand in a queue and carry
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that rice, 15 kgs or 10 kgs, whatever they used to give us back home.
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What's your ultimately life?
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Like, I know this is a very personal question and I would not answer it, but what did you
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I don't think I did much.
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Life was much about, I mean, I just went with the flow.
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I mean, as you could see, even in my pre-PRS days, more or less, it was like, okay, you
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are good at maths and sciences, I mean, which is like, I was fortunate to have whatever
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those genes or talents or whatever, and which meant you ended up writing some, mugging up
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So you go with the flow, I went to the IIT with the flow, didn't like engineering too
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much, ended up essentially four years bunking classes and playing bridge and then decided,
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okay, if it, and what are the default options in 1990?
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At least in IIT Madras, about 60 or 70% of my class went to the US for a master's.
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And those days, MS meant you got scholarship, right?
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Today, I believe you don't, those days, everyone, I mean, nobody had money.
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So you went for a master's, the remaining went for MBA.
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A few guys who did not get either took up a job with the idea that they'll apply next
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I mean, okay, we weren't lucky this year, nobody wanted to go for a job.
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So the flow was that I got into, and I am in the first term, I was lucky enough to do
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And I would actually attribute, I mean, having seen others and people who didn't get in also,
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there is a, in all these things, there is some amount of talent, there's some amount
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of hard work, and there is a reasonable amount of luck.
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So I would also attribute a bunch of it to luck, but I got in.
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So as you could see, it was like, I was just going with the flow.
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One thing that fascinates me, and when I talk to guests of our vintage, what I enjoy exploring
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is how their views of the world evolved.
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Because one, there is that positive where we're all essentially reading the same books,
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right, like the wood houses, and like you mentioned, the Alistair McLeans, when you
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I don't even know why, today, I would not read a Sidney Sheldon, because other things
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But if only, I still remember a vacation when I was marooned in an uncle's house, because
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I had, this was after my 10th standard.
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So I was 15, and I had got some bad eczema and it had got infected.
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So we were on a vacation.
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So I was at their house when everyone else had gone off to meet some other uncle for
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And I was, I didn't have a fever or anything.
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So I was limping around, I was at home.
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And I was at their place for five days.
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The only books available there, I mean, it's hilarious if I think back, and I read those.
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There are two sets of books, because someone had visited and left them there.
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There was a set of mills and bones.
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So 15 year old boy reading mills and bones that I had never read them before.
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And there was Bhavan's journal.
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So between mills and bone and Bhavan's journal, I think I covered the spiritual spectrum.
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I mean, I could, I have read the first 15 or 20 pages of James Joy Ulysses many, many
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times because I could never get past them, but that book was at home.
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So every vacation, come back and try to read it.
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I mean, and that's also luck that if you find James Joyce at home, is it Ulysses, which
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is so hard to read or Dubliners, which is such a great and beautiful book.
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And it's very weird that like you mentioned that if you had to choose, like it almost
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seems arbitrary what books were available to us.
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Like My Camp has been a bestseller, Hitler's book has been a bestseller in India for decades.
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It's easy to bestseller and there's some accidents of happen chance there and so on.
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But the question I was coming at is how does one arrive at a view of the world?
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Like when I think of my teenagers and young adulthood and all of that with so little exposure,
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and I was a son of a civil servant.
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So for me, the state having the role that it does, that you look to it as a solution
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of all your problems, you don't question it in any way, you are naturally distrustful
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of markets, which of course weren't even really there in the 80s and so on and so forth.
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And it took me a long, long time to actually get into adulthood, refine my view of the
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world, think deeper about things, have the access to books that on all sides of the argument,
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which would help me kind of think these things through.
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What was your view of the world during those years?
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Like in the sense that at a later point in time when, you know, 96, you started having
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those dialogues you said with Madhukar and by 2005, you've set up PRS and these are
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clearly things that matter to you that what is wrong in this country, what can one do?
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But are there threads of that before as well, like when do you start thinking about these
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And when you do, who are the writers or thinkers who really influence you?
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Like I'm guessing Burke is one of them because you refer to him often in your talks, but
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I have not read much of Burke, I have read like very limited amount, I have not read
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any of his books, a couple of these things and I have come across them only post PRS.
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So I read a lot of newspapers, I mean, not a lot, it's interesting.
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My father had very weak eyes.
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So one of my jobs from the time I was a kid, I think by the time I was eight or nine, was
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to read out the newspaper headlines to him.
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And if he wanted any story, he'll say, okay, read this, I'll read out the story.
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Good part of that and very funnily, he was not interested in sports at all or in business.
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So we used to read the newspaper pages, stop after the editorial page because then the
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business page comes and the sports page comes.
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And I was interested in sports because of, I mean, I was young, I had brothers, I had
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an uncle who was interested.
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I remember the very first cricket series that I can think of.
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I seen slightly before, but what I remember is the 77 series when we used to wake up at
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5am when India went to Australia.
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And I still remember Gavaskar scored, I think, zeroes or single digits in the first innings
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in the first three matches and a century in the second innings.
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And we lost the first two matches narrowly.
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We won the next two with a fairly large margin.
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The first two matches, I don't remember the sequence, one was by two wickets, one was
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Third and fourth, I think one was an innings and one was some 200 runs.
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I mean, it was fairly clear victories and the fifth match was a close one which we lost.
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And of course, it was a weekend Australia team because there was a carryback.
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And it was Bob Simpson leading and Thompson was there.
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Lily was in, Thompson was there.
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So that is an early memory.
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I was eight or something.
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So I used to follow cricket.
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I used to read everything in the sports pages, including some sonnet club playing some other
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It will come in a small thing in the newspaper.
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So news was always there.
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Of course, when I went to Madras, the newspaper then was Hindu and the Hindu crossword was
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So we used to do that every morning.
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I actually, I mean, I can't even pinpoint, but always been fascinated, interested in
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politics, partly because my father was and at home there was a lot of discussion, though
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he worked for the government.
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He didn't like the government.
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I mean, I don't think he was a pro-market or something like that, but he was always,
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I think there was some, he was a rebel in some sense, though not outwardly.
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So I guess some of that might have been an influence, I don't know.
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So the thing that you need the system, but always be suspicious and skeptical of the
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You need the system to work, but don't trust things to work because people will do various
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And of course, we had, I mean, I don't know how familiar you are with Delhi.
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So we were initially in RK Puram and then we had been rudely kicked out of RK Puram
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and moved to Janakpuri because he had bought a flat because he thought post retirement
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he wanted one and Indira Gandhi imposed the emergency and said, any government servant
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who has a house in Delhi has to move out of government accommodation.
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So we moved to some and that time in Janakpuri, there was nothing.
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So we were thrown out, so all those, I guess like what's going on sort of a thing, right?
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I mean, I actually don't know what are these influences.
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Of course, hanging out with Madhukar, I was going to Pratham, I was seeing what these
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guys were doing, Madhava and Gang.
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So one of the things that has that influenced part of the decision was the idea that if
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I am getting into this space, want to do a reasonably scale impact, otherwise, it is
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I mean, more than anything else.
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And even today, I am not belittling the smaller ones because all those matter.
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But if you are interested in scale impact, I can think only of two models, frankly.
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I mean, variations of two models.
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One is a low cost replicable system, which is what Pratham had started off then, because
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they were trying to do Balwadis, which was preschools in Bombay, then they were running
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in the first three years, they were running, I think, some 4000 of them.
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So they are like a small, even in a slum, a room or a mandir or a masjid or something,
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you need a 10 by 10 space, and the local kids come.
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And these are three or four year old kids before they go to school, the idea was that
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these kids have never, I mean, their parents have not gone to school, many of them.
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So they are not used to that concept.
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And when they are five or five and a half and they get to school, they cannot sit in
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a place for four hours, they are not used to it, they are running around in the slum.
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So you get them habituated to at least learning something.
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And they trained what is called ninth class pass, essentially 10th class fail, local typically
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And they would be doing what people like us do in nursery school, which is singing songs,
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learning ABC with songs or one, two, three with songs.
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So you get some basic thing you are playing around essentially, it is a play school plus.
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No, this was a cheap model, this was replicable.
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Or if I think in a different space, which I am very, I mean, even in our generation,
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early 90s, the PCO revolution, I mean, I end up at phone at home and getting a, making
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a phone call was not easy.
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But when they opened it up to the markets and they said, okay, PCO, that is a scalable,
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replicable, sustainable model for those days.
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Of course, I mean, that has become obsolete because of better technology and cheaper technology,
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Or if I think about, let us say, access to toilets, it is a brilliant model.
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It is sustainable, they charge a nominal amount, which people can afford, and it can be set
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I mean, you get access to a clean loo.
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And I am sure that enough poor people, I mean, not very, very poor, but somewhere in the
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poverty range who want a clean loo, but they actually used to defecate in the open, in
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urban places, simply because they did not have a choice, by giving them a choice at
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The second thing is the state doing it because state has scale, the government has scale.
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So again, Sholam Swachhalaya versus, let us say, Swachh Bharat.
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On education, finally, it has to be government schools.
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I mean, there are what, I am just making, my guess is, if I, there are about two crore
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kids per year in the younger age group, all right?
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So if you are saying 10 years of schooling, I am not even saying 12, you are talking about
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like something like 18 to 20 crore kids.
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It has to be the government system, nobody else can do it.
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And incidentally, if you look at the budgets, the union budget plus state budgets together
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is, I think, about two and a half lakh crore per annum spent on school education.
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Just think of that, two and a half lakh crore per annum.
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The richest philanthropists in India, I mean, that is more than the net worth, I mean, this
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is every year, and this is our money, this is the tax money.
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So if there is an impact to be done, it has to be done through these.
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And if you can bring in, and I am speaking to education, if you have seen the ASER reports
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year after year after year, they tell you that 50% of kids in class five can't read
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This was the first ASER report, this is now, I mean, 50 plus minus, somewhere between 45
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and 55, that number hasn't changed.
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If you can get that two and a half lakh crore of our money to be a bit more efficient and
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improve this target, just think of the impact that makes.
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No individual can do that sort of impact, individuals can do impact at the margin, but
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I would say the individual impact has to leverage the state scale to get the real impact.
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That would be my thinking.
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So some of these things, and of course, when we looked at parliament, we said, okay, all
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these policies, finally, the buck stops at parliament, not at the government, the buck
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stops at parliament, because they are the people who are supposed to oversee the work
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Are they capable of doing it in terms of do they have the systems and processes and support
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systems which enables them to do it well?
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If not, can we strengthen those and remove at least that bottleneck and see what happens?
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That may not be a sufficient condition, but that is definitely a necessary condition.
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So that was the thinking.
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So I have a number of broad questions which occur to me and the first of those, of course,
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you mentioned this education and I completely agree with you that if you are going to do
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something at scale in that particular field, only the state can do it, there's no option
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to that and therefore we have to make that as efficient as possible.
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But orthogonally, there is also a situation where the state doesn't allow private entrepreneurs
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to function at all in this field.
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My position on education, and I've had episodes on this with Kartik Muralidharan and others,
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and my position has always been that let the state do what it is doing to get its act together
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on government schools, but remove the restrictions, let private schools exist.
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As it happens, private schools exist in a very underground kind of way and various studies
#
have shown that poor parents living in slums will often prefer to send their kid to a budget
#
private school rather than a free government school, kind of voting with their feet.
#
And there's another sort of sideways suggestion there that you do school vouchers where the
#
government keeps spending, but it's the parents who are empowered with the choice of which
#
school their child goes to, which brings about a kind of accountability in schools.
#
And I'm sure you'd broadly agree with these propositions, but my question is that what
#
it requires to make these things happen is really a change in the default mindset people
#
have that the state will do everything and anything outside that should be looked upon
#
with suspicion, which was really the 70s, 80s car default mindset, which still kind
#
So at one level, you can give rich analysis to the MPs and politicians and so on.
#
And again, you've been at pains to point out that very wisely you don't actually make policy
#
suggestions per se, you just give all the information and the knowledge so they can
#
take an informed decision.
#
But do you sense that there is any change at all in this default kind of mindset of
#
the state controlling everything or?
#
I mean, I'll give you a concrete example.
#
And Air India got sold.
#
I mean, it had no reason to exist for the last 15 years, at least.
#
But finally it got sold.
#
I don't see any reason for today.
#
Like I live in Delhi, I know lots of people in Delhi, who owns an MTNL mobile?
#
So if you allowed only market forces, they would have shut down long back like many other
#
If you want, I mean, the only reason for having something like that is if they are good and
#
efficient and they prevent a market monopoly or a duopoly.
#
You want competition, government provides one more.
#
But sector after sector, we have seen that governments are not, that is not the strength
#
of governments and it's not just in India, it's the nature of government, of businesses.
#
So there are some, so there are place, there is a space for government and there isn't.
#
So even when you're talking about education, take higher education.
#
In general, in most fields, the most preferred option is a government college.
#
Engineering, if you want to go to law, you go to NLS Bangalore, right, or whatever.
#
I mean, you're not taking a private law school ahead of that.
#
If a kid had a choice of every law school, the kid will go to NLS Bangalore.
#
If the kid wanted to learn medicine, and every choice will go to Aims Delhi.
#
If you want, I mean, you'll go to DU or whatever, right, I mean, one of the DU better colleges
#
So you're not going to a private college as your first choice.
#
In most higher education, you're going to a government college.
#
So the government actually has done a better job than this private sector in higher education.
#
And there have been private engineering colleges for a long time.
#
At least, I'm not talking about the liberal arts colleges, which have sprung up more recently,
#
but medical and engineering started even when I went, I was taking my 12th class exams.
#
So the state has done well there.
#
So I would agree with you that there's no reason to clamp down on private sector, even
#
in the school things, you just, I mean, if you improve your quality and the kids start
#
coming to you, you won the market game.
#
Why should you force somebody to come to you?
#
Let the market decide that.
#
But I don't see, I mean, politically among the politicians, I actually don't see that
#
much of a suspicion of private spaces.
#
Yeah, that's good to know.
#
I mean, one response to by these sort of the chosen institutes in higher education, and
#
I'm thinking out loud, you know, people will go to NLS or AMS rather than anything else
#
is that there are still many restrictions and many of these private engineering colleges
#
and all these fly by night colleges that spring up are often kind of rather shady.
#
But if you look in recent years, you had like, ISB, you know, coming up, which is quite excellent,
#
Ashoka for the liberal arts.
#
But even today, if a kid gets into, let's say, IIM Ahmedabad and ISB, where will that
#
I think they'll go to IIM Ahmedabad because of receive wisdom.
#
But actually, there are plenty of people, perhaps many of them from ISB who say that
#
Maybe, I'm not pulling it down, but at least IIM Ahmedabad is equal to ISB in people's
#
I mean, it's not like, okay, it is not like, let us say, in Delhi context, getting into
#
a DPS or a modern school versus your local Delhi government school.
#
I mean, they are roughly similar.
#
Here's the next broad sort of question I have, that when it comes to the space of ideas,
#
I have kind of believed in recent years that there's no point going to the supply end of
#
the political marketplace.
#
You go to the demand end of the political marketplace and change the incentives, that
#
if you just go to politicians and bureaucrats and sell them policies, which, of course,
#
to clarify is not what you're doing.
#
So, you know, it's a broader question I'm asking.
