The Tyranny of Big Tech: The Sultans of Big Data and Human Liberty

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Josh Hawley, the Senator from Missouri, has fired a powerful salvo against the Mega Tech Corporations-- Google, Twitter, Amazon and FaceBook. The book is a broadside against the erosion of human rights and freedom as a consequence of Big Data and Big Mega Tech Corporations which collect and manipulate the data. Hawley wants all these corporations to be brought under the Anti Trust Laws, as they have become monopolies and as such contravene the Anti Trust Laws passed in the early decades of the last century.  He spends nearly half the book on the Robber Barons who were the virtual industrial aristocracy of USA as it was emerging as an important economic power. He argues that if the Steel and Railroad magnates could be stripped of their monopolistic hold, it stands to reason that these later day Corporations too should be brought under the ambit of the anti trust laws.

However, these Companies do not produce anything tangible. They enjoy huge profits without production. Economics cannot explain why FaceBook is today a multi billion dollar establishment. And it produces nothing. It sells nothing. And yet its profits are huge. Since these Corporations do not produce anything tangible bringing them under the anti trust laws may for that very reason be difficult. Some US states have begun steps to curtail the power and reach of these Sultans of Big Data. But these attempts are few and lack a central focus. Hawley has identified what he thinks is a chink in the armour: the lack of competition and the virtual monopolies these tech companies have acquired in their respective domains.

All these four tech companies have one feature in common: they acquire and store huge amounts of personal data about their users. FB for instance has a user base several times bigger than the population of more than half the countries of the planet put together, And Mark Zuckerberg is quoted as saying that the Corporation is "built to accomplish a social mission". It is precisely this messianic ideology of the Mega Tech Companies that makes them suspect. Unlike political parties that carry out their mission in public, these Big Tech Corporations are shrouded in a veil of secrecy. And the alliance with "Wokeism" makes companies like Twitter engage in political brinkmanship without any concern about public good or welfare. The huge capitalization of these tech giants protects them from public scrutiny and gives them unprecedented power over the political sphere. The fact that Donald Trump was deplatformed by Twitter is not surprising. What was remarkable was that they chose to wait till the results of the controversial elections were declared. Josh Hawley himself is at the cross hairs of the Big Tech Giants fr his role in rallying opposition to the declared victor in the November 2020 Presidential Elections. Twitter is at the moment engaged in a heated battle with the Government of India over its partisan role in what is now called the "tool kit controversy" in India. It is still too early to say who will blink--Twitter or Government of India. The point here is compliance with National Law. Do States have the ability to police these digital East India Companies. 

All these Mega Tech Corporations collect Data in the form of personal data, online transactions, communications, bank details, geo locational data  surveillance data etc. While much of the data stored is probably useless, the data points provide the basis for the prediction of behavior and it is here that the political reach of Big Data comes into play. In USA where 85 % of the population has smartphones and is online 24*7, Data stored when shared with political action groups can tilt the outcome of elections. It is certainly possible that the hostility towards Dona; Trump uniformly displayed by these tech giants played an important role in the Elections. 

Hawley is a conservative and hence he sees the danger of Constitutional Rights and Liberties eroded largely as a fall out of the hunger for Big Data. With statistical Data Mining Programmes it is possible to use the aggregate data for marketing political campaigns and consumer behaviour. The Algorithms are powerful enough to seize changes in behaviour. After the January 6th 2021 Protests the FBI was given access to the Data from Banks located in the bloocks around the Capitol and all those who visited Banks for purely banking transactions were now parsons for interest for the FBI.

Josh Hawley has written an important book. I have no doubt that just as it took a few voices in the wilderness to raise the anti Slavery Movement, the anti Big Tech Movement will also gather strength. What is at stake here is the future of Humankind.

The Persistent Myth of the Aryan Invasion: New Research and Findings

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Tearing Down the Aryan Invasion Myth

Dr Shiv Sastry

Bangalore Education Research Broadcasting

April 2021.

