Rahul Dravid on playing spin

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Pakistan v Australia - UAE Tour - First Test Match, October 22-26 2014

One of the most fascinating passages in Kevin Pietersen's recent autobiography relates not to which team-mates he dislikes or how badly he was treated, but to advice given to him by Rahul Dravid on how to play spin. It is worth seeking out the book just to read the email Dravid sent.

Dravid advises soft hands, be prepared to come forward but do not overcommit, let the ball come to you, recognise there are scoring opportunities off the back foot too. He suggests a novel training method, telling Pietersen he should face Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar in the nets while not wearing pads.

"When you have no pads it will force you, sometimes painfully, to get the bat forward of the pads and will force you to watch the ball," Dravid writes. "Also the leg will be less keen to push out without any protection. My coach would tell me you should never need pads to play spin!!"

System derailed long ago

A protest strategy with a nervous and erratic opponent like Nawaz Sharif was always a recipe for disaster, for the protesters if not for anybody else. However it is highly perturbing to see a large section of society advocating the continuity of current tyranny citing existential threats to the system. Unfortunately it’s only a myth that system is still in place.

The basic responsibility of a government is to ensure safety and well-being of its subject regardless of their religious or political affiliation. The so-called system has completely failed to provide that. Every day there are tens of people dying in the biggest and most productive city of Pakistan but no one in the government cares about addressing it. Your ethnicity and religious affiliation is your crime, bad enough for you to be sentenced to death. Due to hoarding and extortion at all levels, food inflation is rampant but nobody in the system cares. Potable water is either unavailable or needs industrial scale treatment before it can be consumed, while the tanker mafia keeps expanding. If you are robbed, forget about the lost valuables rather just focus on rehabilitation from the trauma which is sometimes worsened due to sexual assaults on family but it doesn't ruffle any feathers in the system.

In smaller cities the fruits of this system are much more rotten than anywhere else. One is completely at the mercy of a feudal who can unleash dogs (human or canine) upon you or abduct your family and you cannot do anything about it except may be burning yourself alive. You are always under-qualified against those who have safarish. I recall being told by a technician in Riyadh that he got arrested on local chaudhry’s order who didn't want him to go abroad to earn living. An ordinary person can never get elected to the legislature as it might derail the system.

One can go on with this list forever but if what has already been listed doesn't raise serious questions about system’s existence then maybe we are part of the problem. This system was derailed long ago and now it’s time to realign it.

It's not THE END for Imran Khan

Henry Ford went broke five times before he was successful with the Ford Motor Company. Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. Stephen King’s first novel “Carrie” was rejected 30 times by different publishers. Colonel Sanders (KFC baba ji) was turned down 1009 times before someone agreed to take up his chicken recipe. I can go on to list similar failures but then I would have overplayed the “never give-up” card just like Imran Khan did the “dhandhli” card.

At the moment, PTI azadi march seems to be heading down south unless Nawaz Sharif does something spectacularly stupid to rejuvenate the crowd and lift their mood. It was not unexpected as even before dharna began, many of the objective PTI supporters were skeptical of the idea for following reasons.

- After five years of PPP’s inactive or impotent rule (for any reason, be it judicial activism, alleged incompetence or corruption), the country is not in a good position to bear this upheaval.

- Public is perhaps not as much economically distressed as required to fuel a successful dharna.

- Public is not as much disturbed or concerned by the alleged “dhandhli” in 2013 elections and is therefore disconnected with the PTI strategy.

- If Zardari rule, despite being much more tarnished than the current PMLN government, was tolerated for five years then obviously Nawaz Sharif is facing a much less potent threat.

- Army is probably not very excited at the idea of an Imran Khan at the helm of affairs given his headstrong approach to enforce the civilian superiority.

- Imran Khan is surrounded mostly by sycophants and turncoats who will sacrifice him for their selfish gains.

- The PTI team is not experienced or trained enough to handle this kind of agitation.

- A better option would be to focus on showcasing the radical reforms implemented over the next four years.

However all is not lost and PTI can find its mojo back with a ruthless but an objective analysis of its disastrous strategy leading to this miserable failure is Islamabad.

“Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.” - Thomas Edison

Imran Khan should have realized by now that a dharna is probably not something that will be helpful in  his attempts to dethrone the house of Sharif. A mature decision at this juncture would be to accept whatever reasonable concessions Nawaz Sharif offers on electoral reforms and take a face saving exit without making any stupid victory claims. 

The PTI team should then go back to the drawing board, evaluate the sensible options at hand, talk to sincere and competent political advisors, and formulate a tranquil political strategy that does not serve only Imran Khan’s ambitions to become Prime Minister. The strategy should also respect the trust reposed in PTI by the youth and especially the KPK voters. They deserve better and even if that means Imran Khan resigning from National Assembly and taking up Chief Minister role in KPK, he should not hesitate. It will not hurt his image as a national leader to serve as a provincial leader first, before aiming at the country’s top post. 