#
But to attack the supply end and say that we'll get better decisions if we work on
#
the politicians and bureaucrats.
#
And I feel that there, if change happens, it depends a little bit on luck.
#
It happens at a glacial pace, like with Air India, though I'm glad it's happened.
#
That's not the little that has happened.
#
Whereas my sense is that the demand end is a problem.
#
Like Andrew Breitbart once said that politics is downstream of culture.
#
And if you just sort of change the culture first, like Gandhi, in fact, wanted to do,
#
you know, if you kind of change the culture first, then the incentives of politicians
#
change completely and the incentives of bureaucrats even change completely because of what the
#
And then real change can happen.
#
Is that something you've thought about?
#
So having worked fairly, I mean, at various levels, closely, not so closely, etc., with
#
a wide range of politicians across every political party, both at centre and states, I'm coming
#
I have been doing this for 16 years now.
#
I still don't understand what are the incentives that drive them.
#
It's a very, so, I mean, I, of course, as you know, had a markets background for 8 years,
#
so it was all, 10 years, it was always okay.
#
Incentives drive people's behaviour, well, I don't really think that is a complete answer.
#
Of course, there is, they drive to some extent.
#
For example, if you actually characterise a politician in that thing, it is okay.
#
What are his objectives?
#
I have to win the next election.
#
And what are we need for that?
#
I need to get the party to give me a ticket.
#
And I need after that people to vote me.
#
And that's the only thing I'm bothered about.
#
In the middle, there's also I need to raise money for the next elections and, yeah, money
#
We do every Wednesday when parliament in session and every Thursday, we do sessions for MPs,
#
which is open to every MP and only to MPs, so that there is Chatham House rules are maintained.
#
Wednesdays, we get an expert to come and talk to them on a subject.
#
And Thursdays, we look at bills which are coming up over the next week or the next month
#
and we discuss them in great detail, actually.
#
The discussion goes like, okay, look at this.
#
There is an issue and a problem with this, the way this has been defined.
#
Because if you read this definition, this definition and this clause together, there's
#
actually a contradiction, there's a problem.
#
So we need to fix this.
#
Otherwise, you will have a law which will later land up in court and will start, let's
#
at least, I am not saying what you ought to do or what the law ought to have, but the
#
law at least should not have an ambiguity.
#
I mean, we are all agreed on that.
#
So that sort of a discussion happens, clause by clause, we go through it.
#
Wednesdays, we get in someone to come and talk to them and why would, okay, my classy
#
example is about 10 years ago, when Abhijith Banerjee was not so famous then, because it
#
was before his Nobel, so people in the field knew him well.
#
But I mean, he was not a household name in India.
#
He was visiting Delhi, he comes to India, right?
#
And we had requested him to come and do one of these and he did.
#
Why would on a December, cold December morning, about 20 MPs take out an hour of their time,
#
which is a precious resource, which means they are not meeting constituents, which means
#
they are not signing some letter, getting admission to a hospital or a school or something
#
like that for somebody and meeting them and winning votes, but spending an hour sitting
#
in a room listening to a professor of MIT explaining why, I mean, and my request to
#
Abhijith was to say that, to explain how do we understand why some policies work and why
#
they do not, which is essentially what their core work is, right?
#
I mean, they use RCT and other technologies, but behind that, why are they doing it?
#
So how do you even know, okay, we have pulled out a policy, is this policy working or not?
#
We have had many in the recent past, I mean, we do it every time, why do they take that
#
Nobody in the party cares, the boss in the party is not going to give them an extra probability
#
of getting the ticket, nobody in the constituency knows, in fact, they might say, why are you
#
wasting your time there rather than fixing my road, which is anyway not their job.
#
I think at somewhere, I mean, my own, this thing interacting one on once many times is
#
they want to do the right thing.
#
The question is, what is the right thing, of course, is driven by your ideology, I mean,
#
what you think is the right thing and what I think is the right thing may be different.
#
So we do not get into that, we explain, if you do x, y, z, let us say, if you do x, the
#
natural consequence of that is a, because that is what both logic and empirical evidence
#
and what people elsewhere have done leads to.
#
If you do y, the consequence is b, whether a is desirable or b is desirable is a political
#
choice, I am not in that game, that is your job, people voted for you, you are the politician.
#
No, but I can say x leads to a and y leads to b.
#
You choose whether you want a or b and therefore you choose whether you should take the x or
#
y path, that is the way we think and that works and they are appreciative and in fact,
#
these meetings which we have is all party, we have MPs across parties and the discussion
#
is very civil, because there is no camera on, nobody is going to talk about it outside,
#
it is actually better than and much more civil than the conversation I have with long time
#
friends nowadays, which now many times gets into very or anything on, I am not on social
#
media, but anything which I believe is on social media.
#
Yeah, one has to re-evaluate all kinds of relationships because just the polarization
#
of these times changes so many equations.
#
So I have a question from here that politicians, it seems to me, are forced when they succeed,
#
forced when they succeed to inhabit two worlds.
#
The first world is the world of electoral politics which only requires them to win elections
#
and they excel at that just by the selection effect, that if they have actually become
#
a minister or an MP, obviously they have excelled at that, that is why they are there, they
#
are great at that and that is a business that demands building public opinion, managing
#
the internal politics within the party so that you get a ticket, managing money, managing
#
money and when you get money to run for elections there are quid pro quos involved and ROI has
#
to be guaranteed and all that is there, which leads us to the cynical view of politics that
#
politicians will just play this first game that I have just described and look at the
#
next election and whatever they do is with an eye on either increasing votes or increasing
#
money or making sure the party gives them a ticket like you correctly said.
#
Now there is a second game that begins, this is the first game, they have excelled there,
#
the second game is the game of governance and this is a completely different game and
#
this is a game they are beginners at, for a first time MP or a first time politician,
#
this is a game they are learning from scratch while the other game they have pretty much
#
mastered by the time they come here.
#
Now it strikes me that you know for anyone to excel at any two fields to find that conjunction
#
first of all is just statistically rare and unlikely that someone who has a mindset to
#
excel at game one which is electoral politics will also have the mindset to excel at game
#
two which is governance and the interesting thing about our modern times increasingly
#
is that it seems to me that elections are determined not by the quality of the governance
#
you might have done but the quality of the narratives you build.
#
So there is actually even this disconnect that they may not even feel that the second
#
So you have mentioned that you had Dr Banerjee come and speak to these guys and 20 people
#
showed up, well there are 420 MPs in parliament but I buy your point that I mean obviously
#
you interact with them more than anyone I know so you would have a better handle on
#
this which is why this next question that I guess at some level a certain presumably
#
large percentage of them would have the desire to learn governance and the interest to figure
#
out what's going on, a large percentage of that percentage would put in the work and
#
some percentage of that percentage would actually have the capacity and the prior learning in
#
terms of being good readers and having exposure to a world of ideas to actually kind of make
#
I don't know any of this and you know all of this so tell me a little bit about this
#
second game and how politicians treat it.
#
Actually this is the third game also, let me complicate it for you, I would actually
#
say there are three skill sets at various levels, I am talking about the ministers.
#
So first you have to win an election that's a particular skill which I mean somebody like
#
me will have zero ability, the only time I have stood for an election was for the library
#
secretary of my hostel of 180 people which I lost and I knew all of them for three years.
#
When I lost, that's my only electoral foray and I have tremendous respect for people who
#
win an election with an electorate of 15 lakh people, how do you manage that, I have tremendous
#
Second they get elected, now they are legislators, you have to understand let us say the insolvency
#
and bankruptcy code, what are the nuances there, then you have to go and see something
#
completely different, let's say something on education, how do you regulate higher education
#
okay or as you could see in all newspapers today, yesterday the standing committee on
#
finance was hearing people on cryptocurrencies, now I mean frankly despite my finance background
#
and supposedly an engineering degree, I don't understand this whole thing yet, I haven't
#
put in my time on it but I don't really understand what it is, but if you want to decide how
#
to regulate, whether to regulate, not to regulate, you have to understand what that animal is,
#
so that is the second skill set.
#
Now let's say you become a minister, there is completely different third skill set which
#
is you are a manager now, it's an administrative skill which is very different from the intellectual
#
ability to understand how the system works, I mean if I take let's say university example,
#
a brilliant professor and a researcher may not be a good dean or vice-chancellor, I mean
#
that's a different skill set, so you need three different skill sets if you are a minister,
#
if you are an MP you need two because you don't need that, you need the administrative
#
to the extent you are managed but that is part of the first itself that you are managing
#
your constituency and your winning elections, so it's actually a very difficult task to
#
find capable ministers because they if you don't you need all three, that's the issue.
#
Of course we fortunately in our system we can bypass number one for some of them by
#
getting them through Rajya Sabha, so you have two and three you can manage but most of the
#
better guys have done all three, I mean I don't know the name names but you all know
#
there are people who have been excellent ministers who have come through the Lok Sabha route.
#
Since these are words of praise why don't you actually take names, I am very curious
#
or you feel others will feel offended.
#
Let me not go recent times because I don't want to get into in this polarized world into
#
Taking sides, appearance of taking sides, I will get that.
#
But let me think, let me somebody like Yashwant Sinha, he won the election, I would say as
#
a finance minister he transformed the indirect tax system, I mean GST was a later thing,
#
GST of course did it but he cut the number of tax slabs, he is the person who actually
#
did the initial FRBM part which said that essentially I have, there is a lot of pressure
#
on me as the finance minister to spend, so let the legislation tie my hands on how much
#
I can spend because that is dangerous.
#
Of course it was passed by Chidambaram because it didn't get passed in this time fully, I
#
think it was passed in 2005 or was it 2003, I don't know but I remember the first paper
#
when it came because I was in the interest rate market, I saw that, I said wow I am seeing
#
an interest rate rally because the government cuts its borrowings and I remember writing
#
a note that time, so I remember definitely it was him.
#
And he of course was running a ministry, so there is somebody like him and I am sure there
#
were people in the past enough and I mean I don't want to go to current people because
#
then it becomes, it takes a political tinge whatever you say in today's world, so I just
#
want to avoid that, that's why I am going back 20 years and he is effectively, I mean
#
though he, I think he tweets etc but he is effectively retired from active politics from
#
Indeed and in fact some people say that when he was finance minister under Chandrashekhar
#
just before that government fell, he actually came up with a plan that he also wanted to
#
liberalise before you know.
#
Perhaps or even the reason I did not take the name of Manmohan Singh the finance minister
#
is because he was Rajya Sabha but otherwise he excelled in 2 and 3.
#
So we are talking today I think or PRS would not have existed if 1991 liberalisation hadn't
#
happened and would have given me the confidence to actually quit a job and do things like
#
that and even the career trajectories we had were thanks to 1991, so I mean I am deeply
#
grateful to the Narsimha Rao, Manmohan Singh for transforming at least my life, I don't
#
So they were there but he was Rajya Sabha, so he didn't get the, in the three categories
#
he didn't make the first one, he made second and third which is he understands things,
#
nuances very complex things and he could also run the finance ministry and later the government
#
and running a government, I think people in the private sector don't understand and the
#
real complexity of running the government which is way way more complex than the most
#
complex conglomerate you can think of.
#
Can you elaborate on that a bit?
#
Well if I am running a conglomerate or running a company, I am the CEO, I have to get a buy
#
in but I can also easily sack people, I can get in new people and I am doing a limited
#
Here the number of different stakeholders and pressures that I have to handle and any
#
decision the impact it has, not just the first order but second, third, fourth, fifth order,
#
how do I even comprehend that and play for that, I mean on anything, you don't know
#
what are the unplanned consequences and you have to be careful about it because policy
#
has way more complications and consequences than a business decision, worst case in a
#
business decision that company will go down, here you take down the country.
#
So let's look at the Air India decision as an example where it seems to me that it would
#
really require skill number 2 at some level to really understand why this is a good thing
#
to do but skill number 3 mainly to get it through that massive sort of government system.
#
The vested interests which are holding that back, you need to get that done.
#
And that can take years or never happen.
#
Yeah, why did they not do it all these years?
#
I mean because you could see right from 2014 when this Prime Minister came in that at least
#
Air India was intellectually an easy decision for.
#
Way low hanging and I think at least I am guessing of course, I don't know, I am guessing
#
that ideologically you won't have an issue with it, I mean it would be part of the thing
#
that he thinks should be done.
#
I am guessing from the other actions, obviously I have never met him, so I have no idea.
#
But looking at the other things he has done, I think this would fit in with his world view
#
by and large, not an issue and he is easily the most powerful Prime Minister in terms
#
of ability to take decisions and get them done since perhaps Rajiv Gandhi.
#
I mean the first clear majority and first person who has full control over his party.
#
He took him so much time to do it.
#
So it's not an easy thing to do.
#
People underestimate that, people say why didn't he do it?
#
There must be some reason, you don't, it's not that he is incapable, it is more likely
#
that you don't understand the complexities he is facing.
#
So many listeners would listen to this and wonder, he is a Prime Minister, he is Modiji,
#
he did demonetisation overnight which was such a disaster, if he gives an order, what
#
stops it from actually being carried out and I understand the answer is deeply complex
#
but this is a question people would have, demonetisation toh kiya, isme kya hai.
#
So can you elaborate a little bit on the sort of this labyrinthine kind of opaque deep state
#
I actually don't know the full answers, I can only take some guesses, for example if
#
I were a bureaucrat and I am entitled to let's say economy class or business class, I probably
#
get a free upgrade every time I travel that, why would I not take that?
#
It hurts me, I am guessing, but there will be somebody like that and there will be many
#
other things and they are also ideologically, what happens to all those Air India employees?
#
It's a big question, right, I mean it depends upon the way you look at it, one way to look
#
at it is where anyway in the top 2% or 1% of the country's population can this money
#
be used to the bottom 5% rather than the top 2%.
#
That's a good way of putting it.
#
One way of thinking that, but another way of thinking that is well, can I afford to
#
I mean one of the benefits or fortunate parts of being in some place like a PRS is the variety
#
of issues that I get to look at and the variety of people that I get to talk to which is great
#
fun are the way we have nicely defined our domain is anything that comes to Parliament
#
which means everything, right.
#
So I am not restricted to let's say education or health or sanitation or banking or insurance
#
or something like that.
#
So if you talk to any of these people, health sector, they will say India should set 6%
#
When I talk to the education guys, they will say 6%.
#
You talk to the guys who are working on defense, they will say China is here, Pakistan is there,
#
You add them up, okay, you will get a number.
#
Next to GDP is what 15, 16, 17%.
#
Say fiscal deficit, add, okay, no, no, fiscal deficit should not be done, it's bad.
#
But add a generous sum, let's say country does a fiscal deficit of 10% which is a risky
#
Still you are at 27%, 25, 27% and you add these, it will be like 40%.
#
So the example I give and for everything again, I think the best way to think of the world
#
is through the eyes of cricket, yes.
#
There are only 11 spots.
#
So if you say you have to play Ashwin, it is a meaningless statement unless you say
#
replace X by Ashwin, then I am willing to drop it.
#
But should I drop this?
#
No, then who will we play instead of somebody, right?
#
So same thing, if you are saying you have to increase for health, tell me what you should
#
Otherwise, it's a non-starter because the resources are limited.
#
I mean, I don't think people get the, people think government has unlimited resources.