From the Eighteenth Century, 1784 to be precise when Sir William Jones founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal, one strand of interpretation has virtually dominated the discourse on early History of India. This line of interpretation denies the indigenous people of India Sovereignty over their land and delegitimizes efforts at reconstructing the past of India on its own terms. When William Jones postulated a common origin of Indian, particularly Sanskrit, and European languages such as Greek and Latin, he unleashed demons that are yet to be laid to rest. This is the alleged  Aryan Invasion Theory or as now modified the Aryan Migration Theory or Hypothesis. 

The book under review is an excellent introduction to the historical context in which the AIT (Aryan Invasion Theory) emerged and its ramifications over nearly two and a half centuries of debate and discussion. The recent findings from the Harappan site of Rakhighari in Haryana has clearly demonstrated that the Indian population does not have distinct European or Central Asian DNA. Genetic evidence from other important sites also support the view that the Indian population was not predominantly a population that either came as invaders or immigrants but were indigenous. It is unfortunate that even after DNA evidence has come into play, there is sustained effort to reinvigorate that AIT hypothesis. 

There are two facets to the AIT: Language and Horse. The obsession with the origins of Sanskrit language and the ideological compulsion to situate the language in either Europe or Central Asia led to philologists and experts on folklore like the famous Grimm Brothers postulate the existence of  "Indo European Languages" which explain the perceived similarity in the morphology of early languages spoken in Europe. The interesting implication of this theory is that it is not necessary  to have an Indo European homeland to explain the perceived similarity in word forms across the early European landscape, Brother, Mother and Father from a common root Brthr, Matr and Pitr can just as easily be explained as originating in India and spreading outward. The constant compulsion to decry and deny the sovereignty of the indigenous people of India has been an enduring theme in the Historiography of India. The creation of a mythical Race of Aryan by Max Mueller was a direct outcome of the common Homeland theory. As a consequence white American "scholars" like Sheldon Pollock and others can saddle India with part of the responsibility for the Holocaust perpetrated by the Germans. The Aryan Invasion Theory found some traction in India in the early twentieth century when leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak ransacked the Rg Veda and its references to stars to argue an Artic Home for the Vedas. It is now clear that the Rg Veda was composed on the banks of the Indus and the exact locale may evade researchers due to changes in the landforms and geomorphology of the Indus floodplains. Now the question of Equs/ Horse.

Another charming vignette  of the AIT is the horse riding warriors from Central Asia riding into India, defeating the native inhabitants and pushing them out of the lands they "occupied". This theory is another strong underpinning to the denial of the Sovereignty of the Indigenous people of India. And the theory has had devastating political consequences. The non existent Aryan is juxtaposed against the Dravidian which was identified with the indigenous population and the "Critical Caste Theory" comes in handy to equate existing social groups within this category. A flourishing political dynasty in Tamil Nadu thrives on this fake   equation identifying Dravidian as a binary opposite of Aryan. Unfortunately, Indian historians like Romila Thapar and other Marxists still cling to this outdated and vicious theory in an uncritical manner. The discovery of the Horse drawn chariot in a Chalcolithic site, Sinauli, in Uttar Pradesh. And the fact that the horse was domesticated in India is also attested by the discovery of true horse bones in post Neolithic sites of the Deccan like Dholavira and Navddatoli. It is higly disappointing that Yashwini Chandra in her The Tale of the Horse: The History of India on Horseback repeats this discredited myth. 

The author has covered a wide swathe of historical inquiry with almost professional precision. He rightly contests and rejects the notion that Avestan was a different language and the Mitanni Inscription found in Assyria which contains the list of Rg Vedic deities and the author rightly do not prove the Indo European origin theory.

This is a book that must be read and discussed by students of History as it is based on comprehensive research.

Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe Niall Ferguson's Analysis of the COVID 19 Pandemic

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Niall Ferguson is provocative, prolific and perspicacious. Provocative because this book taken on the now popular ideologies of "systemic racism", "global justice" and "climate change". Unlike the journalists who find easy explanations in politics and personalities, the historian necessarily has to take a more nuanced position. As he has shown, Trump was not more responsible for the COVID pandemic than Bill Clinton was for the Rwandan Genocide or the War in the Balkans. He is a prolific writer as he and his team chum out books almost at an industrial rate and get it published to catch the latest headlines. And he is perspicacious as he has shown the strong lines of continuity between the present Pandemic and those in the past starting from the earliest ones known from historical sources and he finds a pattern. Governmental interventions in disasters are vital towards finding a solution, but the middle bureaucracy  can subvert the best laid plans of Presidents and Prime Ministers.

