Smart governance for a new century; If Malala were an Indian; Six reasons why Apple stock is tanking; Global attitudes to India, China sink

1 Smart governance for a new century (Maleeha Lodhi in Khaleej Times) We live in a world in profound transition where mounting governance challenges have become more complex at both the national and global levels.  New technologies have created unprecedented flows of instant information that have magnified the challenge. Governments are seen to be delivering too slowly in a world that is moving very fast.

All this has ignited an international debate on governance in the 21^st century. An exciting new book now joins this debate. The authors of Intelligent Governance for the 21^st Century, Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels, offer sharp insights into why this critical issue needs to be rethought. The authors put forward an ambitious idea; provocative for those who believe only Western liberal democratic models can produce good governance. They propose instead that both the East and the West should learn and adapt from one another, combining “knowledgeable democracy” with “accountable meritocracy”.

The authors examine the strengths and deficiencies of the West and the East and suggest drawing on the best practices of both to recalibrate political systems and evolve hybrid institutional arrangements that combine signature elements from popular democracy and the Confucian tradition of a learned meritocracy.

The authors conclude that the best attributes of both Eastern and Western systems can help to develop a template of intelligent governance. This means striking a better balance between rights and responsibilities, as well as a check on populist and partisan impulses by instituting the perspective of the long-term and common good in a strong deliberative body. For the authors, intelligent governance requires “devolving” power, “involving” citizens in areas of their competence and “decision-division” that fosters “legitimacy and consent for delegated authority at higher levels of complexity”.

2 If Malala were an Indian (Jawed Naqvi in Dawn) So what are we going to tell Malala Yousafzai? How shall we break the news to her? The elections in Pakistan are over. It was a historical event all right, not least because of the enormity of the opposition to it. One elected government handing over power to another set of elected politicians is a rare event for Pakistan.

Now the question is: how should the young Malala see the incoming prime minister’s reaching out to the Taliban? They are her tormentors but he wants to mend fences with them. Much of the foreign invasion of Afghanistan was advertised as a measure to liberate the Malalas from the patriarchal country’s hand-reared mediaeval rulers. Are we looking at a U-turn ahead, on both sides of the Durand Line? It was one of them, or one with their mindset that shot the Yousafzai girl in the head. Why is it laughable, which it is, to think they would be punished?

What if the girl from Swat were raised in India? She would be in the ranks of some seriously iconic women who are leading the fight on issues that are not too dissimilar to the ones confronting Pakistan. Gender justice, honour killing, protection of constitutional guarantees to the minorities, communalism and mob violence, depredation of the environment, corporate land grab, cornering of water and mineral resources by the ruling elite, criminal neglect of education and the transfer of healthcare budgets towards a militarised police state.

Malala would have loved working with INSAF (not the Pakistani party), which stands for Indian Social Action Forum. INSAF is working with some 700 Indian NGOs, ranging from the protesters against a nuclear power plant in Koodunkulam in Tamil Nadu to a campaign to quash the Armed Forces Special Powers Act used by the army to inflict unbridled brutality in Kashmir and Manipur. Recently India’s home ministry sealed the group’s accounts, saying its foreign funds were against India’s public interest.

Malala would notice the similarities between the Taliban and a notionally working democracy. A rule thrown at the NGOs reads like the future of any Third World country. Malala Yousafzai may find it tricky to choose between the frontal assault of the Taliban, and the sleight of hand of a widely lauded democracy.

3 Six reasons why Apple stock is tanking (Joe Weisenthal in San Francisco Chronicle) Brokers have been getting bombarded with questions about Apple, which is down nearly 4%. Credit Suisse has put together six reasons the stock is tanking:

Basically, the stock has broken its 100-day moving average. An analyst note came out that was very bearish. There's the fact that Julian Robertson has totally dumped the stock. One of its suppliers had weak numbers. The rally itself recently, from 400 to 450, was "low conviction" (whatever that means). And then there's Google, which continues to grab people's attention.

4 Global attitudes to India, China sink (Joanna Sugden in The Wall Street Journal) A new study on global views of India shows that attitudes toward the country have sharply and suddenly declined in the wake of corruption scandals and heightened fears about women’s safety. The survey of 26,299 people in 25 countries was conducted by GlobesScan Inc. and the Program on International Policy Attitudes.

“For the first time, more respondents lean negatively towards India than positively,” said the report, which was released this week. Researchers blamed India’s negative tilt on a shift in attitudes, mainly in North America and Western Europe, after high-profile corruption cases tarred the government’s international image and the Delhi gang rape case brought the issue of women’s safety in the country to the world’s attention.
China also fared badly in the poll; after improving for a number of years, it racked up its worst performance since the survey began in 2005. After China, India recorded the most dramatic adverse change in attitudes of all the countries rated.

On average, in the 21 countries surveyed in both 2012 and 2013, 35% of people held mainly negative views of India’s influence in the world in 2013, compared to 27% in 2012. The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India said that in roughly three months following the fatal attack on a young woman in a bus in Delhi, the number of foreign tourists dropped 25% from a year earlier. The number of foreign women travelers dropped even more, down 35%, ACCI said.

Iran fared the worst, with 59% of people having a mostly negative perception of the country’s global influence and just 15% regarding it as largely positive. The global opinion of Pakistan was only marginally better, with 55% saying they had a mainly adverse opinion and 15% viewing it favorably.