#
So same thing, if you are spending, so Air India, my contention would have been that
#
if they had paid, they got some, whatever, a few thousand crore, but let's say they
#
had paid 10,000 crore for somebody to take Air India off their hands, it would have been
#
The government is bleeding 5,000 per year.
#
So instead of minus 5,000, in two years, minus 10,000, you're paying minus 10,000, third
#
year onwards, your payback period is two years, which makes a good business decision.
#
The money you don't spend is a notional profit from giving Air India off.
#
It is, because that 5,000 could have been spent, let's say in sanitation or education
#
or health or defense or wherever else where the government needs to spend, right?
#
So I have a story which seems unrelated to this, but I think it's related and I'll tell
#
It's a story about Leo Tolstoy and a chicken.
#
Now in the last years of his life, Tolstoy became militantly vegetarian.
#
You could in fact say that he was like one of the original virtue signalers before Twitter,
#
but militantly vegetarian and Gandhi in fact was very influenced by him in certain ways.
#
So one day one of Tolstoy's aunts, an old lady, because obviously he was also fairly
#
advanced by this time, an old lady said, I'm coming home for dinner.
#
So he said, you're welcome.
#
So she said, I would like to eat chicken.
#
I know you are, you don't eat animals, but I want chicken.
#
So he said, okay, no problem.
#
You will get your chicken.
#
And when they go to the dinner table, she finds that Tolstoy has put a live chicken
#
And for me, this is sort of a wonderful metaphor for, and I'm non-vegetarian by the way, so
#
I'm not advocating for vegetarianism, but this is a wonderful metaphor of how in most
#
people's minds there is a disconnect between the chicken on the plate and the chicken on
#
And it's almost a necessary disconnect in some ways, it's the seen and the unseen.
#
Similarly, when it comes to government, I often say that India's biggest religion is
#
not Hinduism, it's the religion of government, where we look at the government as a solution
#
And we assume there is no cost to government action.
#
And what you just said, you know, is such a good way of thinking about it, that we've
#
got to understand that to everything the government does, there is a cost.
#
And at some level, even beyond this issue of scarce resources and choosing what we spend
#
on, even before that, at a meta level, there is a moral cost, that government exists at
#
the extent of a certain necessary violence to, you know, to have a state.
#
And we never take any of that into account, we just say, no, we should spend so much,
#
And I thought I should, you know, this Tolstoy chicken came to mind, so I thought I should
#
Let's get back to the meta question, but to the start of our republic, right, where, you
#
know, you've spoken in the past, and I've had many episodes on the constitution, where
#
we speak about how, you know, it's not just important to be a democracy in a sense of
#
having elections and all of that, but you also need to be a republic, you need a constitution,
#
which is a set of rules, and that constrains the actions of governments, not people, constrains
#
the actions of the state.
#
Now, what strikes me, what strikes me as a fundamental paradox, and something that I
#
think even Ambedkar realized and Gandhi realized, is that the constitution, though it is nowhere
#
near as liberal as I would like it to be, is much more liberal than society, and therefore
#
we have essentially a bunch of elites, and at that time, unelected elites, who impose
#
a liberal constitution on an illiberal society.
#
So the first question, which is an abstract question, which, you know, we don't have to
#
go into if you don't want to, the first question is, can that imposition be liberal, is there
#
a better way of doing it?
#
But the second question, and this is a danger that Ambedkar was aware of, because he said
#
that the constitution is no more than a topsoil, that everything beneath is completely different,
#
and their hope, of course, at that time, was from the topsoil, these values could kind
#
of penetrate below, which of course did not happen.
#
And what we see today, in a sense, in my cynical eyes, and I tend to be more cynical than others,
#
so you might feel differently, but in my cynical eyes, in a sense, I think politics has caught
#
up with society, and perhaps that experiment was always doomed to failure.
#
If you did not also, you know, impose those kind of, rather introduce those kind of values
#
into society itself, and, you know, make it a bottom-up thing, what are your thoughts
#
This is a fairly complex one, so I will just start off with saying that you are asking
#
me this question in 2021, which is 71 years since 1950 and 74 years since 1947.
#
The very fact that you can ask me this question, and you are going to put it in public, and
#
we are not having a closed-door conversation, which nobody knows about, is a sign of its
#
And the reason I am saying this is, and this is something that I was, I have read in, actually,
#
I mean, I do not even know how do you find these things, but there is this, what is the
#
Ashutosh Varshney's book called, I think, Battles Half-One or something like that.
#
I think it is Battles Half-One.
#
I am not, it is Ashutosh Varshney's book, where he quotes a study where they have looked
#
at some over 200-odd regimes and seen what are the determinants of who will stay democratic
#
and who will not, and India is the biggest, by far the biggest outlier.
#
And another very interesting thing that study puts out is there are, so if you look at World
#
War II as a cut-off point, because the world, Asia, Africa, were largely colonies of European
#
powers till then, and World War II was a breakpoint, India was one of the early ones to get decolonized
#
and a bunch of people in the next 20 years, almost everyone got decolonized.
#
How many countries out of that have stayed democratic?
#
I am just saying regular elections, we missed one by one year.
#
But after elections, second this thing, if the elections are broadly free and fair, and
#
if the incumbent loses, hands over power, which to our credit Indira Gandhi did.
#
I do not know whether she had a choice, but fact is she did.
#
She did not call in the army.
#
I do not know whether they would have listened to her, but she handed over power peacefully
#
So I am no admirer of her, by the way.
#
But at least this one action was, I mean, I do not even know what happened.
#
But how many countries have managed not to have an army, police rule and a democratic,
#
can you guess, off the set that became independent post.
#
So I am not talking about, let us say the western democracies like the UK or the US
#
or I would even call Australia and New Zealand as western or Japan, which was never a colony.
#
I am not talking about them.
#
Guess how many countries.
#
The number must be really small, that would be.
#
According to this study and the book, there are seven, India is one of them.
#
And I remember the other six and I will tell you.
#
So it is Belize, Jamaica, Mauritius, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, none
#
of which has a population of even one crore.
#
We are 150 times larger than the second largest.
#
I guess they are way more homogeneous if a population of a few lakh like Jamaica or something
#
than a complex country like India.
#
So we have pulled off a miracle.
#
Let us not demean that in all our cynicism about what is happening.
#
At the same time, we should not get complacent because it is a perennial project to keep
#
this running, because I mean, democracies, you could see by its very nature, the liberal
#
order which says that everyone has a right to say whatever is on their minds as long
#
as they are not causing physical violence to you and therefore can convince other peoples
#
of their opinion versus the other order which says that somebody who speaks what I do not
#
You are under way greater threat because you are saying that those guys should also be
#
around at all times and you want to keep that and you want to survive.
#
If you lose the battle for ideas once, you cannot get it back, whereas those guys if
#
they lose the battle in the next election, they will win the battle again, but they would
#
not have a next election.
#
So it is a perennial project and we have done a great job.
#
So that is what I would say.
#
Now coming back to your first question about, yes, of course, it was a bunch of elites who
#
put on a liberal thing which was way more liberal than what society did, but society
#
has large, has moved, I mean, we still have a lot of issues, but I would say broadly moved
#
in that direction in which they envisioned India to be for one biggest achievement.
#
We are one country, we are not balkanized into 25 countries, we still are one country.
#
You did not require a visa to come from Bombay to Delhi, you just took a flight, I guess
#
All of us have, I would say, multiple identities the way we think of ourselves.
#
So somebody might think he is a Maharashtrian or a Kannadiga or a Malayali or a Tamil, but
#
all everybody, most people in India think of themselves also as Indians.
#
And I do not know whether that was true in 1920s and 30s, I mean, you are probably your
#
caste first or religion first or region first or something rather than Indian.
#
So that is a huge achievement that the country has over less achieved.
#
So I am actually that way fairly optimistic with, I mean, so when you are at every point
#
of time, last, I mean, I do not know, ever since I can think of as an adult, the current
#
situation has seemed bleak.
#
But if you 10 years later, you look back, you think, well, it was not that bad.
#
I think, I mean, a lot of things that are being said today are again with a bit of exaggeration
#
I will buy your counterpoint, like it plays back to that old statement about whatever
#
you say of India, the opposite is also true.
#
And I remember in episode 149 of the show, I had a long deep conversation with JP Narayan.
#
And when I referred to India as an illiberal society, he pointed out that from another
#
point of view, it is also a deeply liberal society in the sense that if you look at our
#
food, our culture, our languages, it is just so much assimilation coming in.
#
So I buy that point and as far as the constitution itself is concerned, I think Rohit Day's book,
#
People's Constitution shows about how there's so much lived reality, constitution is part
#
of the lived reality of people as well and so on.
#
As far as, you know, I agree that it is almost a miraculous achievement that we remained
#
a democracy and we should not take it for granted and assume that, you know, with the
#
benefit of hindsight, that it was inevitable.
#
But I wonder how much of it is down to sort of inertia, you know, just no one really going
#
as far as to cause the friction that causes such rapid change and also happenstance.
#
Like you mentioned Indira.
#
Like sure, she lost the election and she gave over power.
#
But we all know that Sanjay Gandhi didn't want the elections.
#
She called the elections because she wanted, you know, she wanted the foreign press to
#
think better of her and she genuinely believed she would win.
#
So it might well have been the case that had Sanjay had handed over power when she lost.
#
But we may not have had the elections, Sanjay didn't want it.
#
I think emergency was the darkest period in our post 1950 history.
#
So I mean, as I told you, I'm not admiring of Indira at all.
#
In fact, I think even the period before that when she was PM because of her economic policies
#
were a really dark period, but.
#
That I have a slightly different opinion in the sense, I mean, I'm not particularly
#
in favor of those economic policies, but they went through a formal proper process and at
#
the end of the day, you take right choices, you take wrong choices, but you have the constitutional
#
I mean, they weren't authoritarian impositions, but they were disastrous in their consequences.
#
But but whatever they were.
#
But the very idea of the emergency is seriously problematic.
#
I think I interrupted you and I lost my thought.
#
No, no, you didn't interrupt me.
#
You were sort of responding to my point about Indira and you were sort of stating that she
#
And there are, I guess, all these, you know, always multiple ways to look at something.
#
Just one point, which was saying that you think it's inertia.
#
Well, it's a possibility.
#
The way my counter is simple, OK, if you see culturally, assuming India is a common culture,
#
which I actually I don't think historically it was, it was too different.
#
But I mean, probably the our Punjab and the Pakistani Punjab have way more common culture
#
than our Punjab and say Tamil Nadu.
#
But Pakistan had army coup in nineteen fifty five or fifty.
#
But so if the inertia and what and the loss of democracy, I'm just looking at culturally
#
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and I would contend even Sri Lanka to some extent are not very
#
I mean, at least all of us like cricket.
#
So so we had a different path politically in the democratic this thing than the others.
#
So that's why I'm actually saying that it's an incredible achievement already.
#
But the question is, seventy five years, are we going to do seventy five years more of
#
Because it and remember, I mean, when did US what's the start of US?
#
I would say 1790 or something, not 1776 was the declaration of independence.
#
I think early 1782 or something is when the Brits were defeated.
#
The Constitution was written in 1789, 1790 at 70 years, which is our age now.
#
They were fighting a civil war.
#
Well, with who knows after the delimitation exercise, but no, it's not a proper civil
#
war to armies fighting each other, people dying on the battlefield.
#
I mean, that's a different level happening there.
#
They went through that before they forced the nation.
#
We have managed to do it without doing that.
#
That's itself an achievement.
#
That's a great achievement.
#
And whatever people think of this regime, and I am, of course, outspoken opponent.
#
But the point is, they won elections fair and square, you know, and they kind of mastered
#
that game one, as it were, which is they have done elections and policies.
#
You can always argue various ways.
#
And there are, I mean, even the severest critics of them on the policy front will say things
#
like insolvency bankruptcy code was a great reform.
#
And that's true of every government, every government.
#
If you have an ideology, which I deliberately don't because I need professionally, I should
#
not have one, but if you have an ideology with every government, you will find a mix
#
of things where you like some and you don't like.
#
Because the governments are also managing multiple stakeholders and multiple ideology
#
and they are not going to do exactly what you want them to do because they are managing
#
lots of contradictions.
#
In fact, one of the sad signs of our discourse is that it has become so tribal in the sense
#
that if you are with one party, you will think that 100% of the things they do are correct.
#
And if you are against a party, you'll think 100% of the things they do are wrong, which
#
is crazy, which cannot possibly be true.
#
That's kind of a sign of the times.
#
Let's take a quick commercial break now.
#
And on the other side, we'll continue our fascinating discussion.
#
I have so much I want to talk to you about.
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Well, I discovered one way.
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A couple of friends of mine run this awesome company called CTQ Compounds at CTQCompounds.com,
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A few months ago, I signed up for one of their programs called The Daily Reader.
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Every day for six months, they sent me a long form article to read.
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Welcome back to the Scene in the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Mr. Madhavan about our country, the constitution, our republic, our parliament,
#
and so on and so forth.
#
And I'll start off by kind of going back to the subject of the constitution.
#
The constitution in a sense is where everything else comes from.
#
Our laws, our parliament, everything.
#
That's kind of the root document.
#
And a couple of things that I think about it.
#
One, I'm glad we have the constitution.
#
We do, like you pointed out, it might be a big factor for why we've kind of stayed together
#
as one nation instead of getting balkanized, why we haven't had the army take over and
#
But at the same time, there are deep flaws with it, both at the time of inception and
#
For example, at inception, if one just looks at Article 19, and earlier we referred to
#
And it's true that you and I are able to have this conversation right now.
#
But it is also true that throughout the country, the state at least has the tools to clamp
#
down on dissent because the caveats in the constitution to free speech are those vague
#
abstract terms like public order, decency, and so on and so forth, which constitute such
#
limits on free speech that I sometimes think that we are just being lip service to free
#
speech is not there, which are also the reason why laws like 295A, 153A, the sedition law
#
haven't been struck down, though the sedition law was declared unconstitutional in 1950
#
and Nehru brought it back with the First Amendment because he wanted to keep the communists under
#
So this is my sort of first misgiving about the constitution, that it's a heavy, bulky
#
document that takes a lot from everywhere.
#
Right from its size, you can make out it doesn't have the clarity of, say, the American constitution,
#
which you can carry in your pocket.
#
And the other misgiving is I'll hark back to this old cartoon which once came where
#
a guy goes to a parliament bookshop and he says, can I buy a copy of the constitution?
#
And the guy says, sorry, sir, we don't sell periodicals.
#
And it's just been amended so many times.
#
One of those amendments famously turning the right to property from a fundamental right
#
to a legal right or basically not a right at all.
#
And it's been amended so many times at the whims and mercies of those in charge that
#
you begin to feel that, you know, yes, of the cover in a sense, you know, I've heard
#
you speak and I completely agree about the centrality of the constitution to our republic.
#
But I feel dismayed when I think of all this.
#
What are your thoughts?
#
Two points which you said, one is it's a bulky document, whereas the American one you
#
can carry in your pocket.
#
And the second is that it's relatively easy to amend and has been amended over 100 times.
#
On the first, I think there's just a cliche which is incorrect.
#
If I'm living in a state of whatever, Ohio or California or New York or whatever, I have
#
to look at the constitution of the United States of America plus the constitution of
#
that state, which is fairly large.