Those who come to this book with a background in History, as I do, will find this book rather inadequate. Many of the arguments were already made several decades back by William McNeil in his Plagues and People. And Of course, Alfred J Crossby in his Columbian Exchange has traversed this territory of pathogens and their impact on History. However the book is the first serious attempt at looking at the Global History of a Pandemic that is still reaping its macabre harvest the world over. While Ferguson rightly states that China was responsible for the Pandemic he avoids the question: Did China unleash a bio logical weapon against an unsuspecting world? Given the response to the outbreak in Wuhan, this question has a great deal of salience. Why did China suppress the human to human transmission and delay the confirmation of the deadly outbreak until it had spread to nearly 67 countries. The WHO which played an effective role under Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former Prime Minister of Norway, was rendered ineffective, indeed an accomplice in shielding China from international scrutiny. Dr Tederos was quite unconcerned about the responsibilities WHO had towards the World.

Niall Ferguson has provided a tour de force through all the major Epidemics and Disasters in History and he zeroes in on the 1918-19 Global Influenza Epidemic. This Pandemic which cost nearly 40 million lives was also a Corona virus which was effectively dealt with by a combination of medical intervention and sanitation without the use of Lockdown as strategy. The US Government under President Trump went in for total lockdown which was effective in bringing down infection rates but tanked both the economy and the political future of Donald Trump. 

An interesting feature of the book is the critique of the public health policies and measures adopted b different Governments. In UK the first instinct of Neil Ferguson (not to be confused with the author of this book) advocated herd immunity. Allow the virus a free run and hope that at the end of the dance people will be immune. From this ridiculous policy the team, New and Emerging Respiratory Threats Advisory Group  (NERVTAG). jumped to an alarming and obviously unrealistic daily rate of virus transmission. Like Generals fighting the last war, epidemiologists are busy preparing for the last Great Pandemic. The course of the pandemic has defied all theories, statistical extrapolations and models deployed by experts. 

Added to the noise of the experts was the cacophony in the Popular Press. Captive of the big Corporations like Google, Amazon, Twitter and FaceBook the Press took a negative stance e towards political  leaders of Democratic countries. For example FB prevented the use of its platform for contact tracing thereby helping to spread rather than contain the Pandemic. And mega tech companies, reluctant to alienate China as its Market was huge, branded Trump's China travel ban "racist" though they knew that the disease had traveled from Wuhan, China. Niall Ferguson rightly condemns the 'morality play" quality of COVID 19 reportage as though popular political leaders were responsible for the disease. Quoting from Washington Post, the author has demonstrated that the paper consistently downplayed the threat posed by the disease and  certainly shied away from asking searching questions about the role of China. Of course this has nothing to do with the fact that Jeff Bezos is both the owner of Amazon and Washington Post. And China is a huge market. In a happy eloquent phrase which will resonate with those who cherish human freedom, Ferguson writes, "the East India Companies of the internet have plundered enough data; they have caused enough famines of truth; and plagues of the mind". 

This is a book which is topical and timed to sell as the flavor of the season is COVID.

The COVID 19 Pandemic in India: The Second Wave and How India is Responding

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The Second Wave is hitting India very hard and no respite is yet in sight. The main factor behind the exponential rise in the cases is the mutant varieties, the Canadian and the UK, mutants brought in by those attending the Farmer's protests on the borders of Delhi. The first cases were identified in Delhi and now has spread. The mutants seem to be more deadly than the original virus itself and India has to thank the people who participated in the protests against the Farm Laws. All the Newspapers particularly the woke English Press supported the Agitation and the mass gathering incubated the mutants into a  critical mass for widespread dissemination. Since March 2021 there has been a steady rise in the caseload and though white epidemiologists have predicted Apocalyptic numbers, nothing nearing that is likely to happen. The Government was distracted as the Framer's Agitation so close to Delhi and a series of state elections resulted in the effective strategy of vaccinating the Population started floundering. As I said the Second wave is hitting hard. 

