Vote Before -
For: 154
Against: 106
Don’t Know: 124
 
The no-nonsense Chair Lindsey Hilsum kicked off the night in Cadogan Hall, insisting that by the end of the night those who voted don’t know/haven’t a clue what’s going on had made a decision by the end. It set the sharp, divided and yet joshing tone of the event.
 
George Ayittey’s central tenet was that the solutions to African problems lie in Africa. Highlighting the insignificance of Western aid in solving African problems, he outlined that the $30 billion in aid was huge, but the $148 billion lost in corruption alone outstripped it. He was opposed to the secrecy of the deals signed and the nepotistic nature of them, as African oil is exchanged for presidential palaces and stadiums.

Deborah Brautigam, who had addressed the US Congress on this issue last year, countered that in opinion polls 20 African countries had rated China as highly as the rest of the West. She urged us to reject our preconceptions about Africa in China, and pointed out the link between the 7.7 million people lifted out of poverty every year for every 1% increase in Chinese economic growth. To me, it suggested that it might not be just Africa that should look to China. African manufacturing is also rising by 5% in response to, and often supported by, Chinese factory production. Additionally, China is successful where NGO’s are not as they, critically, provide infrastructure.

Ana Maria Gomez said that the West needed to stop regarding Africa as ‘the lost continent’, and that it was through Western re-intervention that Africa has a chance. The Portuguese MEP humorously observed that it was through the poor quality of Chinese infrastructure that Portuguese engineering firms were thriving in nations like Angola. What Africa needs is accountability and empowerment of civil society.

Steven Chan drew on his experience as a peacekeeper in Sudan to highlight the positive African attitudes to the Chinese for their development in the 1980s. He described our attempts to push out China as a repetition of our self serving colonial attitude in the first Scramble for Africa. China, he argues, appreciates the African aspirations in a way the blindly patronising West has not through its construction not just of schools but universities. He said that African politicians and economists know what the African economies need, and that this form of ‘exploitation’ is willing through the signing of mutually beneficial deals. China also acts as a reformative force, especially in Angola, where it has insisted on democratic elections and budget controls. His parting comment was to remind us that the world has changed; Angola just offered to bail out Portugal in the recent Eurozone Crisis.


Vote After -
For: 149
Against 212
Don’t Know: 25

Pre-Debate Vote: There was everything to play for with 191 for, 136 don’t knows and 68 against.

Between them, they’d published enough books to stock a small Waterstones, and yet such is the nature of their subject is that they fail to agree on anything, often opening new avenues of argument to sidestep each others points. It is Cadogan Hall, the speakers an array of respected historians and the subject ‘Britain’s former colonies should stop blaming the Empire for their ills’. The issue is one that transcends political chasms, with the Labour MP Tristam Hunt taking the traditional pro-imperial stance while the left Guardian columnist Richard Gott and the Conservative MP Kwarsi Kwarteng hold the opposing position.  

Tristam Hunt played the opening gambit, reminding us that Wedgewood pottery scattered over the globe is a reminder of the legacy that Britain has left behind. He shrewdly acknowledges the undeniable ‘crimes of empire’ and the ‘private accumulation’. He progresses to say that seeing a country’s present state as an entity merely formed by recent colonial history is fallacious, that ‘pre-colonial history’ can greatly influence the importance of the legacy of the Empire. The buzzword however is ‘agency’, that saying the Empire entirely shaped their history in the colonial years overlooks the work of the native people in shaping their own history in this time.

Ashley Jackson joked that all the Empire gave the colonies was football and the phrase ‘fuck off’. Later he acknowledged that we left behind ‘state apparatus’ but claimed that ideas of nation-state were thrust upon African nations that were incompatible. The exacerbation of the pre-colonial ethnic and tribal system by colonies were also mentioned, along with the psychological cost of Empire.

Gita Subrahamanyam challenged the idea that Britain’s colonies are actually blaming Great Britain for their ills any more, proposing that the focus of blame has been swung round to the United States. Controversially, she suggested that many former colonies are not particularly vocal in blaming the Empire because the indigenous populations that would have complained were eradicated. She mentioned additionally that the colonial natives did not blame the far off entity of ‘Britain’ but the white settlers who became Australians or South Africans.