#
So we have only one for all 28 states plus the union.
#
If you add the 28 constitutions or 50 constitutions plus one there, it will be my guess.
#
I have seen only the main one, much, much larger.
#
So I actually end in a sense, if it had been as bare-boned as the American one, my guess
#
is it would not have served its purpose.
#
It needed to put in a lot of details at that time in our history.
#
But remember, when you're thinking of a constitution, at the time it was written, what was the background?
#
The primary thought of the American constitution, the guys who wrote it, was that they were
#
essentially rich landholders, slave owners, largely.
#
And they were threatened by the fact that the Mad King George III will come back and
#
So the entire constitution is to protect their interests.
#
That's the way it is designed.
#
And you read the Federalist Papers, which is brilliant.
#
I recommend that to everyone.
#
It actually is the first detailed in a language that I know, which is modern English, exposition
#
of thinking behind separation of powers, etc.
#
I'm sure others may have written, but this is the one I have read.
#
So this was their thinking, and that was the background.
#
In India, these people were thinking about social reform, economic reform.
#
The Americans weren't, American's constitution was conservative.
#
It was keeping the current elite in power, continue to stay in power.
#
Our purpose was very, very different.
#
So it needed, things like directive principles would never find place in any of those.
#
The second thing that you talked about, I would actually call it the strength of the
#
Which is, but okay, do you know what's the average life of a constitution in the last
#
How long do constitutions last?
#
Since you've asked me, I'm sure the number is very low.
#
I have read this in a paper.
#
So I'm, it's in that book, edited by, it's a handbook on the constitution, edited by
#
Madakosla, Pratabanumitha and Suryabhose.
#
It says 15 years, maybe 15, 16.
#
And despite all our contradictions, all the pressures, we are the, I said we stated democracy,
#
we state that also we are possibly the most diverse nation on earth.
#
We are Europe or we are Africa.
#
We are not France or Germany, right?
#
And I think this is part of the thing is the flexibility it afforded, which helped manage
#
I'll just start at the very beginning, 19, early fifties.
#
There was this movement in Andhra Pradesh that we need a state for the Telugu, separate
#
And it's no Nehru wasn't for it.
#
He was afraid of Balkanization.
#
If these interests are allowed to go, then everybody will want and the country will split
#
That was his genuine worry.
#
And this was just a few years after the country had split on religious lines.
#
Why won't it split on linguistic lines?
#
But then 1956, which is pretty soon after, there's this major amendment to the constitution,
#
which created linguistic states and in hindsight of 60 years, 65 years, well, it has worked.
#
So it allowed that sort of flexibility.
#
We have even, I would say, gone back on sovereign promises, like the preview purses and the
#
Now you can look at it two ways and I'll tell you my bias, one way is that these were sovereign
#
guarantees given by the sovereign state of India to the princely states to join.
#
So in a way, it was a treaty between two sovereigns.
#
And we are unilaterally backing out of our side of the bargain because we are more powerful
#
now than way, way more powerful and we have the power to kick them now.
#
So it's not the right thing to do.
#
But my bias on the other side, which is that, do you want two classes or multiple classes
#
of citizens in a democratic republic?
#
Just look at Malaysia, for example, they have those 13, I think 12 or 13 of those kings
#
and those, they take turns and one of the princes runs over somebody in a car and he
#
is immune to prosecution.
#
Not that a powerful person in India running over a car is not immune to prosecution, but
#
legally that person is not immune to prosecution, whereas in Malaysia, legally that person has
#
Do you want that or whatever, different classes of persons?
#
My bias is no, at least on paper.
#
In theory, I want all people to be equal.
#
Of course, power structures will never make that.
#
But power structures also say that there is a theoretical possibility for anyone to claim
#
But there is no theoretical possibility for me, I mean, there is a theoretical possibility
#
for me becoming the Prime Minister of India, but I cannot become the Prince of XYZ state.
#
So we actually did that and that was in 1970s, we went back.
#
So the flexibility has allowed us to progress also in many, many ways.
#
So I would say we needed that.
#
And while doing and very interesting thing was the 1973 Kesavananda Bharati judgment.
#
Again, my bias is towards the judgment, because one argument can be okay, the literal word
#
of the Constitution and not just a literal word, what Ambedkar actually said, etc., is
#
that we are making the Constitution for our times, times will change, people should be
#
That's why the amendment is not a very high bar.
#
The USS had what, 27 amendments, and out of which ignore the first 10, because they were
#
in the first two years.
#
So they effectively had 17 amendments in 130 years.
#
We have crossed a century long back, I mean, of course, they don't have a Sachin Tendulkar,
#
we have one, so we know how to score centuries.
#
We made it amendable, but this one limited the scope of what to the extent that Parliament
#
And let me give you a hypothetical scenario, which is that there is somebody who is a fairly
#
powerful Prime Minister with both Houses of Parliament, huge majority.
#
Today, we don't have that yet.
#
But I would say the last one was Rajiv Gandhi.
#
And before that Indira had, before that Nehru had, they were the people who had more than
#
two thirds majority in both Houses and also had their party had more than 50% of the states
#
and they were completely in control to the extent one can be over the party system.
#
Suppose one of them says, okay, Indira says in 1976, emergency, that amend the constitution
#
This is a monarchy and Sanjay Gandhi will succeed me.
#
If you did not have the basic structure doctrine, this would be constitutionally valid.
#
So I think limiting the power of Parliament to change the constitution was also a good
#
But the thing that has evolved into not originally is that it is not too difficult to amend,
#
but there are limits to the amendment, I think we have reached a reasonable bargain.
#
That can always be some better thing, which I don't know about.
#
But I have no problems with that.
#
And again, to me, finally, it is the outcomes, which test theory, which is that we have stayed
#
together, we are one country, we are a democracy, we haven't done too badly and even on social
#
reform and economic reform, we have actually done fairly, I would say very well, you know,
#
a few years ago, and I have that quiz, I can redo it at some time.
#
Just one burst of enthusiasm on just before an independence day, I just created about
#
35 questions, which are multiple choice.
#
And I sent it to some friends, people got excited.
#
So I just put it onto a couple of my WhatsApp groups and was surprised.
#
It was a quiz on India's economy and India's social this thing.
#
For example, what was the infant mortality rate at that year?
#
How much it has moved with the sign of, let's say the HDI or the economy itself.
#
How much, how many cars did you make?
#
Then how many do you make?
#
What is the food gain protection?
#
What are the railway lines?
#
Most parameters, we are second to China, but we are second, China is of course, the biggest
#
outlier in the history of mankind.
#
So we are second and we have stated democracy throughout.
#
So we are actually not done badly.
#
So I am, as you can see, I'm, I'm quite an optimist.
#
So I'll give four quick counterpoints to different things you said and move on, which is not
#
to say I don't agree with you.
#
I agree with you, but just to sort of throw these notes out there also.
#
One, I did an episode with Madhav Khosla about his excellent book, which came out where he
#
spoke about how part of the purpose of the constitution was pedagogic, that you want
#
these values to kind of spread.
#
So you have to spell it out much more in terms of processes.
#
So there are no ambiguities.
#
So in the actual sort of when theory becomes practice, it's easier for that.
#
When I understand a transformative urge, my question is that on this one matter, on many
#
matters I disagree with Gandhi strongly, but on this one matter, I kind of agree with him
#
that the transformative urge could not really work top down.
#
It had to happen in a more organic way.
#
You could not change India from the top down.
#
And I believe we haven't, I believe in fact we've, you know, politics has reached where
#
And another counterpoint is when you speak of outcomes, I mean, there are no counterfactuals.
#
So we cannot possibly, you know, we could have been worse, but we could have been better.
#
And I would say that many of our social problems have not been solved.
#
That's a counterfactual.
#
Look across the Western border, that's a counterfactual.
#
That is one counterfactual.
#
There are many possible counterfactuals.
#
I agree we could have been worse, but I also think we could have been better and much of
#
what we tried to reform in society from the top down to my mind has failed and might have
#
created further divisions.
#
I don't know if that works.
#
I'd also kind of disagree slightly.
#
I mean, I understand your nuanced point of view on the privy purses and all of that,
#
but my sense is that you spoke about two ways of looking at it.
#
And I find the first way actually slightly more convincing because it addresses the means
#
while the second one seems to say that A, that the end justifies the means, which I
#
believe should never drive something that you do.
#
And secondly, it seems to imply that they were treated as a separate class, which I
#
don't think is really true.
#
I mean, I read a calculation recently about had they continued the privy purses, it would
#
have been such a small percentage that it wouldn't have mattered.
#
They carried the title.
#
You have to call them Maharaj.
#
I mean, to me, I don't want to call anybody Maharaj.
#
They have a right to be called His Highness.
#
See, if I don't call someone His Highness, I can go to jail.
#
People will end up calling.
#
I mean, that creates...
#
There's a feudal structure which is maintained within a democracy because as you said, society
#
So you're actually breaking that societal link to the old feudal structure by taking
#
So I read in a recent profile of Jyotira Aditya's India that when he travels to his native
#
place or his name, everyone calls him Maharaj.
#
You haven't changed society.
#
No, but will they call his son and his grandson?
#
But if you had this, they would call them also.
#
But my issue really there is with the means because we made them a promise.
#
And my sense actually, and I know many people will disagree with this, but that what Patel
#
and Menon did so extremely well, VP Menon did so extremely well in the years between
#
1947 and 50 was a kind of fast track colonization where what the British took hundreds of years
#
to do over a period of time, they did in three years.
#
Part of it was through coercion and part of it was through promises that they broke later.
#
And I understand that we should celebrate that we are one great United Nation today.
#
And I love this country and I love that aspect of it.
#
But it gives me pause that this is how we got here.
#
I mean, I also in general and in my professional work always say means matter and I mean that
#
finally if you follow the right means, on average, you will reach better outcomes than
#
if you don't because if you in fact, I wrote against publicly wrote against the Aadhaar
#
bill being passed as a money bill.
#
And I actually wrote in that that I am not talking about whether Aadhaar is good or not.
#
My point is that it is not a money bill.
#
And if you think Aadhaar is an important thing and let it get passed whatever it means, tomorrow
#
something you don't like will be passed as a money bill because you have opened the way
#
for it and you have created a precedent.
#
So I agree with you on that.
#
So I don't like that fact.
#
But on the other side, and interestingly, we had broken the promises right back in 1956
#
Part of the thing was that these several of these princely state heads, the kings or princes,
#
whatever they were called, they were promised the governorships of where they were called.
#
So in fact, the Constitution had two different words.
#
The princely states cobbled together became a state of India or whatever.
#
They were called Raj Brahmukhs.
#
And the British India which became a state of India like Uttar Pradesh, United Provinces
#
Nicely in the Seventh Amendment, we just kicked out the Raj Brahmukhs and we just essentially
#
what we did was we recast the states.
#
Now the new state has to have a new governor.
#
Part of the new state is not part of what this chap used to be.
#
So we gently, we just, the amendment did, okay, no more Raj Brahmukh, it's a governor.
#
And then the centre appoints the governor.
#
So we have gone back on some of those promises, which in general, I would agree with you,
#
but there are larger objectives where you may have to occasionally break the law to
#
hold the state together.
#
I mean, otherwise you lose the state.
#
It is like, let's say if I go back to Mahabharat, the Pandavas was the biggest change, right?
#
I mean, right from the way they killed Bhishma to Dronanda, I mean, every major warrior on
#
the other side was killed through deceit.
#
And I don't think that's justifiable.
#
No, but if they wanted to win the war, there's no other way.
#
So I'm not saying morality, you also have to win the war.
#
Rationality and instrumentality, I get that.
#
You have to win the war, otherwise you've lost everything.
#
So to win the war, you put on the cloak of morality, but you occasionally cheat.
#
The one tiny thing I'd add to that, I agree with you, I get what you're saying exactly.
#
I won't argue with any of it.
#
But the one tiny thing that when you say we, when you use the word we, that we had to hold
#
together, we had to win the war.
#
I mean the Indian state.
#
Because I wasn't even born then.
#
And that's a distinction I want to make that I will not use we for that.
#
I will say the Indian state wanted to hold together and it's...
#
I'm saying we as in we Indians, as in we Indians needed to do that.
#
I mean, I'm thinking of us all as one community of people as Indians.
#
And of course, the people we stabbed in the back were also Indians.
#
But I'm not counting them in we.
#
So maybe I'm being inconsistent.
#
That's a very thorny subject.
#
The fourth thing I wanted to kind of talk about was, see, I totally buy what you're
#
saying again about the founding of the American state and the imperatives of the elites kind
#
of keeping the position.
#
But what the American constitution did by the time it gained its first stable form after
#
the initial bunch of amendments was that it was a brilliant set of rules devised from
#
first principles which protected every individual, like you have also, you know, in the past...
#
I mean, that principle later got expanded to whatever.
#
But as what I'm pointing out is that the Indian state is not animated by a set of first principles
#
that it has held firm to.
#
And even when we talk about like the basic doctrine and the 1973 judgment, it strikes
#
me, is it who determines what the basic doctrine is?
#
On one hand, if you say that with changing times the constitution can change and values
#
can change, then you could argue why shouldn't that basic structure change?
#
On the other hand, you can argue that if there is a set of values that is so important that
#
it should never change, then it should drive everything else, which is also not the case.
#
Because I have a deep unease with some of these changes, like for example, when people
#
last year during the CAA protest, one of the most heartening things was common people across
#
the country waving the preamble, which is so important and beautiful.
#
But what gave me a moment of unease there was that it was Indira Gandhi's amendment
#
of the preamble and not the original Ambedkar version.
#
And to me, that's a problem because that included the word socialist.
#
And Indira introduced this clause in the constitution that any political party has to declare that
#
In fact, the Swatantra Party fought against this, SV Raju and all that fought against
#
this because they said, what the hell?
#
And socialism is toxic and kept our country poor for decades.
#
And you can argue about that.
#
But to insist that everybody must plead allegiance to a particular ideology, whatever it is,
#
seems to me to just be so wrong.
#
And so I don't know if that's considered part of the basic structure or not.
#
But I think that's kind of one of the dangers and one of the misgivings I have that those
#
animating principles of the US constitution, like they are so clear on free speech that
#
everything that follows from there is clear.
#
You can't really go wrong.
#
A lot of it depends upon the way the courts have interpreted over centuries in the US
#
or decades in our case.
#
So there is a societal evolution along with that the courts go with the times.
#
And for example, US, there are certain debates they have which I find quite weird, like the
#
biggest one, abortion rights.
#
I don't even understand that or the gun right.
#
I don't understand that.
#
So it's beyond my ability to actually understand what's going on.
#
So every society has its own problems.
#
The grass looks greener on the other side.
#
So coming back to this thing, I would say the core principles are primarily in the preamble.
#
And frankly, socialism, yes, she added it.
#
Well, if you were a very textual idealist, yes, it's a big deal.
#
On a practical sense, irrelevant, irrelevant.
#
It is like, I mean, I can be a Hindu and an atheist.
#
I can be a Hindu and a Vaishnava.
#
I can be a Hindu and a Shaivite.
#
I can be an Indian, extremely libertarian, pro-market and a socialist.
#
So if it just added some, okay, somebody a pat on the back and move on.
#
But sir, if words don't mean anything, then the constitution doesn't mean anything.
