The Mauryan soldier does not himself the Royal treasuries enrich nor does he the Royal granaries fill.

He does not himself carry out trade and commerce nor produce scholars, thinkers, littérateurs, artistes, artisans, sculptors, architects, craftsmen, doctors and administrators.

He does not himself build roads and ramparts nor dig wells and reservoirs.

He does not himself write poetry and plays, paint or sculpt, nor delve in metaphysics, arts and sciences.

He does not do any of this directly as he is neither gifted, trained nor mandated to do so.

The soldier only and merely ensures that:

• The tax, tribute and revenue collectors travel far and wide unharmed and return safely;
• The farmer tills, grows, harvests, stores and markets his produce unafraid of pillage & plunder;
• The trader, merchant and moneylender function and travel across the length and breadth of the realm unmolested;
• The savant, sculptor, painter, maestro and master create works of art, literature, philosophy, astronomy and astrology in peace & quietitude;
• The architect designs and builds his Vaastus without tension;
• The tutor (‘acharya’), the mentor (‘guru’) and the priest (‘purohit’) teach and preach in tranquility;
• The sages (‘rishis, munis, and tapaswees’) meditate and undertake penance in wordless silence;
• The doctor (‘vaidyaraja’) tends to the ill and the infirm well, adds to the pharmacopoeia, discovers new herbs and invents new medical formulations undisturbed;
• The mason, the bricklayer, the artisan, the weaver, the tailor, the jeweller, the potter, the carpenter, the cobbler, the cowherd (‘gopaala’) and the smith work unhindered;
• The mother, wife and governess go about their chores and bring up children in harmony and tranquility;
• The aged and the disabled are well taken care of, tended to and are able to fade away gracefully and with dignity; cattle graze freely without being lifted or harmed by miscreants.

He is thus the VERY BASIS and silent, barely visible CORNERSTONE of our fame, culture, physical well being and prosperity; in short, of the entire nation building activity.

He DOES NOT perform any of these chores himself directly: he ENABLES the rest of us to perform these without let, hindrance or worry (‘nirbhheek and nishchinta’).

Our military sinews, on the other hand, lend credibility to our pronouncements of adherence to good Dharma, our goodwill, amiability and peaceful intentions towards all our neighbour nations (‘sarve bhavantu sukhinaha, sarve santu niramayaha…’) as also those far away and beyond.

These also serve as a powerful deterrent against military misadventure by any one of them against us.

If Pataliputra reposes each night in peaceful comfort, O King, it is so because she is secure in the belief that the distant borders of Magadha are inviolate and the interiors are safe and secure, thanks to the mighty Mauryan Army constantly patrolling and standing vigil with naked swords and eyes peeled for action (‘animish netre’), day and night (‘ratrau-divase’), in weather fair and foul, dawn-to-dusk-to-dawn (‘ashtau prahare’), quite unmindful of personal discomfort and hardship, loss of life and limb, separation from the family, all through the year, year after year (‘warsha nu warshe’).

While the Magadha citizenry endeavours to make the State prosper and flourish, the Mauryan soldier guarantees that the State continues to EXIST! He is the silent ’sine qua non’ of our very being!

To this man, O Rajadhiraja, you owe a debt for that very guarantee which is the vital key-stone of our nationhood arch.

Please, therefore, see to it, suo motu, that you are constantly alive and sensitive to the soldier’s legitimate dues in every form and respect, be those his needs or his wants, including his place in the social order. Do thereafter (‘tadanantara’) ensure that he receives these in time or preferably ahead of time, in full measure, for he is NOT likely to ask for them himself.

This is so because before getting so completely wrapped up in his onerous, harsh and exalted charge, the soldier has assumed with good reason that the State, in return for his extraordinary burden and services, has freed him from all responsibility towards his own present and future welfare as also that of his family back home in the hinterland. He is thus very clear in his mind when deployed at a distant border outpost, fighting lumpen groups within Magadha or when campaigning in far away lands that he need only look out in FRONT for the enemy of the State and concentrate only on his MILITARY ONUS and aim (‘shatrunjaya’), completely free of all temporal worries. This assumption is a holy sacrament and an unwritten covenant that exists between him and the State. And rightly so!

If ever things come to a sordid pass, O King, when, on a given day, the Mauryan soldier has to LOOK BACK over his shoulder (‘Simhawalokana’) prompted by even a single nagging worry about his and his family’s material, physical  and social well being, it should cause you and your Council the greatest concern and distress!

I beseech you to take instant note and act with uncommon dispatch to address the soldier’s anxiety. It could be on account of harsh living conditions, inequitable material compensation or asymmetric Court or societal dispensations affecting either his self respect or his family’s material welfare, or both. If any in your household, in your Council or among your courtiers is/ are responsible for allowing matters to come to such a pass, punish him/ them exemplarily without loss of time and send him/ them to serve for four cycles of seasons (‘Chaturrutuchakre’) alongside the soldiers, on the border outposts. If they perish, those would be their just desserts. If they survive, they will return wiser and wizened, more responsive to and with greater empathy for the soldier’s cause.