Richard Gott suggested that the Empire was a Christian entity against Muslims, and that people were ‘forced to participate’ in Empire. He highlights that the Empire was one of violent conquest. That over a two hundred year period there was a revolt against the Empire every single year, suggesting its unpopularity.

Ramachanda Guha began by assuring Jackson that the Hindi and Urdu languages had more explicit phrases than ‘fuck off’. He addressed Gott’s bizarre accusation of the Empire as an overtly Christian one, given that it clearly failed to convert the majority of the population in India. He came to bury Empire, rather than defend it, claiming that his nation’s identity, achievements and failures are uniquely Indian and independent of Empire.

Kwarsi Kwarteng was the last to take the podium, and agreed that the nations would not necessarily have been lands of ‘milk and honey’ but the Empire did not help. He made some linkages between the recent Gulf Wars in Iraq and British management of the Iraqi oil industry in the 1920s. With the various examples, such as Kashmir and Nigeria, it was suggested that they blamed the British for their conflicts.

Patriotism reigned and the motion was passed with 245 for, 20 don’t knows, and 135 against.

It’s been quite a month for Intelligence2. On November 1st Canadian Cognitive Scientist Steven Pinker, ‘the optimistic voice of science’, told a sell-out Royal Geographical Society that humans are becoming less, not more, violent. Then to Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall on November 9th where Stephen Fry, Sean Penn, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis and others discussed the life, loves and hates of their friend Christopher Hitchens.

And there’s more to come…

November 17, ‘Britain’s former colonies should stop blaming the empire for their ills’
Was our disregard for culture and local history to blame for subsequent tensions and wars within our former colonies? Or, is it all too easy for corrupt and unpopular leaders to use the Empire as a scapegoat for their failings? 60 years on, isn’t it time for our former colonies to take responsibility for themselves? Labour’s Tristram Hunt and the Tory Party’s Kwasi Kwarteng will lock horns in our debate. Cast your vote on November 17th.

19th November, Umberto Eco
The Piedmontese writer, philosopher, semiotician and critic will discuss writing fiction about the ‘real’, along with exploring the future of books and his (somewhat controversial) latest novel, ‘The Prague Cemetery’ with Paul Holdengräber, Director of LIVE at the New York Public Library.

25th and the 26th November, IQ2 If Conference
How will our homes, lives and cities be transformed by an urbanised, environmentally conscious and technologically empowered humanity? Watch more than 30 of Europe’s most far-sighted entrepreneurs, inventors and thinkers present their thoughts on the fundamental trends of our age. Buy a ticket to the future.

28th November: ‘Beware the Dragon: Africa Should Not Look to China’
Deborah Brautigam and SOAS’s Professor Steven Chan are set to spar over China’s expansion into Africa should be feared or welcomed. Are these neo-colonialists plundering resources with no regard for human rights? Or rather, are they building infrastructure that will lift the continent out of poverty? Decide on the 28th November:

Believe it or not, Laurie Penny was on the same side as David Willetts, supposedly supporting her team-mate ‘for’ the motion. Here is her speech.

Ladies, gentleman and everyone else here present. My teammate, Mr Willetts, has made worthy representations for the motion, and I am honoured to have been invited by Intelligence Squared to follow his points.

Now, the framing of this debate, like the framing of the ‘baby boomers’ argument as a whole, deserves attention. The older generation, we are informed, has “stolen the family silver’. What does that imply? It implies that the creation and maintenance of the welfare state in Britain, of free and popular healthcare, housing, education and out-of-work benefits were somehow an indulgence - rather than the bare minimum of common inheritance that can and should be the birthright of every generation that is prepared to stand and fight for it.

Yes, many of the baby boomers who were fortunate enough not to have been miners or steelworkers did live through a ‘golden age’, enjoying benefits and a safety net of which their own mothers and fathers could only dream. It is sad to be living in an age when the political class seems to be doing everything in its power to make that ‘golden age’ a historical aberration, rather than a baseline for building towards a truly free and equal democracy.

I believe that my parents and their generation had every right to the education and healthcare advantages that allowed them, the children of immigrants, to build satisfying and useful lives. The generation currently reaching adulthood has that right too, as will our children and grandchildren, and that right is being confiscated right now, as we speak, not by the greed of our parents, but by a government desperate to distract attention from its wholesale plundering of the public purse to finance the cannibalistic self-indulgence of a financial system whose time is done.