#
No, a word like socialist in the Indian context, the Supreme Court has actually interpreted
#
it because there is a case.
#
They said, so that was a nice part, right?
#
I don't know whether you know about the Supreme Court.
#
So there was a case to the Supreme Court to remove the word socialist from the constitution.
#
That is basic structure.
#
They also said socialist, you can interpret in any way.
#
So in a way, legally in India, socialist means nothing because the authority which interprets
#
what socialist means has said so.
#
I guess that's fair enough.
#
I mean, I know many people, I know many people who think socialist means working for society,
#
which is actually in effect, it's the opposite.
#
But let's, I mean, nobody really bothers about it.
#
So let's, let's now come to PRS.
#
Let's start talking about the Indian parliament because there's kind of so much to talk about.
#
So let's first go back to your biographical journey for a moment before coming to parliament
#
and talking about how parliament functions and what it is and all of that.
#
So when you decided to start PRS, one, what were the early misconceptions you had about
#
your venture which got corrected?
#
Because whenever we start something, we see the world in a particular way and very soon
#
we are mugged by reality as it were, and we realize things are kind of different and,
#
you know, move along those paths.
#
So what were the early days of PRS like?
#
Like what was your early vision and how was that modified?
#
And were there things which gave you reason to pause and say, is this going to work out?
#
And were there reasons in the initial days which gave you hope and said, yes, I'm so
#
In a way, it was relatively easy for me because I didn't have too many preconceptions.
#
I didn't know much about it.
#
So I, so it was, as I said, Madhukar was the original ideator behind, he was a good friend.
#
I thought it will be fun doing something like this.
#
And I told Madhukar when we started that I am willing to put two years.
#
We have no idea whether MPs will use our stuff.
#
Nobody has done this before.
#
Personally, the number of MPs I met before PRS is zero.
#
I had never met an MP in my life.
#
Like most people of our class.
#
Why would you meet an MP?
#
I was working in the finance industry in Bombay, there's no reason for me to meet a member
#
There was one person whom I had met who happened to be a member of parliament, which was Dr.
#
He was a nominated member.
#
He was an RBI governor.
#
And in my interest rate rates, when my boss had a meeting with him, he had tagged along
#
So I had been in a room with him in a small, us and him meeting.
#
That's the only MP I had ever met in my life.
#
So I said, you don't know what this is, let's say at the end of two years, if nobody uses,
#
I have a reasonable enough CV that somebody will give me a job.
#
So I don't have worries and I have no liabilities, I had never taken a loan in my life.
#
So that gives me the freedom to do things.
#
If I'm not using that freedom, then I'm wasting that freedom.
#
So let me go on an adventure.
#
Skill sets, I had been writing research for on interest rates, currencies, economy, etc.
#
In an extremely competitive market, because there are you're all writing for some hedge
#
fund guys and there are multiple people.
#
So why should somebody read your research?
#
So that haunts you and people train you how to write in a manner, which is sharp and focused
#
and which people will read and understand.
#
So I had that skill set, domain knowledge is zero.
#
I didn't read a bill or an act in my life before.
#
So I said, okay, so I jumped into it, there's only actually one word which will capture
#
I think it's called foolhardy.
#
It was a foolhardy venture.
#
But the idea was, let's see what happens.
#
So we wrote our first brief, which was so we okay, before that, we need we want to start
#
He was in the US, he had come back on a trip and he had met a bunch of people.
#
And one of the very good advice he had got from someone earlier, who knew the Indian
#
system was that, don't try to set up something independent initially.
#
Find a good think tank or any research organization, which can host you because otherwise, you
#
will be spending your time trying to get your income tax exemption and ATG and this and
#
that and you might have an initial grant.
#
But by the time you get these and started, your time is over.
#
So find somebody to get the proof of concept out, start working and see whether it works
#
So he met a number of people, one of them happened to be Pratabhanu Mehta, who was then
#
at the Center for Policy Research and CPR.
#
And something clicked and CPR was and in hindsight, we were there for seven years.
#
That was a very important move.
#
So we got we started off as a project of CPR, which meant we had the umbrella to work under.
#
Pratap was there, which was great.
#
And very important thing about CPR, which still is today, is that unlike many other
#
think tanks, for example, CCS, CCS has a very clear house view, we couldn't have been there
#
because certain parties will not want that particular outlook, CPR doesn't have any
#
It's a bunch of different people with possibly opposite ideologies working under the same
#
It's like a university in that sense.
#
So that we needed that shelter.
#
They were a well known, well regarded think tank in Delhi.
#
They were located in Chanakya Puri, which always helps because you're like pretty close
#
by to because you're going to meet MPs, you're a 10 minute drive away, you're not a 50 minute
#
drive away for everything.
#
So CPR worked out well, it gave us a good intellectual place to work out from.
#
We have lots of things happen there.
#
So you also meet lots of other people, other interesting people are working there, they're
#
Of course, at that time CPR, I mean, Pratap started building it back, it had gone down,
#
but it was a great place to work with.
#
So we were we started at CPR.
#
We wrote our first brief.
#
So Pratap's suggestion was that do something on him.
#
So he said right to education draft bill was out and Madhukar had worked in that field
#
So he said, okay, work somewhere where you have some domain knowledge and you know people.
#
So we wrote the first brief.
#
We sent it out to every MP by we printed it, put it in envelopes, Delhi address on top
#
and just sent it to MPs with a cover letter.
#
We wrote the second one, which was on the pension fund bill.
#
I had some domain background and a new people I could talk to sent it out.
#
And some people started calling us because everything had a cover letter that we are
#
And if you want on this or any other issue in parliament, let us know.
#
So over a period of the next six months, we are also trying to meet MPs, etc.
#
About 60, 70 MPs are started reaching out to us.
#
And of two years, the number across 100.
#
So I said, okay, there is a market for this because we don't even know whether they want
#
People want people are looking for research content if we can provide them in a format
#
which they can use, which they can understand, which they can appreciate.
#
And they're calling us for briefings.
#
So on deliberately our briefs, we put an upper age page limit of six pages, which includes
#
a cover summary page, which has only 10 bullets outstanding.
#
We said, if I send a 50 page note, people will say, yes, I will read it with the intention
#
They'll keep it on the desk.
#
Then multiple other things will pile on.
#
If it is two pages, if you get something which is two pages, you won't put it on the side.
#
You'll say, oh, two pages.
#
Let me just glance through it before I file it away or keep it.
#
So six pages included a maximum of two pages of what's in the bill and three pages, including
#
all references and citations of our analysis.
#
So typically two, two and a half something and half page or one page for the and everything
#
If there's any number cited, any argument made, this is a citation about the source.
#
So you can verify the credibility of what you're saying and we don't take away.
#
So people coming back by the time 2009 election happened, we had over 200 people reaching
#
out to us, 225 or something, if I remember correctly, elections happened.
#
So February 2009, we had about 225 people reaching out to us, current MPs.
#
May 2005, this had come down to 100 odd because 100 of them vanished.
#
But then by then word of mouth between them and our work had started getting appreciation.
#
So every election cycle, we have built back up to 400 plus MPs.
#
I'm talking about 700, not 525 because Lok Sabha plus Rajya Sabha.
#
So the numbers are, there are 790 or 788 now, 245 Rajya Sabha and 543 Lok Sabha.
#
Then there were 545 because there are two Anglo-Indians who are no longer there.
#
Out of it, roughly let's say 90 are ministers, 1890.
#
Ministers go on a different trend because they have their own thing.
#
So my potential audience is 700.
#
Out of 700, we are reaching out to more than half.
#
When I say reaching out, we sent everybody, how many are calling me?
#
Push is 790, pull is 400 type, that has been there.
#
Of course, there is a variation high and low, how many?
#
So the market feedback is, it is worth doing simply because what is the resource they are
#
They are spending time which is their most valuable resource.
#
If they are spending time doing this and they are reaching out to us, probably we are doing
#
something that they find useful, otherwise they would not do it.
#
That is my market feedback as in and therefore it is worth doing.
#
So that is how it started.
#
So that was the starting part.
#
Then as we started, the original idea, in fact our original node said legislation because
#
the idea was that even a minor change in a bill can have a large scale effect.
#
I can give you the easiest example for people to understand from the many, easiest example,
#
simplest example is there was an amendment about a couple of, during the NDA, what you
#
call it, NDA 1, 2, whatever, essentially 2014 to 19 NDA, not counting the Vajpayee NDA.
#
During this government, there was an amendment to the Forest Act where they clarified that
#
bamboo is not a tree but a grass, that is all, simple one.
#
What they meant was you cannot cut a tree in India without prior permission, you can
#
cut grass which essentially revitalized the bamboo products industry.
#
Now I can grow bamboo, bamboo has a lot of bamboo products, I can do that.
#
One line, or let me say, I am not saying whether it is a good thing or a bad thing because
#
there is an ideology involved, but I will say it is a high impact thing, good or bad.
#
The Right to Education Act has that one clause which says all private schools have to reserve
#
25% of their seats for economically weaker sections.
#
This is one line, impact is high.
#
So laws make, and sometimes just a comma or in fact there is a famous judgment which in
#
the US interpretation, which is if you Google, you should find, I do not remember exactly
#
what it was, it was about something about a trucker, but the Oxford comma made the difference.
#
So that comma or the lack of a comma made the codes interpreted in a different way and
#
So even a comma or a full stop or a semicolon makes a difference.
#
So we said, okay, we need to make sure that our laws are well thought out and clearly
#
written, that is our purpose, because that will have an impact.
#
As we started doing and working, MP started coming to us and asking us for other things.
#
So there is this discussion happening on, let us say, price rise, mere ko uspe bolna
#
Aapke pass koi material hai kya?
#
So we write a note and give it to them.
#
So we started getting requests on other things being discussed in Parliament.
#
We started getting requests on budgets.
#
I need to speak on the budget, the party has asked me to speak, have you done an analysis?
#
So over a period of time, we evolved our work to say that what is driving us?
#
Actually the driver is not Parliament, Parliament is an instrument.
#
The driver is that if we want lives of citizens of this country to be better, I am loosely
#
defining the word better because it has been using, but this thing, we need better thought
#
out and written laws and government to be held to account, budgets to be done, which
#
are all Parliament's job, we need Parliament to work more effectively or if Parliament
#
works more effectively, then people will have, I mean, it serves citizens better.
#
And the final target is citizens and finally, why do I care about this MP or that MP?
#
They are the route to the citizen.
#
So we should therefore support MPs with research on all the things that come up in Parliament.
#
Apparently what happened was MPs started pushing us individually at one-on-one meetings, somebody
#
will say Parliament still has reasonable systems, there is a good library, Parliament is an
#
excellent library, there are standing committees, which by and large work, but my state is in
#
Can you do something for my state legislature?
#
We were a team, at that time our research team was a grand total of three people, including
#
me, 28 states, three or four people, sorry, can't do.
#
But over a period of time, we realized that if we go back to what is our core purpose,
#
citizens, and if you look at the constitution, back to the constitution, and you look at
#
the seventh schedule, many things that affect people directly are either statelist or concurrent
#
list, which means implementation by states more or less.
#
And if you are not looking at state legislatures, we are fooling ourselves by saying we are
#
It's a question of timing, should we do it this year, next year, two years down the line,
#
but we should be doing it.
#
That was the decision we took.
#
We took that in 2000, we had started late 2005, 2008, we said, okay, we need to do this.
#
And by 2011 or something, we started reaching out slowly, now we are working across many,
#
Again, most state legislatures are in a bad shape.
#
And there's no point as of now having people there.
#
If a state legislature meets for 25 days a year, and if there is a PRS person sitting
#
in that state capitol, what does that person do for the remaining 340 days of the year
#
or 330 days of the year?
#
So we have only one office in Delhi.
#
What we do is when the legislature meets, people travel there, there's a four day session,
#
so you just go and park in a hotel for those four days and come back, it's way more efficient
#
than having an office there.
#
So we're working across states, we are working here.
#
So again, similar stuff in states.
#
You know, one of the big restrictions it seems to me here is the structure of parliament
#
in the sense that the anti-defection law of the 1980s, and I had an episode on this way
#
back, essentially means that you can run parliament from the top down with an Excel sheet.
#
Because basically what the anti-defection law is, it forces members of parliament to
#
vote not according to their individual conscience, but whatever is a party line.
#
You're given a whip, you got to vote.
#
So let's say that in that game too, where parliamentarians educate themselves about
#
everything that is at stake, if they come to a different conclusion from their party,
#
they can actually do nothing about it, you know, even if they come to a different conclusion.
#
So how frustrating has this been for you and what is a flip side of this?
#
Because obviously you're getting a lot done.
#
So what are the processes through which that happens?
#
In fact, if there is one thing of which I am an evangelist, it is that the anti-defection
#
I have written about it many, many times.
#
I mean, give me an opportunity to talk about Indian cricket team.
#
I'll bring in the anti-defection somewhere and talk about it for five minutes.
#
So when I was talking to you, I was thinking, it was in the back of the mind.
#
How do I bring that in if you did not bring that in?
#
Someone has to bring it in the central.
#
In any case, I think anti-defection is completely and the Supreme Court erred on that basic
#
I'll tell you why in multiple ways, it's not just in one way.
#
First thing, what is the, how do you think of a legislator or an elected representative?
#
Broadly, there are two ways in which people have conceived the role of, let's say an MP,
#
when I say an MP, I mean an MLA also in this.
#
One is the Burke thing where the Burke made that very famous speech, which I would actually
#
recommend people to read because it's all of four pages.
#
I'll link it from the show notes.
#
It's a five minute read where he talks to the electors of Bristol after the election,
#
which he says that you effectively, he says that my job is to exercise my judgment for
#
the betterment of the whole country and not be your agent to do what you want me to do.
#
And he also goes on to say that I am betraying you if I don't exercise my judgment, because
#
I mean, think of it like, let's say that I am the CEO of a publicly listed company and
#
not asking the shareholder to take, tell me what to do every time.
#
I am exercising my judgment to do things, a good CEO is exercising his or her judgment
#
to do things which will benefit the shareholders and not act as their direct agents asking
#
them every time or the board does.
#
In fact, there's a quote from Burke which says this as well from that letter where he
#
writes, your representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgment.
#
And he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion, stop quote,
#
thereby giving that nuance that the job of a citizen in a democracy is not just to elect
#
someone who will do what you want him to do, but to elect people of good judgment, whose
#
And this is the quote that I was, I mean, I couldn't remember the exact quote, but this
#
is what I tried to paraphrase.
#
The second notion, which is that is effectively people are elected and he's supposed to further
#
he or she is to further their interests, because that is what, because you are the representative,
#
so you are representing them.
#
So I am in a constituency, there's something coming up, this is good or bad for the constituency,
#
I will react or vote in a way which benefits the people I am representing.
#
There's a second notion which is generally the delegate concept.
#
I mean, I'm not, my own bias is towards the first, but let's take the second for what
#
it's also a notion worth considering and people, I mean, I have respect for that position.
#
What we have done is we have made the MP a delegate of the party leadership, neither
#
of the constituency nor of his or her own judgment, we have just converted that.
#
So we have completely taken away the concept of a representative.
#
Now comes the second trend, which is that how does a good democracy work?
#
Okay, let's take for all it's laws, the US is a reasonably good democracy, because it
#
is sustained 200 years.
