Political Strategy

We come across groups of people who are often dissatisfied with the existing system. Such types of thoughts are frequent among student groups or young professionals. Recently, we saw some IITians forming a political party. There is also news of Lok Satta which promises to herald a new era of corruption-free society. They have their own strategies to take on the system. But, optimistically speaking I would say that there is less than 1% chance for their success. The reason being simple. All such groups aim to take on the enemy head-on. In this case the enemies are the existing political parties. The reason for that behaviour is very sinmple. Enthusiasm to do something great coupled with the dedication to overhaul the system drives them to take such bold moves. Because of their euphoria they tend to pursue the following strategies. They tend to attract the voters' attention towards the existing problems and promise good solutions. They speak of ideals and their goals. They can also show them good and clear-cut paths to reach their goals. It is easier said than done. But one key element is missing. The 'Professionalism' of politics is the missing element.

There might be umpteen reports in the newspapewrs and journals that might suggest that "India is Shining". But, there are some facts that might simply throw water on the dreams of such zealous groups. Most of the professionals might agree with the fact that the system needs to be changed and even are gracious enough to appreciate the efforts of these radical gropus. But, they don't even think of voting. At the end of the day, the true voters make a choice. the irony is that these true voters are mostly illiterate or literate as per the definitions of the government. And their valuable vote is defined as a function of the amount of money, clothes and liquor donated to them. Now, how can these groups think of makng these voters rational? Are they going to set on an overly ambitious goal of making them literate or rational or aware of these problems? Or are they tring to persuade the professioanls to cast their votes? All of these alternatives are practically impossible to follow. I don't mean to say that there is no way out.

Lets look into our glorious history to find instances where the existing system was uprooted. A burning example is the case of Chanakya and Chandragupta Maurya. Chanakya overthrew the Nanda Dynasty and coronated Chandragupta as the King. Their strategy was simple. It can be stated as follows. When you are eating a hot roti, you try to eat from the corners and not from the centre.

We can draw a lesson from their strategy. It is not advisable to take a tiff head-on with established political parties because of their clout. At this point let me venture my opinion. "Uprooting an existing system needs consent from the people supporting the existing system." This means that we need to have people in the system who will grow so powerful that they become the pillars of the system. And when these pillars are moved out of the system, the system disintegrates leaving way for the new system.

In our current discussion, I believe that the above strategy will work more effectively than the existing strategies.

My theory of an ideal foreign policy

The world always has two sections of people namely "The Rulers" and "The Ruled". The ideologies of the rulers have always changed the world. To put thing in a simple way, the political ideologies of the national leaders decide the future course of the of the world.

There is no shortage of examples to prove the above statement. Take the case of Ivan the terrible, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolph Hitler, Stalin, Franklin.D.Roosevelt, Winston Churchill etc..... Everyone of the above cited names had their own political views that have more or less changed the course of their nations. Some of them believed in wars and some in negotiations. Having spoken a lot about the rulers, it would be really misleading if the importance of ruled isn't highlighted properly. A simple scrutiny of the lives of the above stated rulers shows that they were the ruled in the early days of life. Their revolutionary thoughts and ideologies made them the rulers. This clearly drives home the point that political ideologies decide who the ruler is and who the ruled is. We can now take the case of the world in entirety and treat the countries as the population. Now, the same concept of the ruled and the rulers can be extrapolated to this case to decide which country dominates the world.

There are several established ways of looking at the world. One philosophy goes on to states that all the countries in the world can coexist in harmony and peace and therefore keeps the concept of war at bay. Another sect of people espouse a philosophy which advocates that there are two or more groups of countries in the world. Each group has a leader country and the aim of each group is to attain supremacy over th world affairs. This is the current situation in the world. Advocates of this philosophy argue that negotiations coupled with smart war tactics can be used to gain the supremacy.

It is clear that the above two philosophies are based on to corner stones namely the negotiations and the war. the difference in theories arise because of the different ways of viewing the utility of negotiations and wars.

I believe that negotiations and wars are the cornerstones of country's foreign policy. but, let me venture a philosophy that the ultimate goal of a state is to be the supreme leader of the world .I would further state that there can't be something called as a multi-polar world that exists in perfect harmony. I would argue that any multi-polar world will have internal tensions and rivalries which will try to make the world a Uni-polar world. And the state that wants to head the unipolar world needs to have a leader who believes in two important tenets. The first one is that war between two nations of competing countries is inevitable. The best that can be done is delaying it. The second being that negotiation is the process of buying time from your enemy.

These two tenets have a huge impact on the foreign policy of a country. The first thing being that the country continuously engages in negotiation with its competitors to develop itself and to preempt war till it is ready. This process of negotiations continues in a strategic way till the state establishes develops a significant economic and military clout without giving any clues of a war. After the state is poised for facing the enemies, it will try to assert its supremacy in the issues of interest by means of a diplomatic way. If the competing nations agree, it supremacy in the area has been established. this process continues in different matters till significant opposition arises. After evaluating the alternatives for the military stand-off, the country engages in a military battle if it believes that it can overpower the enemy. By this step, its supremacy is strengthened. If it fears a defeat, the country again starts the process of negotiations to buy more time and the cycle repeats.

By means of these two tenets, the supremacy of a country can be established. And this should be the ideal motive of every country because of the fact that the security of a country is assured if its enemies feel threatened. in the real world, enemies of a country are under constant threat if the country is in the lead.

The above theory should have ignited a doubt that if every country follows the above philosophy, then who will be the ultimate leader? The theory answers the question. In the theory, we discussed the cycle of negotiations and threat of wars. The country that carries out the cycle most efficiently wins the game. But, the victory is momentary and the supremacy can be retained if and only if the country continues to carry out the cycle more efficiently that any other country in the world.

Hope, you had a good insight into my theory of foreign policy.

Forecasting NEWS

I just completed reading few articles relating to the entry of Ramcharan Teja, the son of Chiru, into the Telugu Cinema industry. As I was skimming through various other articles relating celebrities, a queer question arose in my mind. Can we forecast the NEWS articles beforehand????

The first answer that comes to mind is a big NO. Putting aside the natural criticism and sarcasm that might arise after hearing this, we can figure out this is something that we do in our daily lives.

Got confused????

Let me explain. For the sake of simplicity let us take the case of a person who has purchased a newspaper and boarded a train. Lets further assume that he got into a general compartment. Any person who has ever been in this situation in a real life will tell you what is going to be the next scene. Co-passengers share the pages of newspaper and are engrossed in reading and exchanging those pages. After everyone is done with the reading activity, the most enthusiastic person in the group will start giving lectures on the NEWS that caught his attention. It can be anything. Soon the monologue transforms into a dialogue and finally into a Group Discussion, typical of an Indian group. One aspect of this discussion is of utmost importance to our topic. We will surely find that most of these groups end the discussion with an opinion about what is going to happen to the issue of discussion in the Future??? Differently put, forecasting the NEWS.

Having said that we generally have a tendency to Forecast NEWS, I will try to build some models that can be used to forecast the future NEWS articles in my next post.