I am aware that in speaking frankly like this I may be breaking the protocol of this debate. I was invited to make a polite case for why the older generation has sold out the younger for the opposing team to politely contest, presumably without too much reference to class, to the economic crisis, or to persons here present. I feel that the situation here is too urgent to pay protocol or politeness any mind. Mr Willetts, you and the cabinet of which you are a member are screwing the younger generation on whose behalf you claim to speak today.

The rank hypocrisy of standing here and claiming that the baby boomers have sold the family silver whilst, as we speak, an Education White Paper is passing through the House which will allow private companies to rifle through the pockets of all that remains of the higher education system in this country, burns in the back of the throat.

We are talking, let’s remind ourselves, about a higher education system which disadvantaged young people are already abandoning in despair because of the soaring costs of university which you have personally overseen. University applications are down almost ten per cent this year, despite your assurances that tripling tuition fees and gutting the teaching grant would not make a difference to applications. Mr Willetts, if you truly care about the young people of Britain, if you truly believe that the Baby Boomers have stolen the family silver and should be made to return it, you would not do these things.

It is not the baby boomers who have stolen our future, Mr Willetts. It’s you. You, and your government. And we will not forget it in a hurry.
Phrasing this robbery in terms of generational conflict is a clever piece of misdirection. In your book, Mr Willetts, you draw attention to the fact that the post-war generation is set to get out of the welfare state ‘approximately 118%’ of what it put in, a statistic that fundamentally misunderstands what the welfare state is about. Here’s another statistic for you: the richest 10% of the population of Britain are now more than 100 times as wealthy as the poorest 10% of society, and whilst the people of this country have been suffering the fallout of public sector cuts that have seen their standard of living drop through the floor, the richest 500 members of this society have seen their wealth rise by a fifth.

Mr Willetts also draws attention, as he has several times in public forums, to the fact that the rise in social status of women has, he believes, contributed to the problems of working men - ‘feminism,’ he says, ‘has trumped egalitarianism.’ More misdirection. Anyone, it seems, is to blame for rising inequality in this country, except the wealthy. Set the children against their parents, the women against the men, anything to stop legitimate civil unrest as the majority of this nation realises that it has been sold off and sold out by the political and financial elite of which Mr Willetts himself has long been a member.

A clever piece of misdirection, but not quite clever enough. As we speak, the streets of this country are full of angry people who are not fooled for a second by this muddled rhetoric about generational conflict. This is class conflict, and it is being waged by the wealthy against everyone else with the full support of a cabinet of millionaires who see nothing wrong, for example, in claiming hundreds from the taxpayer to change the lightbulbs in their second home whilst claiming that it is the women and the over-forties who are taking the state for everything they can get. My colleague appears to expect that my generation will be fooled by this argument. Mr Willetts, we are not fooled, and we will not forget.

I know that I was invited here to back up your case, but Mr Willetts, ladies and gentlemen, what did you expect? How could you possibly ask me, having seen my friends, my family and my contemporaries have their futures stolen and their life choices decimated by policy decisions which you have personally overseen, not to call it like it is? To speak like this is the only possible response to the many and specific betrayals of trust and mandate enacted by the government of which my team-mate is a member, and by Mr Willetts himself in personally presiding over the largest transfer of wealth from poor to rich, young to old, advantaged to disadvantaged in this country in recent memory.

I hope that leaving him to back up his absurd arguments on his own will help him, in some small way, to understand one of the few remaining lessons it may be useful for him to learn. Mr Willetts, you are more alone than you think. You, and your government, and governments like it across the world, are losing the argument, just as you will lose this debate.

Right now, as we sit here in this beautiful hall, in this prestigious talk which most of you have paid to attend, students who were involved in a peaceful protest against Mr Willetts’ savage university reforms in June are going through the courts. Tomorrow, they may be sent to jail, for no other reason than daring to speak out against the bartering off of British higher education by a political class so drenched in self-deceit that it really thinks posturing about generational conflict will fool us. We are not fooled.

