Bibek Debroy: Ghosts who talk

It is curious that someone who should be producing pearls of wealth should be dissatisfied until he also produces pearls of wisdom.

A few years ago, at the organisation where I then worked, we invited Manmohan Singh to deliver a chief guest's address. The broad theme was human development. He wasn't the FM then, nor was he the PM, this being the in-between period. As is customary, we asked whether talking points were needed and were told that none were necessary. Talking points are an euphemism for a draft speech. Manmohan Singh spoke on the basis of a few notes he had scribbled down on a pad and the speech was virtually extempore. This led to some eventual consternation, because someone wished to publish the speech and there was no copy, recording not having been thought of. We couldn't ask him to deliver another speech, this time, written down. Among the many things I hate, one is writing speeches (or talking points) for other people. How do you know how that person will deliver, when he/she will pause, what his/her sense of humour is and whether Iqbal or Tagore is the preferred quote? You can't be a good speech-writer unless you became an alter ego of the speaker, unless you know the person really well, well enough to think like him/her.

I accept the point that PMs and Presidents don't have the time to write their own speeches and must have some kind of draft prepared by others. Apart from political correctness, these speeches may have policy nuances. In any event, they will be published and preserved for posterity. Every comma is important and these can't be extempore. I am even prepared to extend the point to other ministers and future PMs, provided you can predict the future reasonably accurately. But beyond this, I am contemptuous of people who can't write their own speeches and must solicit help. I think this contempt isn't misplaced, though there have been a few occasions when I have myself been forced to indulge in ghost-writing. If you are invited to deliver a speech, it stands to reason that you have attained relative prominence in some area of human endeavour. That's the reason you have now become a speech-giver and it is also understandable that you have some knowledge in your area of activity. So that's the area you should speak.

But we have this remarkable phenomenon that anyone who is relatively prominent in any area is immediately presumed to be an expert on everything under the sun.

Thus, a flurry of invitations, on topics as diverse as the ascent of Mount Everest to the Human Genome. Of course, the people sending invitations aren't completely unreasonable. These aren't instances where the speaker is being sought as an expert for his/her knowledge. Instead, the invitation is to be a chief guest, to light a lamp, say thank you, best wishes, stuff like that and sit down. Unfortunately, the person who is now relatively prominent refuses to accept this and that's become a problem with someone I know. His name is Hashim. He runs a business. The business wasn't doing particularly well earlier. Actually, I don't think Hashim has much business sense. But he married lucky and his wife's business acumen turned the enterprise around. The upshot is that Hashim has become relatively prominent and has even been elected chairman of the local club. Last week, he was invited as the chief guest to a dog show and what transpired then is indicative of what has gone wrong with Hashim ever since he became chairman.

He takes himself and his assumed knowledge too seriously. All that was required was for him to pat a dog on the head, offer a dog biscuit and that would have been that.

Instead, he surfed the Net for two weeks. He brought in dog jokes and dog breeds and drove his family nuts by reading out 19 different versions of his speech. He spoke for 45 minutes instead of the required five.

The dogs didn't seem to mind, but the owners went nuts. I have heard a story about Winston Churchill and I am sure the story is apocryphal. Churchill was a great orator. But never in his life had he started a speech with the cliched words "It gives me great pleasure", the chief guest trademark. Churchill was apparently once challenged by some MPs to the effect that assorted bits of paper with words written on them would be placed inside a box. One of these would be pulled out at random and Churchill would have to speak extempore on whatever was written on the chit. And he would have to begin his speech with the dreaded "It gives me great pleasure". As luck would have it, the chit had the word "sex" and Churchill uttered the required words and promptly sat down. Why can't people like Hashim do a Churchill and sit down after performing the ornamental function?

The dog incident was actually somewhat better, because Hashim did some surfing and research, so to speak, on his own. But I know of other instances where he does nothing of the kind. He gets other people to ghost write his speeches, not necessarily gratis. Paid or not, this seems to me intellectual dishonesty and probably has something to do with our scant respect for intellectual property. It is certainly true there are similar instances in academia also, with supervisors forcibly inflicting their names as co-authors on their students. However, in the process, supervisors (or seniors) don't delete the student's name from the paper. They only add their own, undeservedly. In addition, in academia, faculty are supposed to have intellectual pretensions, since that is their bread and butter. A businessman need have no such pretensions. That's not what he is supposed to be good at. There is always the odd exception, but Hashim isn't one of these. So why does he feel compelled to be omniscient and why does he need ghost writers to draft profound speeches for him?

Actually, the malaise runs deeper.

Had it just been the spoken word, I would have found it to be a bit more acceptable, even though that too is intellectual dishonesty. But it extends to the written word. Hashim also gets people to ghost write articles for him. Someone who should be producing pearls of wealth is dissatisfied unless he produces pearls of wisdom. He thus has borrowed views on what is happening to the global economy and interest rates. I suspect deep down there is an inferiority complex about money not being enough. Once one is relatively successful in business, and business in India is still regarded as dirty, one craves for social acceptability and movement up the ladder. In business, there is the perception that everything has a price and can be bought, including thought and intellect. So one might as well try and purchase that acceptability and hope for the day when Padma awards can also be bought.