Recent torture events have highlighted the strength of sleep deprivation as an instrument of torture. As those who have experienced jet lag know, one of the strongest pulls is that of jet lag. When jet lag commands, few can disobey the order to sleep.
Surprising, as it may seem, there is another power with an equal "command" effect -- ideology.
Here is where the analogy is complete. Apparently, otherwise sane people go berserk when sleep-deprived -- or when possessed by ideology.
In the next few articles, I would like to explore the ideology phenomenon, and its abundance in the social sciences. (It does occur in the physical sciences as well, but the consequences of being wrong are more obvious.)
I will try and demonstrate the power of id(eology) on issues that all of us have an opinion on, and feel expert at: the effect of economic reforms on poverty removal, the level of poverty in India, the magnitude of inequality change, and whether past Indian reforms have had a human face.
These topics lend themselves easily to the play of ideology as they should; what is tragic is that eminent institutions, and their scholars, indulge in what can reasonably be described as skullduggery.
Facts get twisted beyond recognition, and all is OK and saleable because it is for a good cause -- helping the poor of India (and the world) by asserting that the numbers of the poor are actually much much! More than stated in official government documents.
A related hypothesis I want to jointly explore with the readers is the following: that intellectual dishonesty is more often than not the preserve of the ideological left rather than the ideological right.
Actually, I should correct that. On non-economic issues the right has the moral authority over the prize for intellectual dishonesty; on economic issues, the left. How do you define intellectual dishonesty? (or ID and the close correlation with id is purely intentional).
Difficult, but not impossible. The presumption is of knowingly stating something to be different from what one knows to be the "truth". The most classic illustration of ID is the neo-cons, and world "leaders" like Bush and Blair, and other sundry passengers who all claimed that there was evidence, beyond reasonable doubt, of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Few events in world intellectual or other hi story can match the arrogance and destructive power of this ID.
To be sure, there are several other reasons, besides ID, why scholars (and the institutions they belong to) get their facts wrong. Sometimes, differences in interpretation lead to differences in conclusion. Sometimes, differences in methods. Ideology is not an exact science with either a yes or no answer, and in the social sciences, and especially on emotive issues like poverty and inequality, opinion is often perilously close to evidence.
The presence of several possible causes for different conclusions on the same question, e.g. what is the level of poverty in India, leads to what economists call an "identification" problem.
In other words, how does one separate fact from evidence, from opinion, from judgment, from interpretation, from just plain intellectual dishonesty? The simple answer is one cannot. So while I will present the facts as best I can, I leave it to the reader to make her judgment on the correct classification.
Why am I doing this? Because quite honestly I am tired of my good friends (mostly from the left) using what is at best harmless cocktail party chatter and gossip as reflecting the parameters of a new policy to address the joint issues of growth and poverty reduction.
If it didn't reflect, or affect, policy, and only graced scholarly journals, it would not matter. There are checks and balances in academia, and sooner or later (mostly much later), dishonesty is exposed. But one cannot, should not, let the juggernaut of ideology run amok, and especially ideology based on false information or biased interpretation. (Isn't it the case that when interpretation is based on facts, it ceases to be ideology?)
Since I have talked of ideology affecting research output, and especially policy recommendations for the poor, it is only fair that I disclose my own credentials. My ideology can best be described as right-wing when it comes to economics, and left- wing when it comes to "socio-political issues". My daughter calls me politically ambidextrous, and I have always envied athletic dexterity (my son does bat left-hand and bowl right-arm, so there is justice!)
My good friend Cornell University professor Kaushik Basu recently talked disparagingly of market fundamentalists; in his view, these simpletons are a dying breed in the US but are prevalent in developing economies like India. If he is right, then this is very good news for the prospects of India's growth rate (relative to the US) to be even higher than it is.
I take pride in being called a market fundamentalist; unlike the fundoos from the left, at least there is some check and balance on our views (if we get it wrong, we lose jobs, money, intellectual respect, etc.). But what does market fundamentalism mean? A strong dislike for government power; a strong belief that governments often want to do the right thing, but end up lining up their own pockets, and the hearts of the "psuedo-liberals".
More specifically, I believe taxation is primarily for redistribution; but I am wary of governments intervening "in the name of the poor". When in doubt, and most of the time the doubt is overwhelming, the government should not produce either the goods (e.g. defence equipment) or the services (education, health care, etc.) -- but it should, it must, finance them. So what policies should be undertaken to help the poor? Not reservations, but large scholarships for the children of the needy.
Not guaranteed jobs, but guaranteed income to the poor; if cash transfers are considered too radical, then food stamps should be given to the poor. Education and health care are best provided through voucher systems, and so on. You get my drift.
No issue is more ideological than what to do about the poor. Except two -- how to count the poor and how to assess their progress. And most of this debate misses out that other large country, China, for the simple reason that that other country does not allow any independent views on poverty. Only World Bank researchers are allowed access to Chinese data; even other "in the name of the poor" organisations like the Asian Development Bank are not allowed any access, not even a reproduction of data gathered from Chinese surveys on household incomes.
Incidentally, this policy of favouring only the World Bank for "authoritative" output on one's own poverty was also the case in India until just five years back. After considerable exposure and criticism, the National Sample Survey Organisation of India finally began releasing NSS data to the public; prior to that, only the World Bank had access to raw NSS data from India. And as documented in the next article in this series, access to NSS data is necessary, indeed crucial, for the identification of the presence/absence of ID in poverty research.
I have gone through an entire article without mentioning a single number or statistic. On a subject like intellectual dishonesty, such an omission might appear particularly glaring. But don't fear -- the next two articles will document, perhaps in too much gory detail, evidence on poverty, inequality and trends in the same on India; the documentation will cover the good, the bad, and the ideological.
All points of view will be presented, and done so to help the reader identify when ideology masquerades as evidence.