If you first learn of your soldiers’ problems and needs from your own trusted informers (‘gupt doota’) and NOT from the Commander-in-Chief (‘Senapati’) himself, relieve him of his charge and retain him not for another day. No matter how good a horseman (‘Ashwarohi’), a swordsman (‘Khadgaveera’), a wrestler (‘Malla’), an archer (Dhanurdhara) or a tactician (‘Rana neetigya’) he is, dismiss him (‘ardha chandra prayoga’) for failing to keep his ear close to the military ground. Dismiss him also for not having the gumption and courage to be the first to tell you of the soldiers’ anxiety and needs before the others do. The Senapati owes a downward loyalty and sensitivity to his troops in much the same way and measure as he owes these upwards to you, for this is a unique and age-old essential feature of sound military leadership and an article of faith between the troops and the General!

It is my bounden duty to caution you, My Lord, that the day when the Mauryan soldier has to demand his dues or, worse, plead for them, will neither have arrived suddenly, overnight nor in vain. It will also bode ill for Magadha. For then, on that day, you, My Lord, will have lost all moral sanction to be Rajadhiraja ! It will also mark the beginning of the end of the Mauryan Empire!

Please share…this ought to be read widely – especially with those at the helm of our affairs.

Somewhat Related: The web thickens… and Read this and weep..

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As I stress towards the end of the seminar (and in the slides), this is work in progress. So suggestions, corrections and modifications will be garetfully acknowlegded and incorporated.   Thanks. Jai Hind, Jai Bharat!

Related Posts:  Hindutva and Liberalism, “Sukhasya moolam Dharmah”

Why I am a proud nationalist,

Understanding Raj-Dharma – Part I and Part 2

Somewhat Related: “People are the Nation” – Excerpts

…During the secret discussions prior to the Entebbe operation, Rabin, who agreed to the mission after much persuasion by intelligence and ministry planners, effectively established the principle that is still followed by all Israeli leaders facing hostage situations: if the necessary intelligence is available and the operational circumstances allow, force — even a great deal of it — will be used to free hostages; if not, Israel will negotiate a prisoner exchange.

Rabin signed off on the Entebbe plan only after intelligence agents assured him that aerial surveillance showed Ugandan soldiers guarding the terminal where the hostages were being held, indicating that the building was not booby-trapped.

…Thirty-five years later, many who took part in Operation Entebbe at the highest levels were also involved in the negotiations to bring home Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was abducted by Palestinian commandos on June 25, 2006, and whose capture has consumed Israeli society for the last five years. Shimon Peres, then Israel’s defense minister and now its president, signed the pardons for the Palestinian prisoners who were released in exchange for Shalit. Ehud Barak, a planner of the Entebbe raid, is today Israel’s defense minister. Tamir Pardo, who is currently the chief of Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad — and whose support helped Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu push the Shalit deal past skeptics in his administration — was the communications officer for the commander who led the raid in Entebbe. That commander, Yonatan Netanyahu, was the only Israeli military casualty of the operation, struck by a bullet while advancing with his men toward the terminal where the hostages were held. In the command bunker in Tel Aviv, when Peres learned that Yonatan Netanyahu had been killed, he told those present that Israel had lost “one of most wonderful people there has ever been in this country.”

It was at the antiterrorism foundation established by the Netanyahu family in honor of Yonatan’s memory that his younger brother Benjamin began his career. In 1986 he edited a book titled “Terrorism: How the West Can Win,” which argued intensely against negotiating with terrorists under any circumstance. In one of the two articles he contributed to the book, Netanyahu wrote: “This is a policy that in effect tells the terrorists that we will not give in to your demands. We insist that you free the hostages. If you do not do so peaceably, we are ready to use force. We are offering a simple exchange: your life for the lives of the hostages. In other words, the only ‘deal’ we are prepared to do with you is this: If you surrender without a fight, you will stay alive.”

Today, when explaining how he, of all leaders, could sign the agreement that marked a new record of acquiescence to a terrorist organization — the release of 1,027 prisoners, many of them with Israeli “blood on their hands” — Netanyahu falls back on the policy that was laid down by Rabin in the deliberations leading up to Entebbe: the intelligence and the operational circumstances left him no alternative but to make a deal.

…

Maj. Gen. Yaakov Amidror served as a senior officer in military intelligence for decades and today serves as national security adviser to the prime minister. “I believe that it is right to endanger the lives of soldiers in operational actions in order to bring about the release of a living hostage or to get information,” Amidror told me in an interview in 2009. “But the important principle is not to conduct any negotiation for the bodies of abducted soldiers or for living hostages. Israel has trapped itself in an impossible position, in which it sacrifices vital security interests in order to return hostages or their bodies, and this exceeds all the limits of reason. If, for example, it was clear to Hamas or any other organization that we do not pay anything and do not negotiate, the motivation to kidnap would be significantly lower.”

Do read the article in full. It is long but intensely thought-provoking.

Related Posts:

Somewhat related: Tackling Terrorism: One Step at a Time . || Satyameva Jayate ||

*** Profit is Charity by Dipinder Sekhon ***

Profit – legally and ethically generated – is one of the best measures of social value-add.

