Gujarat, still

Gujarat was on their mind too. In the week the Supreme Court of India directed the Gujarat government to reopen all the cases arbitrarily cl...

Gujarat was on their mind too. In the week the Supreme Court of India directed the Gujarat government to reopen all the cases arbitrarily closed by the Gujarat police 8212; nearly half of the total number registered after the 2002 post-Godhra riots 8212; the Economist revisited the place where India 8216;8216;still hurts8217;8217;. Truth, justice and reconciliation, it wrote, are still missing in Gujarat.

The magazine laid out the reasons for its gloom: not a single murderer has been convicted for the riots while the Modi government has charged 123 Muslims and detained nearly 100 over the fire in the train compartment at Godhra. The government continues 8216;8216;to act less like a scourge of illegal violence than its sponsor8217;8217;. Though many read the BJP8217;s May 13 defeat as a rejection of Moditva, the man himself has survived the storm. If Modi is under attack in his party today, it is not for his brand of hate politics.

From Ahmedabad, the Economist described a deepening segregation. Muslims live in ghettos, fugitives still. Many face a 8216;8216;tacit economic boycott8217;8217;. Conservative Muslim organisations are gaining influence.

Blame it on India!

In the race to November, George Bush is finding it tough to brazen it out on the economy. Experts are now confirming the gathering murmurs of a jobless recovery.

And this may not be just a passing blip, if Newsweek is to be believed. In a report on the state of the New World Economy, the magazine outlined a strange affliction that has spread in the entire developed world: 8216;8216;Even as recovery spreads worldwide, workers are finding themselves working harder for less money8217;8217;. The 8216;8216;Yankee virus8217;8217; of payroll declines in a booming economy, has infected Europe too.

India, China and the internet 8212; not necessarily in that order 8212; must share the blame. Because 8216;8216;the new labour market is shaped by growing global competition, spurred by the rise of cheap manufacturers in China, India and Eastern Europe, and the price-chopping effect of both the Internet and giant retailers led by Wal-Mart8217;8217;. These 8216;8216;forces8217;8217; compel western companies to be increasingly tightfisted on prices and labour costs.

The fashionable spectre, then, is this: in a shrinking world, in terms of wages, the question may no longer be whether China and India will catch up with the West. It is: how far will the West fall back to meet India, China.

Two alone

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Political common sense and Duverger8217;s Law, named after the French sociologist Maurice Duverger, tell us that the first-past-the-post electoral system naturally leads to a two-party system. Not necessarily, argued Pradeep Chhibber and Ken Kollman in the Washington Post.

The writers, both professors of political science in American universities, are authors of The formation of National Party Systems: Federalism and Party Competition in Canada, Great Britain, India and the United States. In the Post, they explained why the electoral system or the American Constitution are not to blame for the limited menu of options before the American voter 8212; it8217;s either the Republicans or the Democrats in November.

The US has not always been a predominantly two-party system, they pointed out. It was in the 1930s that minor parties stopped winning significant vote shares in congressional elections and the electorate came to be almost neatly carved out between the Democrats and Republicans.

For Chhibber and Kollman, it happened due to the increasing centralisation of American politics. 8216;8216;The decline in voting for minor parties has corresponded to the increasing power of the national government relative to the states8217;8217;. The academics wrote with barely disguised nostalgia for a time when most policies that determined the voters8217; wellbeing were made at a more local level.

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In decentralised systems, they pointed out, smaller parties that have roots in provincial politics, draw enough votes from their areas of influence to have a say in national politics. Chhibber and Kollman gave Canada8217;s example. They could have added India to their list, where the first-past-the-post system has certainly not been able to suppress the assertion of multiple parties on the national scene.

Olympic wisdom

And how would the ancient Greeks have regarded modern athletes8217; use of performance enhancing drugs at the Olympics? The answer is easily imagined, wrote the New Yorker8217;s art critic this week as he roamed two museums that showcase the ancient games. Cheating, he said, appeared to be common at the Greek games.

He recalled a founding legend of the Olympics about the demigod Pelops, who won his wife in a chariot race by sabotaging her jealous father8217;s vehicle. On doping, he conjectured, the ancient Greek would have said: 8216;8216;If it made humans more godlike, what could be bad?8217;8217; And museums today would be exhibiting 8216;8216;vases decorated with lyrical scenes of injection and pill-popping8217;8217;.

Doping would not have been the tawdry thing we make it out to be. Had the Greeks but known it, they would surely have aestheticised it.