Let Nawaz Sharif’s incompetence be vehemently exposed in comparison to KPK growth story. Based on performance, people will naturally vote for PTI and take care of rigging themselves. If electoral failure still follows in rest of the country, then may be thugs is what they deserve. PTI or Imran Khan cannot do (and should not worry) much about it. However the current strategy will have to be revised as without leveraging the performance in KPK, PTI cannot expect different results than this azadi march.

Why is the PTI Azadi March a bad idea?

Never … murder a man who is committing suicide. – Napolean Bonaparte

Before I begin my train of thoughts on PTI’s Azadi March, I must clarify that I am a firm believer in the democratic rights to carry out long marches, protests and boycotts. These are basic human rights exercised to remind the rulers that not every step they intend to take is without a contest for there are people, even if lower in number, who don’t necessarily agree to your proclaimed policy making abilities (and are well within their rights when they do so). Every policy is multi-dimensional and all the arguments, be against or in favor, carry weight. Based on multiple factors such as cognitive bias and intellect, some arguments might carry more weight to one person than the other but there are some established set of consequences for any action bearing almost similar outcomes in all environments. Right or wrong, Imran Khan has serious reservations on the way Mian Nawaz Sharif came to power and has been running the affairs since then.

PMLN government has stood firm on their intention not to let their grip loosen on the system at all evident by the bequest of leadership mantle to its next generation. One fear possibly lurking in the back of their minds is regarding the loss of royal family status at least in Punjab (they do not seem to care much about other parts of Pakistan). On the governance side, everything is piecemeal with a complete lack of a strategic vision or an understanding of the challenges that are bound to haunt us in future if no radical steps are taken. Available healthcare facilities are essentially at a very basic level breaking down every now and then due to petty disputes with doctors and paramedics. Education activism revolves around Danish Schools. Attempt to control inflation by setting up small weekly bazars. All these steps are nothing but an admission of the inability to manage a larger and integrated system. The mistakes that PMLN will commit over the course of next four years will be enough to kill any future prospects of re-election.

Similarly PTI has four years of uninterrupted free hand to manage and improve the systems in KPK province. Whether they succeed in repairing the governance fabric in the province remains to be seen but they have shown the intent by introducing structural reforms in healthcare, education, judicial and security infrastructure. It’s only a matter of time that these reforms would have borne fruit and with some effort, the positive growth stories would have gone viral in this age of incredible media coverage. If things go well, the main opposition parties like JUI (F) and ANP are staring at the possibility of substantial damage to their electorate.

On the other hand, the challenge to hold people together for more than a week will only make matters worse as PMLN is known to be a dangerously nervous opponent when thrown a formidable challenge. They might resort to a use of brute force but if they decide to hold their ground and stay put, PTI will be facing a serious credibility crisis. Persisting on the roads with harsh weather conditions in the monsoon season is fraught with problems and PTI workforce is not physically or mentally conditioned enough to withstand the difficult circumstances. There will be some who will stay there however a major part of PTI’s rally will start disappearing in a week or so. This will be an acute international level embarrassment which might set in motion an irreversible process of decline in PTI’s political capital. They will have to resort to the plan ‘A’ in any case which is KPK governance improvement. The sooner they realize this, the better it is.

Key points - Third Arrow of "Abenomics"

After two of the three planned arrows were fired in the last couple of years, Abenomics is now implementing the third part of the economic revival program commonly known as "Abenomics". The main focus of this part is structural reform of Japanese economy. 

Key Points;

- Corporate Tax reduction by 2.4% in 2014, plans to take it to 20s in several years.

- Make it mandatory to appoint outside directors- Comply or explain.

- Revamping the portfolio strategy of Government Pension Investment Fund

- Allowing start-ups to bid for government contracts, opening markets and promoting new entrants in energy, agriculture and medical services.

- Establishing National Strategic Special Zones facilitating one-window operation to set up entities.

- Select Japanese cities to be freed from building height limits.

- Womenomics encouraged with labor market reforms.

Article Review: Germany on Innovation

HBR recently published an article on the comparison between US and Germany on their approach to innovation. The link to the article is : http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/05/why-germany-dominates-the-u-s-in-innovation/

Key highlights are listed below;
- At the national level, Germany is better than US and China in innovation and growth.
- Leading in sustainable energy systems, molecular biotech, lasers and experimental software engineering.
- Fraunhofer Society, applied-science think tank established seven institutes across America.
- US leads in providing financial platform to fund innovative ideas however on radical inventions, Germany is as good as US.
- Germany enables workers to increase their productivity while US attempts to replace workers with technology.

Key Takeaways?
- Financial system is important to help commercialize any innovations.
- Encouraging initiatives to improve old business/manufacturing processes through new ideas and technologies.
- Instead of focusing on consumer sector, Germany has wisely chosen to concentrate on technologies that are used to manufacture end user products.
- A cross-over of different industries (e.g. integrating/employing technology/finance/arts related professionals with various business sectors) results in improved business processes.
- Business application of academic research helps innovation to spread across the economy.