#
And we have all and also because it makes good TV, so we have all watched it.
#
So we are familiar with it.
#
I mean, there may be many other good ones, but we don't have the familiarity.
#
So when there is a presidential, there's a debate for the president of the US or the
#
primaries and there is some senator there, people ask and very often ask, there was this
#
Iraq vote, how did you vote, why did you vote on this, the some other vote, what is right.
#
So your actions in parliament, the voter is evaluating and using that to decide whether
#
you need another chance.
#
And in fact, that is the core of representative democracy that you are answerable to the electorate
#
every five years, and if you have not performed, you will be kicked out.
#
Okay, once you bring in the anti-defection law, how am I answerable to my electorate?
#
Because I did not have the freedom to do what I thought was right, or I didn't have the
#
freedom to even do what they thought was right.
#
I can only do what the boss says.
#
I think the anti-defection law also, I am telling you different angles, completely misjudges
#
the concept of a political party.
#
Now, I mean, a political party has a few crore people, there is no way that everyone has
#
the same opinion on everything.
#
And you can't have a crore political parties.
#
So the way parties are is, again, I am not necessarily talking about India, I am talking,
#
let us say, more mature democracies where they have evolved over a long period.
#
Again, let us take the US.
#
You have a broad idea what the Democrat party stands for.
#
You have a broad idea what the Republicans stand for.
#
Now, you are a citizen, you are not really involved in politics.
#
But for whatever reasons, whatever has shaped you and your interest and what you grew up
#
with, you have an inclination towards this ideology or that ideology and you go with
#
those guys, whichever you have.
#
Maybe instead of two, you may have three, four, five, you cannot have 100.
#
But you may be a Democrat, there are 100 things, you agree with them on 70, you disagree with
#
them on 30, which is true within the party's senators or the other thing.
#
But what the anti-defection law assumes is that on everything I agree with everyone else
#
Because I have to, we have all voting, I will just take a favorite example, I have used
#
There is this vote on FDI in retail during the UPA days and I am deliberately going 10
#
years back so that we do not get into current politics, FDI in retail.
#
The UPA proposed, wanted to open it up, the BJP opposed it.
#
The Congress had, I think, 206 members, there is UPA too and BJP had 116 members or something
#
I can't believe that all the 206 MPs of the Congress in Lok Sabha thought FDI in retail
#
is good and each of the 116, the BJP thought FDI is bad, but that's how they voted.
#
There was actually a vote, recorded vote on this, that's how they voted.
#
So anti-defection law actually makes, enforces MPs to be dishonest about their beliefs.
#
But it infantilizes them.
#
Since I am listing out the different ways.
#
Please list out all of them.
#
I don't think I will list all of them because there may be more which I have not thought
#
Let me think of one more.
#
Again, I am going to the basics of what an MP and party stand for, right?
#
What is the primary job of an MP?
#
And let's get back to, there's a nice speech by Ambedkar.
#
In the constituent assembly, when he introduces the draft constitution, I think it is 1948
#
November or something like that.
#
I think, I don't know the exact date, but that's the introduction of the constitution
#
when he is explaining the structure of the constitution as they have introduced.
#
And in that, he discusses the presidential versus the parliamentary forms.
#
And he says both are there, both are there around the world.
#
The presidential system provides more stability because they were that guy for four years.
#
The parliamentary system provides, the word uses is greater responsibility, we can use
#
the word accountability.
#
There is a modern usage of the word accountability which possibly was.
#
And he goes on to explain saying that every day, the government has to be responsible
#
to parliament, which is maintained through questions, motions, debates, including the
#
The conception is that you are accountable to every MP.
#
Now obviously, the government of the day in India, in Lok Sabha, is the person who has
#
won a majority in Lok Sabha.
#
After that, so there is a, what the anti-deficit law has converted this into is, day one, there
#
is an election if there is any, and you choose a leader.
#
For five years, you can't hold that person accountable at all.
#
So you have taken away the absolute basis of what a parliamentary democracy is about.
#
So I think there are enough reasons for the Supreme Court to have fairly easily struck
#
this down on basic structure because it completely changes the nature of parliamentary representative
#
It actually changes the nature.
#
And if that, if a representative democracy is part of the basic structure, which I presume
#
it is, and we are not a monarchy, then, or we are not an elected, five-year elected monarchy
#
or autocracy, whatever, in that case, anti-defection law should have no place.
#
And incidentally, this is something that when I was researching about five, six years ago,
#
I wrote a book chapter and at that time I was looking and I don't think things should
#
I discovered that there are only five other countries, great democracies, which share
#
this feature, where if an MP votes against the party whip, the MP loses his or her seat.
#
And the other five, I remember the names Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Guyana, and I forget
#
Oh, you read it by something that I wrote or something?
#
This was the Robert Mugabe Zimbabwe.
#
Not that I don't know what it is now, but we share, I mean, these are the five countries
#
we share this great concept with.
#
So there is no, we should not have that at all.
#
Now to your second part of the question, which was that if this is there, then what is the
#
whole point of having a parliament?
#
Why are we bothering to talk to MPs?
#
Why are we not just talking to, let us say, the leader of the BJP and the leader of the
#
Congress and the leader of the Trinamool and the leader of the DMK or whatever, right?
#
I mean, it's irrelevant because of this issue.
#
Well, parties are not monoliths, despite all this.
#
And I can give you examples again.
#
There is an interesting bill called the Seeds Bill, which was brought in in 2004, introduced
#
It was there for a very long time.
#
They could not pass it.
#
They could not pass it because there was a lot of resistance by Congress MPs against
#
So party leader also has to manage internal party dynamics.
#
Then there are things like standing committees, which change things.
#
Then speeches in parliament do have a long term impact.
#
So what happens if the government has brought in a bill for a final vote in parliament?
#
It will almost certainly pass.
#
That's because they bring it only if they have already done the groundwork through back
#
channels to ensure there is enough support.
#
But that groundwork is in that a lot of work goes in.
#
So I can give you many examples where bills have been amended, suggestions made by standing
#
committees and the government has found them reasonable and taken them on board.
#
So even in many other issues, what MPs say do have a large impact.
#
So these are the sort of direct things where other than improving the quality of discourse,
#
which is a much more fuzzy thing, there is even a lot of direct impact, including budgets.
#
How do you look at budgets?
#
Where should you allocate?
#
People are interested in that.
#
What role does something like Question Hour play in this?
#
Like one of the sort of benefits of the whole program that you run and helping parliamentarians
#
manage this game too, is that even if they cannot actually vote the way they want to
#
necessarily, they can still have an impact in terms of asking questions to ministers,
#
some which the ministers have time to prepare for, for some which they don't when they're
#
supplementary questions, burning questions on the issues of the day.
#
How much of an impact does this have?
#
Because while this is incredibly useful, what I have realized is that most of the country
#
doesn't actually tune in to watch this or follow this at all and it's not reported and
#
none of that really happens.
#
So if it's like happening effectively in a sealed chamber, I mean, obviously it's not
#
anyone can follow it, but if it's effectively in a sealed chamber, then is it just a kind
#
of a charade or does it have a real impact?
#
And can you give examples of real impact that you have seen coming out from your research?
#
Okay, there are two different things.
#
One is we as a policy do not draft questions for MPs because that takes a position and
#
we don't take a position.
#
But if an MP asks us, let's say, I want to raise this issue, can you give me background
#
And what we do with MPs is very clear in the sense it's only research.
#
So if today, even on a bill, if a BJP MP asks or a Congress MP asks or a Trinamool MP asks
#
or a Shiv Sena MP asks, they get the same material.
#
I'm not customizing for the MPs, politics or ideology.
#
So if one MP asks you, you will give that not only to them, but to everybody.
#
So there are some standard products which everybody gets.
#
But if one MP asks, that person gets it.
#
But let's say four days later or one week later, another MP asks.
#
The same thing may be updated for some extra information.
#
I mean, next year, somebody asks, you obviously take out the old research note.
#
If something has happened, update it and give that.
#
So I'm not customizing.
#
In fact, I'm not bothered what that MP's politics is or ideology is.
#
It's the same note everybody gets.
#
And this is a very good question that you asked about why does this even matter?
#
Why does a speech in Lok Sabha matter?
#
At the end of the speech, if they're on a bill, let us say there is a four hours of people
#
Everybody knows that the government has a majority, government has issued a whip, they're
#
So is the rest of it just like a four-hour thing where you're just watching Sholay or
#
listening to your podcast or, I mean, entertainment or information?
#
I would love parliamentarians to listen to my podcast while they're there.
#
So is it just to the core thing about what the outcome is, which is a bill becoming an
#
act, it is completely irrelevant.
#
So why do they even, okay, why do people even bother to prepare for it?
#
Why do they waste their time preparing for it?
#
And there can be multiple pressures.
#
But one of the things I think is always there and it works.
#
Yes, peer pressure, peer appreciation, peer criticism.
#
Every MP like all of us want and to look, I mean, to do things, partly to do, be seen
#
as doing things also, also to do things sincerely.
#
I mean, why are there so many people who are doing things when nobody is watching, doing
#
Like they say, character is what you do when no one's watching.
#
So many of them do that, they also get rewarded.
#
So if you are seen as very diligent, you might become an MOS or something by the, because
#
the party boss is watching you.
#
So you might actually get tangible rewards in terms of you will get a ticket again, you
#
will get appreciation from others.
#
In fact, I remember this was on one of the bills during UPA time again.
#
It was a BJP MP and he had worked very hard on that bill because was the lead speaker.
#
In fact, he wanted to meet us and we had a two hour long meeting going through the entire
#
bill and that person's eyes were red because had not slept the whole, I mean, not because
#
the person was drinking, but because the person had not slept the whole night was preparing
#
Next day, given very good speech.
#
And then he called us after the speech, he actually called and said, thanks for helping
#
me understand the issues, Pranabda said, well-spoken said, and Pranabda was the leader of the house
#
from the Congress and this guy is a BJP MP, but a pat on the back from Pranab Mukherjee
#
who was a respected parliamentarian means a lot to that person.
#
I am sure in the Indian cricket team, if there is a newbie, at the end of the day, if Kohli
#
taps and says, well done boy, I mean, that guy will be out regardless of what he scored,
#
I mean, the person you look up to telling you that you've done a good job.
#
The questionnaire itself does have a lot of impact.
#
Again, the minister doesn't want to be caught embarrassed, doesn't want to be caught on
#
So they have to prepare.
#
They work very hard to anticipate and the ministry works very hard to anticipate the
#
supplementary questions so that they have a good answer because you don't want public
#
Just to make it clear to the listener, the difference between the main question and the
#
supplementary question is they have 10 days to prepare for the main question as given
#
But when supplementary questions are asked based on the answer, they have to think on
#
Just think of it as an home assignment versus a surprise quiz in your class.
#
So it's a home assignment immediately followed by a surprise quiz.
#
Does it make a tangible difference?
#
It does shape government policy very often.
#
Even sometimes like, let me take a simple example, there's something that the constituency
#
It could even be something like a railway line has a level crossing and you need a fly
#
over there which makes a big difference to the people of my constituency.
#
And I asked the minister of railways because that person controls this in that time that
#
is there a plan to build this etc, etc, etc.
#
That might trigger off.
#
So the person can't say, no, you'll never get it, person will say, yes, we are looking
#
And that way trigger off some files moving, which creates that.
#
I'm just taking a very simple constituency type.
#
Of course, policy type questions also come very often.
#
And those are way more complex some very often, but they can even trigger policy.
#
People ask me and I'll before you ask me, I'll ask the question myself and answer it
#
because that's I mean, I like to set the question paper for myself.
#
So there is this concept of private member bill.
#
Let me explain that because I'm sure many of our listeners don't know these intricacies.
#
I had no clue before 2005 when I started PRS.
#
So what most of the acts that you see in force, they originate as a bill, they're introduced
#
by a minister and then it goes to the parliamentary process.
#
And if it's passed by both houses, presidents and it becomes an act.
#
Now any member of parliament can propose a bill.
#
And if it's a proposed by the government, a minister introduces on behalf of the government
#
because it's a collective responsibility of the cabinet.
#
But if I'm a non-minister MP, which means I'm called a private member and I introduce
#
a bill that also in theory has the same importance as any other bill.
#
In practice, the last private member bill that became law was 1970.
#
There were 14 of them because the government has, which is very different from let's say
#
the UK where they also, when we follow the Westminster model, UK every year about five
#
or six private member bills become law.
#
They take them way more seriously.
#
Here we don't that much, but still they have an impact.
#
I'll give you an example, 2015 if I remember correctly, maybe off by a year or so, there
#
was a private member bill on rights for transgender persons introduced by Tiruchi Shiva of the
#
That bill, he was a Rajya Sabha member, came to Rajya Sabha.
#
The typically what happens is these are on alternate Fridays afternoon after the discussion.
#
Usually the minister says that we will take action on this, please withdraw your bill
#
and default position usually is the MPO has introduced, withdraws the bill and says the
#
government will go forward.
#
Tiruchi Shiva said, no, I want a vote.
#
He has a right to a vote.
#
I said, no, no, I want a vote.
#
Now how can any government issue a very party issue a whip, which says we don't want to
#
protect the rights of transgender persons politically.
#
How can you even do that regardless of what's there in the bill?
#
And the time for moving amendments was over because you have to give that earlier because
#
nobody expected the eventuality of him insisting on it.
#
So nobody bothered to do the homework that if this were to become law, there are these
#
four provisions which are problematic.
#
Let us make them correct and pass law because obviously there are issues.
#
So now it comes to the vote, they scrambled and nobody could vote against.
#
So it passed Rajya Sabha.
#
Now it comes to Lok Sabha.
#
Now the rule is that which, okay, there are lots of private member bills, which one will
#
be discussed in the house.
#
That's usually lottery.
#
But if one house has passed a bill that jumps the queue in the other house because it has
#
already been deemed to be important by one of the houses.
#
And since a member of parliament cannot enter the chamber of the other house unless the
#
So you find a couple of others to sponsor your bill in that house.
#
So two or three MPs there decided to sponsor this bill, which is Trichy Sheva's bill, but
#
they are sponsoring it in Lok Sabha and listed.
#
The government decided by now.
#
The government said, we will do something.
#
They actually postponed a bit by the earlier bill, which was being discussed in Lok Sabha.
#
They continued discussing for a few more weeks.
#
So they postponed it, but this had to come.
#
The day this was listed that morning, the government introduced its own bill, right
#
of transgender persons bill.
#
And then they said that we have our own bill.
#
Let's stick both these together and let a committee look into it.
#
And finally, what happened?
#
The government bill got passed.
#
Nevertheless, there is now an act that has the protection for transgender rights, etc.
#
I would give Mr. Shiva the credit for pushing getting this done because he actually pulled
#
So when people say, how does it matter?
#
And even questions, the signal intentions.
#
So since you like cricket, this reminds me of, you know, only test cricket, only test
#
Well, T20 I don't watch.
#
I think I managed to convince Ram Guha on my episode with him that they are two different
#
So one should not judge them against each other.
#
So in 1996, Lalit Modi had the idea for a league system, though involving one day matches
#
because in those days, T20 was not a popular format for something that looked very IPL like.
#
And I remember Mr. Bindra in 2003 gave me an interview when I was in cricket for where
#
he spoke about this at length, but it was on the back burner.