Clients buy services and products only when they can extract value from them. Example, if a company sells asoap for Rs 10 (when it costs it Rs 8 say), the customer buys it only because s/he can extract more than Rs 10 ofvalue from it (say Rs 12). Hence while the company generates profit in the transaction, the customer also gains. Acompany’s profits therefore are a measure of the cumulative value it injects into the society. If the soap makingcompany is earning crores of rupees in profits, it is doing so by adding value to millions of people.

A business need not do any traditional ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) activity for contributing to the society. In fact traditional CSR – like donating to schools or hospitals – may not be a very economically efficient or effective way of impacting developmental outcomes. As long as a business keeps generating higher and higherprofits ethically and legally, it will be making greater and greater social contributions by injecting value to its customers, and helping them inject value into their own lives or into the lives and businesses of their customerswho are next in the chain.

Donating to a school or a needy child or family produces immediate visible outcomes. Therefore, these are typically more satisfying personally, and may be necessary for keeping one motivated towards social welfare. However, these may not be the most effective and efficient ways for achieving desired outcomes. For example,the same effort, time and money contributed towards governance reforms in education may help create more schools (reference #1) and raise more people out of poverty.

Perfect markets require information symmetry between buyers and sellers, and absence of monopolies etc. Long term complex developmental outcomes – like reduction of corruption, governance reforms, environmental sustainability etc – whose benefits are spread across several people and are difficult to quantify may not find easy market based solutions.

Even though these things will be economically beneficial for many individuals andbusinesses, it may be difficult for these objectives to raise business investments (reference #2) due to complexity of information involved, long term diffused results, collective action problem etc. Such efforts therefore may still largely dependon traditional charitable and philanthropic support. Individuals (rather than business organisations) should consider philanthropic donations (out of their personal bank balance, rather than their organisations’ profits) towards solving such social problems which do not find market solutions.

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Please watch the following video interview by Nobel Laureate Prof. F. A. Hayek’s for more on these lines.

References:

1. Pl refer to this seminal paper – Reinikka, R., & Svensson, J. (2004). Local Capture: Evidence from a Central Government transfer Program in Uganda. The Quarterly Journal of Economics , 119 (2), 679-705.
2. There are some interesting attempts though. Check this out: http://www.ted.com/talks/shaffi_mather_a_new_way_to_fight_corruption.html

P.S. Also read another FTI colleague and friend, Sanjeev’s views on charity (part of his forthcoming book). Please bear in mind that these are “cut and paste extracts from across the entire book, and so these points, below, are not paragraphs that flow into each other”:

We are born to be fiercely independent; self-reliant. Thus, we are deeply offended by charity thrust upon us when we can fend for ourselves (no matter how feebly) with our own effort.

…Charity can, at best, give someone a fish for a day, but can’t teach the person to fish. It has to be ‘administered’ each day, whereas teaching how to fish is a durable cure. Unless a desperate emergency arises, charity must therefore be abjured.

…There has never been a time in history when private charity was sufficient to feed and educate all the poor.  The liberal believes … that … everyone [be] provided with a reasonably level playing field (reasonable equality of opportunity). Any enhancements beyond this income based social minimum should be left to the fine tuning of private charity and social relationships (such as between parents and children). …it is inappropriate for a society to assume that all taxpayers will voluntarily pay taxes for the welfare of others. But on the other hand, we also know that private charity has never succeeded in sheltering everyone who may be in desperate need. In other words, although empathy is not good grounds for a social minimum, we look for a rational system that will not be entirely incompatible with our empathies. True, government provision of public goods and the social minimum (as part of social insurance) will necessarily displace some voluntary communitarian effort and charity.

In sum:1) Except for someone in deep distress, TEACH. Don’t “give”.  2) Have a state that runs a FRUGAL social insurance program (NOT a welfare state) to bring about a reasonable equality of opportunity. Therefore, unless you are involved in helping those who are starving or badly sick or handicapped and have no resources to help themselves,  DO NOT give charity. Instead, teach – either for free or for profit (I recommend FOR PROFIT teaching, which is more sustainable and by which you can multiply your efforts a thousand-fold). Set up a primary school for the poor. Set up a branch of Adharshila where you educate the community in ideas about classical liberalism and economics.

Dear Friends, these slides (and the accompanying thoughts) have been on a mind for a very long time (several months & more)…They were finally triggered after reading Harsh’s post on “Whither the Hindu right? some weeks ago. Some of you may have also read Amit Malviya and Arvind Kumar (not to forget Ashok Malik and an anoymous blogger) writing about this and related aspects in the last few weeks. These set of slides are my own humble attempt at exploring the parallels (& the congruency) between classical liberal thought and “Hindutva”.

Please do share your comments and thoughts…This will enrich the discussion and strengthen this effort. Jai Hind, Jai Bharat!

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Related Posts: Why I am a proud nationalist , Understanding Raj-Dharma – Part I and Part 2 and an excerpt from the Introduction to Radha Rajan’s “Eclipse of the Hindu Nation”

A video of my talk based on these slides is below (shared in Jan ’12 at a meeting presided by Dr Koenraad Elst in London):