Mr Willetts, I do not expect you to listen to me; I do not expect you to apologise to the audience for daring to come here and dissemble, nor to my generation for pretending to speak in our interests whilst mortgaging our futures to your friends in finance. But if you wish to retain a scrap of self-respect, you could start by asking that young people like me not be criminalised for having the temerity to speak against you. Thanks to you and your education reforms, hundreds of thousands of people who voted for you are watching their worlds get a little darker. There is no need to cement that betrayal with cowardice.

Simon Zadek is today’s guest blogger. He’ll be speaking at our debate this Thursday, ‘London’s Policy on climate change should begin in Beijing’ at the Royal Society, in association with the IHT and supported by Shell. 

 Is Westminster or even Number 10 driving the UK’s impacts on climate change, or are such matters being determined eastwards in Beijing. Does that matter and what should we do about it?

China’s success in reducing its carbon emissions will be core to the UK’s own emissions score.Officially, the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by almost 30% over the last two decades, from 788 million tonnes in 1990 to 566mt in 2009. But this media-friendly downward trend turns ugly if you measure emissions linked to the goods that Britons consume rather than what they produce. Many of the former take place it China, which if added in increasesthe UK’s 2009 carbon footprint by over 50%. As China’s industries become less carbon intensive, so do some of the UK’s imports, assuming the UK does not substitute clean Chinese imports with dirtier imports from elsewhere.

China does not have a stand-alone climate change policy. Instead its  goals for greening its economic growth are laid out it in its 12^th National Plan framing its climate-related goals, including its headline planned reduction in carbon intensity of 40-45% by 2020. Increasing. China produces more than 50% of the world’s wind turbines and solar modules. Environmental protection under the new national plan is considered a ‘pillar industry’, along with information technology, new energy, energy conservation and clean-energy vehicles. These industries could contribute 15% by 2020, up from approximately 5% now.

China’s accession to the club of high-tech nations is being secured through the world’s biggest green bet. It has implemented the world’s largest green stimulus of US$201 billion, (compared to the US$94 billion in the United States). Investmentin environmental protection is expected to top US$450 billion by 2015,US$807 billion in the power sector, US$304 billion to US$457 billion in renewable energy and US$600 billion in smart grids.

The UK will become a consumer of China’s rise as a producer of high-speed trains, solar panels, electric vehicles and aircraft. But its own production will be a pale reflection of China’s vision and practice. Green growth policies between the two nations are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Whilst the Chinese government is turning China into a green giant, the UK is doing the opposite, cutting public investment in pursuit of a smaller state and the approval of the infamously short-term focused investment community that dominates the country’s political economy. And the payoff - in the face of policy uncertainty, clean technology investment in the UK collapsed in 2010 to a paltry US$3.3 billion, a fraction of its 2009 high of US$11 billion.

China’s outward investment may, however, clean up the UK’s green act, albeit at a price. China’s overseas stock of investments today is a modest US$350 billion or so, barely a third of the US$1 trillion of foreign direct investment (FDI) in China. Premier Wen quietly predicted at the recent World Economic Forum meeting in Dalian, however, that outward investment would be on a par with FDI within just a few years. The trillion-dollar question is whether this immense flow of capital into the global economy can be harnessed to support international green growth, including in the UK. China would certainly welcome the opportunity to build the UK’s renewables industry, upgrade its power grid and replace its ageing train system with a version of its very own high-speed network. Elsewhere in the world, notably in Africa. A forthcoming report by the Chinese-government sponsored China Council for International Co-operation on Environment and Development to Premier Wen will propose policy instruments to green China’s wave of outward investment.

The UK’s climate policy is, frankly, of little consequence to the climate. With emissions of 520 Mts out of a global total of over 30Gts, there is little that the UK can quantitatively contribute without turning off the whole economy. But there are two ways in which the UK can provide leadership in shaping a sustainable global economy. The UK’s hosting of a disproportionately large part of the investment community provides it with an opportunity to promote co-ordinated policy interventions across global financial markets. Reducing short-termism, alongside greater transparency and stronger investor governance frameworks could shift investor behaviour to count longer-term outcomes including climate. Current debate about the financial transactions tax illustrates the opportunity and the challenge.