The Government of India relied on the vaccination programme in order to stanch the disease. And that was not to be. India has developed two vaccines and both, particularly COVISHIELD has been very effective and lab studies show that even the mutants are effectively neutralized by this vaccine. And COVAXIN is the other. As part of its humanitarian effort India exported 20 million doses all over the world and USA Germany and UK have been far less generous. Vaccine Maitreyi as the programme was called was effective and just then disaster struck.

Joe Biden and his right arm Kamala Harris struck a decisive blow. As  a historian I cannot endorse conspiracy theories or Deep State compulsion behind the Woke Politics in USA. The Indian journalists like Guha, Dutt Gupta and others friendly with the  Congress Party started systematically derailing the Government strategy by raising imaginary efficiency  questions about the COVISHIELD and started rooting for the Pfizer drug. The Pfizer unlike Astra Zenneca is effective and far less susceptible to blood clotting. But costing around $500 (US) this vaccine would have been a financial disaster. However the Opposition and the Press started lobbying very strongly and stridently for this vaccine. The tests have shown that COVISHIELD is just as efficacious and the Pfizer. Joe Biden in a body blow struck at the very heart of India's strategy.

Using the Defense Production Act first invoked by President Trump, Joe Biden and his right arm Harris stopped the export of the critical component for the manufacture of the drug and  prevented NOVAX from exporting the component. This delay created a window that allowed the mutant virus infect the population that had not been vaccinated and at least a few thousand deaths are the result of this policy. USA has enough vials of vaccine hoarded to such an extent that its entire population can be vaccinated a few hundred times and yet Biden and Harris decided to embargo the critical component. If Biden and Harris talk of Human Rights, International Leadership, Humanitarian Intervention etc, it is certain that such woke garbage will be received with sniggering contempt. In fact we are still not sure if Biden is behind this policy or his handlers who are nameless faceless people hiding behind the façade of an election in which Biden and Harris were "declared" elected. Anyway the Embargo and the relentless Propaganda unleashed by a section of the Press against what was an effective strategy until the end of March 2021.

Is recovery in sight? The numbers are staggering. The Government has been able to reconfigure the supply chain as both France and Russia have stepped in. Oxygen which was in demand is being produced in newly fabricated plants and the recovery rate is increasing steadily. This disaster is entirely the result of American callousness and we have a new phenomenon: Death by changes or disruption in the supply chain. India will not forget this hard earned lesson.

National Herald Frauds: An Expose

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

National Herald Frauds

Author Shree Iyer

California USA, Jan 2021

The book authored by Shree Iyer, an engineer turned

entrepreneur, makes  an interesting read but it is cast not as a narrative account of the Scandal but rather as a series of short pithy reports on the National Herald Frauds (in plural). This is a case brought out by the BJP MP and a leading light of the political firmament of India, Dr Subramanian Swamy.http://creative.sulekha.com/subramanian-swamy-and-indian-politics-why-india-needs-a-ruthless-hunter_553763_blog. Nearly 10 years back we have drawn attention to the great work done by Dr Swamy in his ruthless hunt against Crime and Corruption in the field of Indian politics. He exposed the 2G Scandal which involved the leading figures in the Dynastic Fascist DMK Party and he followed it with the expose on the National Herald Frauds. The Congress interim President her son and several of her Congress colleagues have been enlarged on bail for serious fraud as a consequence of Dr Swamy's relentless quest for truth. It is unfortunate that the case is not getting the attention it deserves and prosecution has virtually stalled, perhaps at the behest of the Congress itself.