#
And then the ICLZ came up with the ICL and that spurred the BCCI into acting on Modi's
#
And then the IPL happened and the ICL went.
#
So when you spoke of, you know, this bill happening kind of like that, independent member
#
comes in, you use the phrase that there are lots of private bills.
#
Why are there lots of private bills when the last one that got through was 1970?
#
Because like Trichy Sivas Singh, people want to signal intentions.
#
They put in a lot of work, private, because writing a bill takes effort.
#
And you help with that also in terms of the background.
#
I'll tell you where we do and where we don't.
#
We run a different program where we just run the program.
#
We don't get into the details called the Lamb Fellowship.
#
I don't know whether you have heard of that.
#
I had one of your alumni, Shivam Shankar Singh, on my show.
#
Oh yeah, Shivam was there.
#
So the Lamb Fellows, they work with the AMP and they take positions, they draft questions,
#
But there's a very clear wall that I don't know what bill they are working on or what
#
So they're reporting to us.
#
We do, obviously, we need to monitor a program we run.
#
It is like, how many questions did you do in the last thing?
#
And of course, once something happens and is introduced, the guy comes and says, I did
#
this shows and we say, okay, good shows, that sort of a thing.
#
But we are not involved in any way in drafting these because that means we are taking a position.
#
Drafting you're taking a position.
#
My next question, and this is something you referred to in the break, and you referred
#
to during the conversation as well, when you said that we make sure it's six pages, a first
#
page is a cover page, two pages of what the bill actually is, two and a half, three pages
#
of whatever, including the footnotes.
#
And I found that really impressive because one of the problems people have is that even
#
if you have the sincere intent that you want to absorb knowledge, either you put it off
#
or you skim, which is exactly why you said that you didn't want more pages or less pages.
#
And you want them to take it seriously, but also actually read the full thing.
#
In the break, we were talking about writing values and I kind of realized that independently
#
and most probably before me, you have started teaching a lot of the values that I talk about
#
Like what I call the Naniji test in my writing course is the mum test for you.
#
And language is really important because one of the problems with people writing policy
#
is this dull academic jargony language full of abstract terms that just make the eyes
#
glaze over and you can't possibly read it.
#
And your writing needs to be functional because you're talking to people who are really busy
#
and even if they want it, you've got to make sure it's as clear as possible.
#
So how did you like when you started PRS, when you started writing these briefs, did
#
you already come with a set of values that you evolved over time?
#
You know, what was that process like where you arrive at your sort of handbook for writing
#
these and tell me a little bit more about that as well, because I think many, many people
#
have a problem with being able to communicate complex subjects in simple language.
#
My background helped in the sense I was working for Bank of America before that for ISEC and
#
actually learned the writing in ICC securities.
#
Your first job is where you got taught.
#
So I am writing, let's say a report.
#
I was for some time a banking sector analyst.
#
So I'm writing a report on State Bank of India stock.
#
I'm sitting in ISEC and writing, there's a guy sitting in Deutsche Bank and writing,
#
there's a guy sitting in some other brokerage, Anand Rathee and writing, there's someone
#
else writing in CSSA and writing.
#
Some 30 of us are writing.
#
Who's our target audience?
#
The fund manager or the great and that person has 30 reports.
#
Why would that person read my report?
#
And if that person doesn't read my report, and many people don't read my reports, I lose
#
my job, why should my boss pay me a salary if nobody is reading my report?
#
That feedback comes back.
#
So it's a matter of survival.
#
So we are taught to write in a way that a busy person will still read what you write.
#
So I had that background.
#
That's why I write short.
#
So in fact, one of the lessons that there's a person called Andrew McCormack, he was a
#
JP Morgan guy, he was my first, he was the head of sales, trading and research when I
#
joined ISEC securities, an Englishman because JP Morgan.
#
So he used to say and that is something that I internalized is that there are two ways
#
of making an argument A, B, C, D, therefore E. E because A, B, C, D. He says write E because
#
A, B, C, D, get their attention because otherwise by the time you reach your conclusion, people
#
have stopped reading you and he used to say you have to write boom, boom, boom, boom, five
#
So it's short, people notice all five, if you write large ones, nobody reads.
#
So I said, okay, busy audience, hedge fund manager, busy audience, member of parliament.
#
Same thing, different subject, but same in a way, there's some commonality.
#
So one should write for this.
#
That was the idea when we started.
#
So how do you actually have a larger team when people also internalize that?
#
Some of that is that as we got a team, I was editing other people's, I found that the Indian
#
education system is particularly bad and not just India, even the American education system
#
in some of these areas, they write convoluted long sentences.
#
And how do you make people, how do you actually industrialize, if I may use the word, simple
#
writing, because there are, let's say six analysts, seven analysts, I want to make,
#
I want to make my job easy.
#
So how do I make my editing job easier when they give it to me?
#
So there's a second rule that we put in, 15 word.
#
So any sentence, I said, if there's a sentence greater than 15 words, I'm not going to read
#
So I won't edit the document.
#
You better break it up into two sentences, bring it back to me.
#
Because you can't write a complex sentence with 15 words.
#
So we brought in some of these ideas of writing.
#
And by the way, all our searchers are freely available to everybody on the website.
#
And the reason is simple.
#
Part of our role as we see it is also that people of India should know what's happening
#
in parliament, should know what bills are coming up, should be able to understand the
#
nuances because that's how there's a greater public awareness and public debate.
#
So if you want to look at a complex subject and you want to see what you have done, look
#
at the first report on the insolvency and bankruptcy code.
#
It's a complex code or look at the similar one, which was not passed, FRDI bill, which
#
is the insolvency bill for the financial guys.
#
It was financial, I don't remember the full name, something FRDI bill.
#
How do you regulate banks?
#
The risk of a bank going under, how do you regulate that?
#
How do you manage that?
#
That is what that bill is doing.
#
And we have written, summarized the bill in two pages, or even we had a, because it's
#
more current, we have a brief on the website on the draft cryptocurrency bill.
#
First question is, what is cryptocurrency?
#
So you're trying to explain that and all in one and a half pages or two pages because
#
that's the space we have.
#
I mean, I feel like I've met such a kindred soul because all of this is stuff that I tell
#
For example, that whole structural thing of ABCDE would start with E instead.
#
And one of my pet peeves about op-eds or opinion pieces is that initially you don't know what
#
the stance of the person is.
#
You are taken for granted as if that person is entitled to you reading the full thing
#
to figure it out, which really irritates me.
#
And another thing I tell participants of my course is that the full stop is your best
#
And for a lot of writing, like opinion writing, op-ed writing, writing for large audiences,
#
it really is, though obviously the caveat there is if you're writing fiction or personal
#
essays or whatever, sometimes your sentences need to be long.
#
It's a good thing you're building that slow rhythm, but not in this kind of writing.
#
I completely agree with all of that and I was going to ask if all of this is accessible
#
to the public and you've just answered that question.
#
So I'll give the link from the show notes.
#
The other element of what you pointed out is that what I have found and what I keep
#
telling my students is that if you force yourself to write in a clear way, you are forcing yourself
#
to think in a clear way.
#
It helps your thinking because if you haven't thought through a subject properly, you can
#
still get by by using jargon and vague abstract terms and all of that.
#
But if you're going to explain it to your nani ji or to your mum in your case, I mean,
#
we have these different tests, then you are forced to use clear, simple language and you're
#
forced to really understand the subject well enough.
#
And I also don't understand cryptocurrency, so I'm going to read this and see if that
#
Let's go back to the subject of parliament, which is so incredibly important.
#
Of course, you've spoken all about the anti-defection bill, but do you feel that one inherent limitation
#
and what you can achieve through parliament, even if the anti-defection law was to go,
#
it's just a structure of a republic where so much power is so centralised.
#
And as you correctly pointed out earlier, a lot of what affects people's life is really
#
And the MP doesn't have much to do with that.
#
And therefore, you know, and I mean, obviously, you affect what you can and things scale better
#
when they are happening in that, I mean, the system is what it is and you have to work
#
But, you know, does that also, you know, become a limitation?
#
So this is the dilemma, there are multiple problems here.
#
One is we are a very large country in the sense we have one, whatever, one, one point
#
four billion, one forty crore people.
#
So the size of a central assembly like parliament, like Lok Sabha, you can't have three thousand
#
people because an assembly of three thousand people is meaningless.
#
Then you will be like the Chinese guy who will be once in five days a year or something
#
So you'll have a limit, maybe five hundred become six hundred, seven hundred.
#
But it can't be much more than that.
#
And divide that by this number, you have a constituency size of twenty lakh.
#
So that we have to live with that.
#
The answer to that is to actually have parliament just certain things and states are much smaller.
#
The largest state is still very large, which is U.P.
#
But the second largest state is Maharashtra, which is about ten crore, still very large,
#
still larger than the United Kingdom or France or Germany.
#
It is actually even Maharashtra is large.
#
The suburb where I live, Varsova is larger than Iceland in population.
#
Yesterday I was checking out because the Netherlands has imposed a lockdown because they had, I
#
think, thirteen thousand or fifteen thousand cases of covid.
#
So when I said I just Googled, I mean, so to the world, the first search result for
#
credibility that has population of Netherlands and it is less than Delhi, it is half of Delhi.
#
So the Netherlands is half of Delhi, roughly, or slightly more than half of Delhi, 60 percent.
#
So it's just extra or something like that.
#
So we are a very populous country.
#
So the thing is to move that and even move further down to the extent we can to the municipalities
#
and panchayats and all that.
#
Of course, the other problem is nobody willingly gives out power.
#
Will parliament give to the states?
#
Will states further give down?
#
I mean, there are strange things that have happened in this country, which I don't understand
#
Because again, if you go back to incentives and people work vested interests, these things
#
should not have happened by that logic.
#
My favorite example is the Right to Information Act.
#
Why did that get passed?
#
The people in power had the opposite incentives.
#
Everyone had the opposite incentive.
#
They don't want to be accountable.
#
So that's what keeps me, that's why I said I'm an optimist.
#
I don't understand things, but they have happened.
#
So just because I don't understand the rationale doesn't mean that there is not something else
#
It's just that I don't understand it.
#
Maybe something is going on.
#
Maybe my whatever framework is not good enough to capture that.
#
But the fact is it happened.
#
So things happen, which seem to go against all the rationale that my framework gives
#
One way to actually rethink the way we work as a country, again, I don't know.
#
Like I said, I don't understand why things happen.
#
So I'm optimist that sometime this might happen, though, again, incentives wise, it should
#
If you think of concurrent list subject, and if I go back to the original conception, there
#
are three lists in the constitution.
#
The union list, which is primarily things where you need uniformity across the country.
#
Like banking is uniform, because again, I want whether I have a bank account in Delhi
#
or in Bombay or in Calcutta or in Hyderabad, I should be able to comfortably interact.
#
It should be a common law and I should have one RBI and not multiple RBI.
#
I should need to have the same currency, not everybody issuing defense and there are many
#
And in fact, the list is much larger, but there are some obvious ones.
#
There are some things which are definitely local, which is state list.
#
And what is a concurrent list?
#
The way I would think of it is you need a certain level of uniformity, but you need
#
So in a concurrent list subject, when parliament makes law, it should make law which is reasonably
#
So you cannot move outside this, but within this you play around.
#
So in fact, I had made this argument when we were invited by the standing committee
#
in the first, when the land acquisition bill was done in 2013.
#
I think we went in 2011 or 2012 at that time.
#
In the committee, I made the argument that this is a concurrent list subject.
#
I do not know what it is, but I can easily say that what works in Kerala is unlikely
#
to work in Uttar Pradesh and vice versa because they are very different local scenarios or
#
in Mizoram or in Punjab.
#
If you have one law up to the final detail, which is same for Punjab and Mizoram and Uttar
#
Pradesh and Kerala, something is going to fail.
#
So you make the skeletal and let the state assemblies on that, put on the more details.
#
That is one way to think of it.
#
We do not do it because again, which government at the centre does not want to dot all the
#
I's and cross all the T's and say, okay, I have done the perfect law, every government
#
Which civil servant is going to say that I do not know everything.
#
So four final questions for you unless digressions occur and digressions sometimes occur, but
#
I have taken a lot of your time.
#
So my fourth last question, I do not know if there will even be a word for it, like
#
penultimate is second last, what would fourth last be, quadruple ultimate, I do not know.
#
In India, we anyway say second last, so penultimate is like, I do not think most people understand.
#
Like get down at the second last bus stop is an instruction I have got and I have not
#
figured out how do I find out which is the second last until I go to the last.
#
Also you mentioned earlier the importance of a comma, here the importance of a hyphen
#
comes into play because when I say this is my fourth last question, there has to be a
#
hyphen between the fourth and the last.
#
If that hyphen was not there, it would mean that I am deceiving you, that I have told
#
you I'm asking a last question and after doing it three times before, I am asking you a
#
fourth last question, but I am not doing that, I am asking you a fourth last question.
#
What a silly digression.
#
So you know you have spoken, like I will link to this talk of yours you gave which is very
#
I think you might consider it common knowledge, but I think it is a lot of people do not really
#
understand the nuts and bolts of how parliament works and should work and you have spoken
#
about the three key roles of parliament which is making laws, oversight of government, financial
#
sanction and oversight, all of which obviously your work really kind of helps with.
#
But what is also happening, what you have also pointed to is one, the increased number
#
of disruptions and two, that parliament sits less and less and of course I am sure the
#
anti-defection law in the sense that all this doesn't really matter may play a part in that,
#
but parliament is just sitting much less than it used to, much less days of the year and
#
within those days there are constant disruptions happening by opposition members or whatever
#
which every party has done when it is in opposition and Arun Jaitley in fact you have pointed
#
out famously defended it in this PC rote in 2012 and then he was on the, the shoe was
#
on the other side very soon.
#
So you know just looking at that, I mean in theory yeah these are the things parliament
#
should do and these are, this is how our democracy runs, this is our machine.
#
So I see the design of the machine and it is intricate and beautiful and whatever flaws
#
there are are minor and it is a magnificent conception, but then I look at the working
#
of the machine and here the lever is broken, screws are missing, the rat is stuck scurrying
#
So you know and I guess at a meta level it can be made better because parliament itself
#
and politicians themselves can reform the system and you are giving them the knowledge
#
and the information that can help them arrive at that, but what is your sense?
#
Does it sometimes sort of fill you with despair at why am I even doing this or are your kind
#
of successes good enough to say that no, no it is worth it?
#
There are of course times of extreme frustration, I mean you, let us say we have worked hard
#
on a bill, put in two months of research, gone and briefed MPs, they are interested,
#
they have called us, they have spent their time on it and then there is disruption and
#
in 30 seconds the bill is invalid in parliament without any debate, happens, it is frustrating.
#
But there are also times when you can see that all this work has actually come to fruition
#
and there is something is happening with that.
#
So that keeps us on and the very fact that there are enough MPs and again when I say
#
MPs I am actually, we are increasingly doing work with MLAs also, enough of them who are
#
actually keen makes it worthwhile.