A second leadership opportunity for the UK concerns its capacity for social, rather than policy, innovation. Three billion middle class folks by 2020 will consume way, way more than our planet can handle. We need more than technology upgrades, business re-engineering, and a refitted urban environment. Call it a change in consumer behaviour, a transformation in lifestyles, a values shift or even a spiritual awakening for those with a suited disposition. Whatever you call it, we need more than the geeks can deliver, even those from China. The UK has demonstrated its capacity to catalyze social innovations. Fair trade, community economics, animal rights, social enterprise, corporate responsibility and collaborative consumption are all micro-movements that have flourished in the Anglo-Saxon world. 

London’s climate policy will be made in Beijing, along with much that will determine the shape of the UK’s future economy. But London still has a card it can play, its role in shaping the global financial community, which in turn is the custodian of our investable assets for our collective future. And the UK’s citizens, whilst not in the policy seat, could provide leadership in demonstrating new forms of consumption that reduces our ecological footprint. In these senses, Beijing’s climate as well as its practice could continue to be shaped in London.

Simon Zadek works on sustainability issues worldwide and is writing in his personal capacity. He is Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Senior Fellow at the Global Green Growth Forum. He blogs regularly at www.zadek.net

Malcolm Grimston is today’s guest blogger. He’ll be speaking at our debate this Thursday, ‘London’s Policy on climate change should begin in Beijing’ at the Royal Society, in association with the IHT and supported by Shell. 

On the face of it it seems almost a no-brainer.  Taking 1990, the Kyoto base year, and 2010 as the standards, global primary energy use has increased by some 48%.  But in North America the increase has been ‘just’ 28% and in Europe and Eurasia there has been a fall of 13%, while in Asia-Pacific the rise has been 156% and in China 257%.  Global carbon dioxide emissions from the use of fossil fuels grew by 47% – a stark illustration of the failure of climate change policy so far – but again in North America the increase has been 16% and in Europe and Eurasia there has been a fall of 17%, while in Asia-Pacific emissions have increased by 159% and in China by 242%.  The old call for ‘contract and converge’ as an approach to greenhouse gas emissions is partly under way – some convergence but scarcely a whiff of contraction.  Nor are things likely to change soon – China’s latest Five Year Plan projects a doubling of power capacity between 2010 and 2020, some 55% of the growth coming from coal.

The logical response to this state of affairs might seem obvious – put any resources available for combatting climate change into ensuring that the energy systems of the most rapidly developing countries are as efficient and carbon-light as possible.  In the short term the amount of carbon saved per unit invested is bound to be higher, both because of the current state of technology in some developing count6ries and because it is inherently more fruitful to introduce low carbon measures when plant is being built (to meet growing demand) than to backfit them onto existing plant or to replace plant early (as is more likely to be the case in areas where energy growth is slow and new capacity largely a matter of replacement).  This was the philosophy behind the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) at Kyoto – allow companies investing in low carbon energy in countries not covered by carbon caps to gain carbon credits to ‘subsidise’ their emissions in the developed world.

However, there are three clear reasons for rejecting this as an all-out policy.  First is simply that of verification – there are plenty reported examples of low-carbon schemes being cancelled and resurrected a few metres away, or with minor modifications, in order to gain carbon credits through the CDM.  It may be possible to tighten up on criteria to address this, though not easy.

Secondly, sustainability is not just a matter of the environment and climate change.  Any approach to climate change must also be sustainable under economic, resource and social criteria.  Growing fears about international security of supply as demand grows and fossil reserves become depleted create a compelling case for developing low-carbon (i.e. fossil fuel free) technologies and preserving natural gas for direct heating and for peaking capacity in electricity supply to compensate for the intermittency of some renewables.  In the UK the main factor now quoted by the pro-nuclear power majority in the population is security of supply rather than climate change.  Frankly I don’t care if reductions in carbon emissions happen because of deliberate policy or as a by-product of other sensible policy measures.

And third, we must recall that in the developed world we are plundering our children’s birthright away to support our unsustainable way of life.  We are spending their money as we continue to build up debt; we are using their natural resources as we burn away minerals which have other vital uses; and we are despoiling their atmosphere, possibly irreversibly, to allow us to continue to pour greenhouse gases away so profligately.  Say we could borrow another ten years of this lifestyle by exploiting the short-term opportunity of carbon mitigation in China – all this would do would be to allow us to bring up another generation thinking that the Second Law of Thermodynamics can be ignored forever and that we can continue using resources much more quickly than they can be replaced.  Of course we should do all we can to aid the Chinese and other growing economies to improve their lives as sustainably as possible.  But none of that removes from us the responsibility of a radical rethink of our relationship with our planet.  And that must begin at home, not on the other side of the world.