What are the National Herald Frauds? The Associated Journals of India was launched by Jawaharlal Nehru, the second Prime Minister of India, in 1938 as a public limited Company to run the propaganda arm of the Congress Party, the National Herald. Interestingly, the shareholders of the public limited Company were not given any opportunity of being consulted over the transfer of the properties of the Associated Journals of India to a new organization which was floated in 2012 called Young Indian. Over the many years of Congress rule, the Associated Journals of India had acquired several tracts of prime real estate in almost all the major urban centers of India, including Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Chandigarh. An interesting feature of the transaction lay in the fact that the directors of the Associated Journals of India were almost identical with the dominant controlling interests of the Young Indian. The total worth of the properties acquired by the Associated Journals of India was 2000 crores and all these extensive valuable real estate was now transferred to the Young Indian, the new shell company created to transfer  the property. 

The cartoon illustrated on the left provides an insight into the mechanics of this fraud. The same set of persons operating in their capacity as directors or shareholders of the AJI transferred the properties belonging to the National Herald holding Company to the shell company created to receive the properties on behalf of the Young Indian and interestingly enough both were identical. In other  words a set of public servants had colluded to defraud a public limited Company of its property. The debts of the Associated Journals of India were taken over by the Young Indian for mere 90 crores.

Dr Subramanian Swamy the relentless Crusader against Corruption and Dynastic Fascism filed a private complaint against Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and several other worthies of the Congress Party in the High Court of Delhi in February 2013.  The charges against these worthies included cheating and criminal conspiracy to grab 2000 crores of land and assets. When the Mother-Son duo were asked to appear before the Court of Law the entire Congress Party went into convulsions. The Party tried all kinds of underhand measures and strategies to have the case either stayed or thrown out. But the relentless Dr Swamy has prevailed so far. The Income Tax Department of the Ministry of Finance in a 105 page document has shown that the entire transaction was indeed a sham. Attempts to portray the prosecution in the National Herald Scam as political vendetta has drawn a blank even from the Dynastic Fascist friendly English Press which includes the Hindu, Times of India and Hindustan Times. And the Central Government under the Prime Minister the Hon ble Narendra Modi has kept itself out of the limelight so as to deflect the charge of vendetta.

The Case is now in the courts and legal opinion is unanimous that it will end in convictions. But does that mean the end of political corruption in India. Perhaps not. But India needs a ruthless honest hunter like Dr Swamy to make its politicians understand that the Law Governs the Country and not Outlaws.

I like this book in spite of its unusual format,

The Untold Story of Hicky's Bengal Gazette: Scandal, Blackmail and Corruption in Old Calcutta

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

The Untold Story of India's First Newspaper

Andrew Otis

Madras: Westland Publications Private Ltd, 2018.

The History of the print media is an exiting field of research thanks to the pioneering works of Roger Chartier and Robert Darnton. Like Elizabeth Eisenstein who emphasized the revolutionary character of print as a medium that brought about a fundamental transformation  in society, both the historians mentioned studied the impact of print by analyzing the social groups which patronized the mass produced chap books, almanacs, and other uses of print. Darnton set his eyes on the great project of the eighteenth century, the publication of Diderot's Encyclopedia. Andrew Otis has a more humble quarry. He has studied the Bengal Gazette, a Newspaper which was started by James Augustus Hicky in Calcutta in 1780. The book is an exploration of the trials and tribulations faced by Hicky as he took on the powerful Governor of Bengal, Warren Hastings, 

Printing began in India in the tiny coastal village of Tranquebar in 1714  when Prussian missionaries from Halle established a printing press as support to carry out their evangelical activities. The troubles that Hicky faced in Calcutta stemmed from one Protestant missionary from Tranquebar who set up shop in Cuddalore and then moved to Calcutta, Johann Zacharias Kiernander who was seconded to India by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge according to Hicky was more interested in making money and he accused him of systematically defrauding the Society. Not content with his broadsides against the missionary, Hicky carried out a campaign against Warren Hastings accusing him of corruption and using the Chief Justice of the Sadr Adalat Eliah Impey as his accomplice, in extortion, corruption in Military Contracts and plain thuggery that will perhaps shame even an Indian politician today. Hicky was particularly savage in his attacks on Hasting regarding his war against the Rohillas which was waged for the sole purpose of seizing the wealth of the "Begums of Oudh", the grand dames of Awadh. Hicky compared Warren Hastings with Clive, his predecessor and obviously even Warren Hastings was not amused.