#
I mean I will just give you an example of MLAs for example, we did a workshop, this
#
was actually our first physical workshop since, I mean the last one was in February, January
#
or February, February 2020 we did one, or GAN and I think on and then obviously everything
#
shut down, we did a workshop in September this year when things had opened up in Delhi
#
for MLAs from the north eastern states focusing on issues related that they are interested
#
in etc. and we had to actually close, we had to say okay enough, because in a workshop
#
in a room when you are doing and especially we wanted given now we also wanted to make
#
sure that we are not crowding people and this was in the early September, so some distancing
#
So we said we want about 30-35 people and that is a large enough group, we do not want
#
to keep 70 people in and we had 35, we actually had to turn away people saying that yes we
#
understand we will do a second one, we will definitely we do not want to not serve you,
#
but we cannot do it today because there are people it was first come first serve and others
#
So there is and they are sitting for two full days listening to issues, understanding things,
#
understanding how budgets are done, understanding what is the look east policy and things like
#
that, why are they spending two days away from the constituency sitting in a conference
#
room in Delhi coming all the way and coming at both their time and their cost, they are
#
paying for their travel and stay and all that, why are they doing that, there is something
#
going on and therefore if what we do helps like in any group and that goes for any organization
#
and any type of organization there is also always a distribution of sincere people, average
#
people and slackers and the system moves forward when you move people from the right whatever
#
one extreme towards the better extreme and the guys at the sincere and hardworking actually
#
So our thing is there are certain set of people that we cannot know much about, they are not
#
interested but if there are people who are keen and interested and they do not have the
#
tools, to give you a cricket example because we seem to love it, if you send Virat Kohli
#
into bat with a hockey stick will he score the century, so you need to give him the bat
#
but if Virat Kohli is not interested in scoring that century, give him the best bat he cannot
#
do anything, if he does not have either skill set or the intent you cannot, assuming that
#
he has that he needs the equipment, what we are doing is trying to improve the equipment
#
we cannot do more than that but I can see that that helps and that is what keeps us
#
So a digressive question before I get to my last three questions, one thing that researchers
#
have interestingly found and Adam Grant writes about it in his recent book think again is
#
how a common quality to leaders everywhere across industry and whatever the surveys have
#
shown is not things like intelligence or education or all of those but their humility and eagerness
#
to learn, so do you find that this correlates well with those sort of legislators that you
#
work with who are at the sincere end that what may matter is not necessarily your native
#
intelligence or any of those things but your intentionality that you can come there without
#
any education but you want to do it and you are open to ideas, you are not stuck in an
#
Most of them are open because most of them are humble enough to say that they do not
#
know especially the technical, so we are not going to going and telling them how to win
#
an election because they are experts in that, they know that they are not experts in let
#
us say electricity regulation, so they do not have any ego in order to study that or
#
even things and the interesting thing is that they know a lot on because they have a lot
#
of on-ground experience, I will just give you an example, land acquisition, we had been
#
working on that for over 10 years or I started actually looking at it first time when the
#
first bill came in 2007, finally it was passed in 2013 then the NDA 1 brought in an amendment
#
in 2014 which did not get passed but we wrote a brief on that, we went to the committee
#
and there were MPs who were interested in it, so one of those MPs came to our office
#
and wanted to understand it in detail, then while we are explaining this MP says that
#
if you want to acquire land for a road highway it is not too difficult to get it as long
#
as you pay a reasonable price but railway line is very difficult to acquire land, so
#
I said why and then once he says it you kick yourself as in why did not you think of it
#
which is that if it is a road it connects to the nearest town, so I am not giving all
#
my land, I am giving a portion of my land because it is a linear project, the remaining
#
land value goes up, I have better connectivity, I gain, if it is a railway line cutting through
#
my farm I cannot go take my tractor from this side to that side of the farm I have to drive
#
5 kilometers to reach that level crossing or a flyover and cut across and that line
#
does not give me any advantage, there is some train passing through, it does not even stop
#
anywhere near by, so I have no benefits, I get hurt, so regardless even if you pay me
#
good market value it hurts me, now this the MP knows because in the constituency there
#
will be protests on certain things, sitting here and talking to people I do not know.
#
I would not have been able to guess this had you just told me, but once I tell you it is
#
so obvious, why did I think of it, it is obvious, so they have a huge amount of practical on
#
ground knowledge and they are generally humble and see that is the one set of people who
#
have to get validation once every 5 years, they go get kicked by the constituents every
#
5 years that keeps the humility on.
#
Third last question finally, it strikes me that one of the things you do and this could
#
be as important a public service as what you set out to do is that you are not just building
#
policies and spreading ideas you are also building people and enabling this ecosystem
#
of people who think deeply about these things, it has been more than 16 years, 16 years and
#
2 months I guess since PRS was formed, so tell me a little bit about this because throughout
#
this time you must have worked with many many young people who have gone off into different
#
directions and done things, you know even through the Lamb Fellowship you have given
#
that invaluable experience to people who understand the system better, what is your feeling about
#
this because if I was in your place damn I would be so proud, so what do you see happening
#
here like people will often be moan young people perhaps because they have only experienced
#
vocal young people on Twitter and say no this generation is like that, but it strikes me
#
that many of the people I interact with today are just incredible, great work ethic, work
#
hard, humility all of that, what is your experience building your, the troops of Madhavan as it
#
Oh not at all, no actually young people keep me very again keep me young let me put it
#
that way, so like the median age in my office today is I think 25 or 20 they are less than
#
half my age and there are people who are joined now whose parents are younger than me, I am
#
53 it just means that I am old, so and they keep me going actually other than there again
#
I would say when people say generalized things there is always a distribution and of course
#
when I am hiring for either PRS or LAMP it is my attempt to take the right end of the
#
distribution because that is what I want to hire.
#
So maybe I am not talking about a typical young person, I have a selection bias, both
#
in terms of sincerity and in terms of idealism, they are way more idealistic than I could
#
think I was at that age and I think a bunch of it is also that the country has moved both
#
economically too where you can effort to do that, right I mean you are reasonably well
#
off there are lots of opportunities when I was 21 maybe there is no chance I mean I needed
#
to get a job which was paying me fairly decently not that we pay very badly at that time but
#
I mean you can live on it comfortably but you need to want to build a career here and
#
in those days if anybody had said like I said I followed the usual path of engineer and
#
MBA why because you get a job, I did not know anything about engineering when I went in
#
for engineering but I knew that if I finish an engineering degree a job is assured whereas
#
if I do something else I do not know whether I will get a job or not.
#
So that was a predominant concern of those days, today there are what you are doing would
#
have been fairly inconceivable in 1990, you would not even have thought of this.
#
So the country has moved, country has evolved and that has opened up opportunities that
#
I think is given the courage for lots of younger people to experiment and come, so they do.
#
The good thing and you are right about that, I am very proud of them, there are people,
#
so there are two types of young people which we have had, so we get a lot of undergrads
#
even we hire them and we know that and in fact I kick them out at a particular point
#
of them and say okay, now it is time you go and do something else because you need to
#
grow but many of them have done interesting things later and of course I think it is 400
#
lamb fellows every year it is about 50 of them, we have done 10 batches, first batch
#
was small so it is more than 450 lamb fellows till now and we did a count about a year,
#
a year and a half back about what are they doing now, about 60% of them were in the politics
#
slash policy space, I will just explain to you what I mean by this, politics I mean they
#
are working directly with an MP, a minister, an MLA, a party or even with something like
#
Prashant Kishore's outfit or ABM of the BJP side and one of these which is direct politics,
#
policy when I say it means a think tank or even in a corporate policy group or in a activist
#
group in the policy, parsing the policy side, I mean that is what I am calling policy, so
#
60% are about that, 20% are studying because they came after an undergrad, they have gone
#
for a masters and many of them are in the top schools around the world.
#
So we have had I mean if you think of the US, these lamb fellows are there in I mean
#
name it Harvard, Yale, Stanford, NYU, if you look East, NUS, in India they have gone for
#
management, they have gone to the IIMs, ISB, places like the top places, so they are actually
#
getting a top rank second, whatever second degree before they decide what they want to
#
do, so and many of them are also I think we are changing the way they look at politics
#
and politicians because there is this inherent cynicism and not just India about politicians
#
and I am not saying they are the best people in the world, there is a lot of corruption,
#
I mean there will be enough moral bankruptcy anywhere but what people do not appreciate
#
is the complexity that politicians live with and the pressure that push them towards some
#
of this, they are not necessarily bad people but they live in an extremely complex environment
#
and they need to and if you do not behave in a particular way in that environment you
#
die, die in the sense your career is finished, so you need to manage that like anywhere else.
#
People do not understand that and people do not understand that many of them are trying
#
to do what they think is good for society, now we may I mean for example the present
#
government I am reasonably sure that you may differ with thinking what they, you may think
#
that what they are doing is not good but I am sure they think what they are doing is
#
good for the country, so that is a difference of opinion on the ideology but there is no
#
intent issue, they want to do good, what they believe is good may be different from what
#
This is a classic example of the seen and the unseen in the sense that all of these
#
kids who are working with you and going on to all these different things will one day
#
run the country hopefully and that will have a massive social impact but I will move from
#
the social to the personal for a moment, I find it fascinating how what people choose
#
to do can shape who they are, can change them and I see a lot of this in my own life and
#
I have written about this as well and it is interesting to me how you shift from you know
#
your corporate career to doing PRS and when you do something like this you are always
#
playing the long game, you know, you are just focused on the process, you cannot look at
#
immediate results of things, there might be periods of time where nothing is happening
#
where you wonder is it worth it but I guess you train yourself to be process oriented
#
and say that I am just going to keep on doing this and have faith in the long run and the
#
long game and I would imagine that this would have to change you as a person in terms of
#
getting more terror, having more patience, being less impatient, even being less material,
#
all of these things, so when you sort of if I might ask you to reflect you know do you
#
think you are a different person now than you would have been had you continued in banking
#
or continued in your corporate career and if so what are those differences?
#
I actually do not know to be frank because perhaps I am more patient I do not know but
#
people who work with me probably will not disagree with me because I mean one's own
#
evaluation of oneself will be very different from what others think of you, I do not think
#
I have had a significant I mean obviously my income in banking would have been a multiple
#
of what I get now but all that would have I have not changed my lifestyle it was never
#
very expensive even when I was earning a lot of money because I am comfortable with a particular
#
certain lifestyle I have not changed it all it would have mattered is my bank balance
#
would have been different how does it but my the way I look at it is the only value
#
of a bank balance is the amount it goes down by which means you are spending if you are
#
not spending it what is the point of having that number in an account somewhere value
#
of money is when you spend it and if I have more than what I need to spend then the remaining
#
is irrelevant so I do not think it has changed me materially in any particular way because
#
I continue doing that so I actually do not know it has definitely helped me appreciate
#
that the world is way more complex than what I would have thought because I mean and it
#
has also helped me I mean or rather I would say enabled me meet a much larger cross section
#
of people for example I guess what you do one of the pleasures and I share that pleasure
#
is the fact that I get to meet interesting people absolutely I get to meet a lot of interesting
#
people which I would not have done so my old banking circle there are a lot of interesting
#
people but I can continue to meet them and I can continue to meet others I would not
#
have met them there so it is a larger and wider circle yeah that is wonderful and you
#
are spot on about you know that being one of the perks of what I do as well my final
#
question and this one this doesn't need reflection it's not a difficult question but it's a
#
question I asked my guests at the end of every show because my listeners love to read contrary
#
to you know the impression people have that people don't read today people have short
#
attention spans I've realized doing the show that's really not true there's in fact even
#
a meme where people will post books they discovered on the show as seen unseen bookshelves and
#
all that on Twitter so I'm going to ask you to recommend books which either mean a lot
#
to you or you read recently and were impressed by or that you love so much that you just
#
want to stand on a stool and tell people you have to read this please read this.
#
I do read a lot of pulp fiction or whatever junk I would not call any writing junk yeah
#
I won't call it that people call it that because I read that so I did a binge reading last
#
month I think I spent a lot of time on it on I don't know whether you have read Lee
#
Child and Jack Reacher yeah yeah of course I think the new book is out now I haven't
#
read the new one but there is a another guy I discovered last month but has been writing
#
for a few years Mark Grinney the character is Cortland Gentry the grey man is the first
#
book so he is about five foot seven or something and he has the incredible ability to just
#
merge into the background and when people are following him it's like CIA type but he
#
makes Jack Reacher look like a nobody so he's like a super superhero he's like Rajnikanth
#
plus Mithun Chakraborty so I write so good fun I mean I like reading this I of course
#
my comfort reading where I am generally a bit down and I want before going to sleep
#
something which will get me a smile and I go back to sleep is reread a PGW any time
#
go back PGW is the all-time repeat favorite it's comfort food for our generation I think
#
yeah and you just keep laughing and then I mean and even if I reread I spot things which
#
I missed the last time in his wordplay sometimes I mean I forgot so so he is remarkable so
#
PGW of course and then a lot of I mean I recently read actually not recently last year a couple
#
of years back one of the better science fiction books that I enjoyed reading I actually used
#
to read science fiction a lot than I I don't like the science fantasy yeah I like the more
#
fiction types so I mean the Asimov Clark genre rather than the more fantasy genre this the
#
three-body problem so surely however you pronounce yeah I don't know how to pronounce it yeah
#
I loved that trilogy because it was in a way like Asimov plus Clark I recently read another
#
science fiction which was nice it was called Hail Mary somebody gifted to me it's a recent
#
book and so Hail Mary that I actually read very recently that's a nice one fiction if
#
you want a slightly more sentimental variety maybe not sentimental I like that gentleman
#
in Moscow which came out a year a couple of years ago immortals then it read the later
#
book recent one which is nice still it's again one of those types which is called the Lincoln
#
Highway I do read some enough nonfiction also so a bunch of them so I would I would say
#
I read anything that I get my hands on actually I don't do that I came across a rather I figured
#
out a new formula for reading which is as we had discussed earlier when we are growing
#
up the resource constraint was books we read now my resource constraint is time yeah so
#
even if I manage let's say one and a half books a week two books a week which is like
#
if it's nonfiction it takes a long time if it's fiction I just finished off in a couple
#
of days right so I can average about 75 to 100 books a year maybe then the remaining
#
part of my life and maybe two thousand books left maybe thousand five hundred left best
#
case scenario there's so many things to read so you want to be discerning no and also if
#
I start reading and about 50 60 pages I don't like it it's I go back to my financial this
#
thing stop loss exactly I mean just because I bought the book doesn't mean I have to read
#
it sunk cost fallacy yeah sunk cost so it's cut it out and get to the next one so I have
#
a recommendation for you if you enjoyed the three-body problem it was translated by this
#
guy called Ken Lou yes and he's got this great book of short stories called Paper Menagerie
#
that is nice that is very nice yeah awesome so Madhavan thank you so much for your generosity
#
and sharing your time and ideas with me I'm most grateful thanks a lot thanks a lot for
#
calling me and having me here if you enjoyed listening to this episode do check out our
#
show notes enter rabbit holes at will you can also head on over to the PRS website at
#
PRSindia.org Madhavan doesn't seem to have an active account on Twitter which I guess
#
is a wise decision to make but you can find me on Twitter at Amit Verma AMITVARMA you
#
can browse past episodes of the scene and the unseen at scene unseen dot IN thank you
#
for listening did you enjoy this episode of the scene and the unseen if so would you like
#
to support the production of the show you can go over to scene unseen dot IN slash support
#
and contribute any amount you like to keep this podcast alive and kicking thank you