On Tuesday night, celebrated Israeli novelist and political thinker David Grossman sat down with Linda Grant at the Cadogan Hall to discuss his latest novel, ‘To the End of the Land’. Soft spoken and with a lilting accent, the audience hung on his every word, his statements on Israeli life, politics and literature carrying an effortless gravitas.

Grossman introduced ‘matsav’ (‘the situation’), an Israeli concept which encapsulates his country’s ongoing war and their misfortune; it is the answer to everything and in turn an excuse for the nation to stop seeking answers. For years, he chose to move away from the topic in his writing, believing it could no longer be revitalised. He was acutely aware that as an Israeli author, even when he did not write about the conflict, his every word was interpreted as an allegory. He only chose to return to the subject in his latest novel when he had two distinct ideas to translate into literature- the first being the agony of a son going to war, and the second, the concept that it takes two people to create ‘bad news’; one to deliver and one to receive.

He finally believed that he could melt the situation down to its ‘components’ through depicting the private pain of a family, and in particular a mother. The woman in the story, Ora, undertakes a journey half the length of Israel which Grossman chose to replicate himself. Surprisingly, the only danger he met in a war torn country was from animals- wild dogs, boars and scorpions. His ‘sweet reward’ with nature came with an epiphany as he considered how many labels were put on the soil beneath his feet. He believes humanity has a deep need to have a place, despite the fact that we are so temporary.

Grossman encouraged the audience to grasp how very fortunate we are to live a life of peace. It cannot be envisaged by an Israeli man, it would just be an illusion; just as a life of war, suspicion and trauma is impossible for us to comprehend. Grossman wishes for Israel to be harmoniously integrated in to history, and most of all, he wants it to be a home. At present, his country cannot even be regarded as a shelter.

A poignant question from an audience member provoked a heartfelt response from Grossman; did he lose faith in literature after his son died? No; it became his home, and gave him the distinct sense that he was doing something right in a world that was all wrong. The power to invent- to infuse life and warmth into his characters was a way of choosing life and escaping the gravity of the situation.

Prompted by the audience, Grossman gave some valuable political insights; referring to the damage done by the Israeli political system to his country’s progress, along with his opinion that a unified ‘one state’ is not possible. To him, both Israel and Palestine deserve and belong to separate states. They are so deeply pitted against each other in hatred that they could never function in a political sense. Lastly, his comments on the Arab Spring were remarkable- while he was deeply moved by the revolution, he does not know if Egypt is ready to become a democracy. He believes a democracy is not about the majority, it is about the minorities- and is Egypt ready to represent its women? Its homosexuals and non-Muslims?

How can UK climate change policy expect to have any impact when booming cities in China are belching millions of tons of C02 everyday? Shouldn’t we focus on cleaning up electricity production in the emerging world before we build more windmills on British soil? But then again, wasn’t the “green new deal” all about creating jobs in a new sort of economy? Making Britain a leader in an industry of the future? Not to mention making us just a little less dependent for our energy on geo-politically unstable regions of the world…
 
All these questions and others will be tackled our our forthcoming debate, ‘London’s policy on climate change should begin in Beijing’. Taking place at the Royal Society on Thursday 20th October the event marks the start of Switched On - a series of debates, talks and discussions on energy in association with the International Herald Tribune and supported by Shell.
 
We’re proud to announce that the panel is now confirmed. Proposing the motion is Vicky Pryce, Joint Head of the United Kingdom’s Government Economic Service, and Simon Zadek, advisor on sustainability to the World Economic Forum. While on the opposition, we’ll see arguments from Malcolm Grimston, Honorary Fellow at Imperial College Centre for Environmental Technology and George Monbiot, Guardian columnist, activists and author of ‘Heat: how to stop the planet burning’. 

We hope you can join us for this provocative and nuanced debate.

Buy tickets.Visit the event microsite. 

Pre-debate vote: For: 117 Against: 155 Uncertain: 175
 
The Royal Geographic hummed with curiosity on Tuesday evening for an issue hugely important in the democratic world, and yet buried underground.