Both Kiermnader and Hastings brought charges of libel against Hicky and in spite of the Jury finding Hicky not guilty of most of the serious charges, he was sent to prison, making him the first martyr for the Independence of the Press. The four years that he spent in Jail weakened his health, drained his resources and impoverished his family. in 1799 Hicky died on his way to China and was buried at sea, off the coast of Malacca.

The book is written in a highly readable style and there is no attempt at painting heroes and villains and this is welcome. Warren Hastings was recalled as the news of his egregious corruption reached the House of Commons and the main articles of impeachment wer drawn up by Edmund Burke on the basis of Hicky's scathing attacks: the illegal execution of Nanda Coomar, the Poolbandy Army Contracts, the Affair of the Begums of Awadh being the most noteworthy. After a trial that lasted nearly 8 long years, and 5 changes in the British Government, Wrren Hastings was acquitted.

As a contribution to the history of the East India Company, the book is not of any importance. However, the life of Hicky as he took on the powerful officers of the East India Company is of great importance. In a foreign land, Hicky tried in vain as it turned out in his lifetime, to establish the Freedom of the Press. He refused to divulge the names of his sources, a strategy he could have used to deflect the charges of libel on to his informants. And for this adherence to principle we need to remember Hicky. The records of his trial by sheer happenstance have survived and I am sure that it will attract greater attention. 

Narendra Modi in Pondicherry: A New Political Formation emerges

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, arrived in Pondicherry on a ne day visit. He was welcomed by the newly appointed Lt Governor Dr Tamilissai, who was once the President of Tamil Nadu BJP and now the Governor of Telengana. Addressing the public soon after he had inaugurated a slew of developmental projects, the Prime Minister lit into the dynastic politics and family oriented High Command culture of the Congress Party and its leadership in Pondicherry. He inaugurated a Blood Bank at JIPMER and laid the foundation of the Karaikal Centre of JIPMER, he announced the development of Minor Ports in Pndicherry under the Sagarmala Scheme and the inauguration of the IV laning of the Sattanthapuram to Nagapattinam Section of NH 32. And the most important of all the dedication of the rebuilt Hotel Marie to the Nation.

Narendra Modi did not mince words. He drew attention to the fact that a leader who to his own leader is not worth electing. This was in reference to the infamous video that went viral in which a woman who complained to Rahul Gandgi when he visited Pondicherry last week, saying that Narayanaswmy and his Government did not extend any help to those affected in the recent rains. This was conveyed to Rahul as though the woman was complimenting the Government for the splendid work done. Narayanaswamy like every petty courtier sought to take advantage of the ignorance of the languages of communication of both Rahuk Gandhi and the poor  woman. The Prime Minister also reminded the people of the slipper lifting episode in which Narayanaswamy picked up the slippers of Rahul Gandhi thereby demeaning himself and thus demonstrating his servility to the Crown Prince. Apart from these the Prime Minister also listed the several lapses on the part of the Narayanaswamy Government including the long delayed Panchayat Polls.

The BJP is making an all out effort to win Pondicherry. It is a fact that the Government of Pondicherry was absolutely inept partly because of the in ability of the Chief Minister to get along with Dr Kiran Bedi, the Lt Governor appointed by the Centre. He resorted to agitation against Dr Kiran Bedi twice but did not succeed in making any headway against the Lt Governor. Even on the contentious issue of the 3 nominated MLAs he lost as the Supreme Court held that the 3 MLAs had the same rights and privileges as any elected member. In fact over the four years he had been in power, Narayanaswamy took several of his disagreements with DR Bedi to Court and did not get relief in even a single case.  The frustration within the Congress became acute and several MLAs including the second in command, Shri Namasivayam resigned from the Party. And Narayanawsamy Government fell as it was reduced to a minority.  

What about the up coming Polls. There are 30 seats in all. The BJP will certainly win a few seats around 5 to 6 and along with the AIADMK and the NR Congress the NDA political Formation will end up with around 17 to 18 seats.  The importance of Pondicherry to the BJP is purely symbolic. It wants to post a credible  electoral performance ina Tamil speaking area. And in this the BJP will succeed.