Suhel Seth, the Indian marketing guru, businessman, actor and columnist opened for the proposition with a re-telling of the Achilles myth. Just as the Greek hero’s dodgy tendo calcaneus was the death of him, Seth reasoned, so too will India be crippled by the over-centralisation, nepotism and endemic corruption inspired by her system of liberal democracy. With a confidence and flare learnt from extensive experience behind the podium, Seth ended that Indian democracy has allowed poor governance to thrive under a facade of democracy.

But surely the only other alternative is tyranny, countered the author William Dalrymple. India’s neighbours along - Burma, Sri Lanka and, until 2008, Nepal - highlighted how dictatorships where. The only solution to governing such an ethnically diverse region as India, stipulated Dalrymple, is through a devolved democracy where individual states like Jaipur are given partial autonomy. And besides, he went on, if the Arab Spring tells us anything it’s that democracy will always be fought for by repressed peoples.

Speaking for the motion, Patrick French brought the debate back round to systemic corruption at the heart of India’s democracy. Thirty three members of the INC, he said, have accusations ranging from three counts of murder and ten of attempted murder to unlawful detention and burglary. He added that crime lords now routinely buy local government positions to bypass the law. And almost every MP younger than 30 has inherited their position from their parents. Be middle class or rich, French concluded, and you may see some benefits, but in almost every other sense (upholding the rule of law, making government accountable, allowing the state to function) Indian democracy is failing badly.

Mani Shankar Aiyar propagated the idea that ‘India did not have enough democracy’. He relished pointing out the proudest accolades of Indian democracy, that half of all those living in a democracy are Indian and are spoken for by 3.2 million representatives, of whom 1.8 million are female. He stressed that democracy was a prerequisite of good governance, and that although Indian democracy may be “eccentric” he argued that all forms of democracy all deviated from the ideal. He ended by speaking of the ‘anti-incumbency’ in India, highlighting that two thirds of MPs are overturned at each election.

The debate was tenacious, and due to the personal connections of the speakers, the dialogue became humorous and quick-witted.

Post-debate vote: For: 159 Against: 266 Uncertain: 19

Democracy is India’s Achilles’ heel by intelligence2

Who?
Vicky Pryce, economist.
 
Born
Vasiliki Courmouzis. An Athenian by birth she took and kept the surname of her first husband, an academic she met while studying at LSE.
 
Career
A sparkling academic career at LSE led into an equally sparkling professional career at Williams & Glyn’s Bank, where in 10 years she rose to chief economist. She then spent three years at Exonn Mobil and following that a stint at KPMG as chief economist. In 2001 Department for Trade and Industry in August 2002 as Chief Economic Adviser - the first woman ever to be appointed to the post. In 2010 she left the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to move into consultancy.  
 
An academic who means business
Like many high flying economists, Pryce’s name is as familiar to MBA students as it is to civil servants ands executive boards. She is a visiting professor at Cass Business School and Imperial College Business school and also a visiting fellow at Nuffield College Oxford.

No stranger to hard work
She is known for working incredibly hard. For each of her five children took had only six weeks off work after giving birth, and while working at KPMG she was held up to her colleagues as an example of stamina and dogged determination.

Privatising Eastern Europe
Pryce’s greatest accomplishment is cited as her work decentralising the economies of former Soviet states in the first half of the nineties. Her twice monthly trips to Prague, the Czech Republic and Romania are said by her KMPG colleagues to have been ‘novel’ experiences for her Eastern European counterparts who weren’t used to dealing with a senior woman.

On Gordon Brown
She dismissed former Prime Minister’s five rules on the economy as ‘an informed guess’.

Climate change credentials
She has edited White Papers for the government on the economical contributions needed for sustainable energy including ‘Options for a Low Carbon Future’ (2003) and ‘Meeting the Energy Challenge’ (2007). She is also the estranged wife of Liberal Democrat MP, Chris Huhne, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

Former colleagues say
‘When it came to the privatisation of the whole of Eastern Europe, she was instrumental’.

The Independent Says
‘One of the most important columnists of her generation.’

Vicky is going to be a member of the panel in our forthcoming Shell debate, arguing for the motion, ‘London’s policy on climate change should begin in Beijing’, on Thursday 20th October at the Royal Society. Click here to buy tickets.