"the sleeping man woke into the world, into the chirping of the birds, the morning sounds, the red line of the sun just about to rise, the blinding world of senses. He knew he was not doing the right thing.But man cannot be stopped. He woke again. And then again and again. Until it became a habit and then a necessity and then natural. Time went by. The wind of thought weathered the rock of truth. Sleep is now the unconscious state. The state blinded by senses is now called the conscious state. When you are out of touch with your real Self, beyond the limited perception of the senses, is it really consciousness? Will the world realise the real conscious state sleeping in the minds..."
Sreekanth quoted this on 5th Jan 2003 in his blog! just happened to do a random click in search of the Sreekanth I had met a few years back...
Monday 29 October 2007
of parallelism...
Panya: "ha ha ha!!! two parallel lines do meet sometimes!!!" (on one seeming point of convergence between us after years of disagreements on practically everything!)
Pakya: "yeah thats my point...even staying parallel without diverging is an indication of something naa? I don't think we should complain about being parallel :) "funny I should quote myself, but as I was 'not' telling someone earlier today, I am making myself aware of the narcissist inside me. anyways the point was about parallel lines, not so much about just one of them lines.
have heard enough cliched arguments around 'agreeing to disagree', 'seeing the other's POV', 'empathy', but somehow none of them ever struck a chord for me. harmony and disagreement were always opposites for me. just looking back at the 30+ years that spans our friendship (panya and pakya), it struck me how uncommon it was.
garrulous, outgoing, flamboyant, assertive (even obnoxiously so sometimes :), spontaneous, adventurous panya...
quiet, reserved, withdrawn, agreeable (even pitiably so at times :), thoughtful, conformist pakya...
and one well timed common adventure with education has now given us a platform and a basis to challenge our individual notions and worldviews using common vocabulary. of course we don't have to live together all the time which lends the relationship the space to breathe!
so whats the point...nothing. just felt like saying this online :)
Thursday 9 August 2007
The decade of our discontent
The Decade of our discontent
P. Sainath
Sixty years on, rural India is a shambles. The most severe agrarian crisis since the eve of the Green Revolution rages on.
Rural India is a funny place. In 60 years we haven’t managed — except in three States — to push through any serious land reforms or tenancy reforms. But we can clear a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in six months. In the sixth decade of our independence, structural and other inequalities deepen, and rural India is in big trouble
The first lead story on the front page of a major English daily four weeks ago was striking. A young man from Chandigarh had paid Rs.15 lakh for a ‘fancy’cellphone number. It wasn’t long before the rest of the media got into the act. Soon we saw his parents distributing sweets to mark their son’s achievement. Newspapers editorialised (in front page ‘news reports’) on how this reflected India’s new confidence. Our ‘aggro’ in the period of economic reforms and liberalisation.
It surely reflects something. A class exists to whom it is perfectly natural for a leading Indian magazine to act as luxury scout. Its publisher’s letter tells them that “for $115,000 a box, 500 limited edition Dragon Gurkha cigars are now available. In 80 year old camelbone boxes that once belonged to a Rajasthani ruler.”
The average monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) of the Indian farm household is a long way from Rs.15 lakh. And further from $115,000. It is, in fact, Rs.503. Not far above the rural poverty line. And that’s a national average, mixing both giant landlords and tiny landholders. It also includes States like Kerala where the average is nearly twice the national one. Remove Kerala and Punjab and the figure gets still more dismal. Of course, inequality is rife in urban India too. And growing. But the contrasts get more glaring when you look at rural India.
About 60 per cent of that Rs.503 is spent on food. Another 18 per cent on fuel, clothing, and footwear. Of the pathetic sum left over, the household spends on health twice what it does on education. That is Rs.34 and Rs.17. It seems unlikely that buying unique cellphone numbers is set to emerge a major hobby amongst rural Indians. There are countless households for whom that figure is not Rs.503, but Rs.225. There are whole States whose average falls below the poverty line. As for the landless, their hardships are appalling.
It is not that inequality is new or unknown to us. What makes the last 15 years different is the ruthlessness with which it has been engineered. The cynicism with which it has been constructed. And the scale on which it now exists. And that’s at all levels, even at the top. As Abhijit Banerjee and Thomas Piketty put it in a paper on “Top Indian Incomes 1956-2000,” “The rich (the top 1 per cent) substantially increased their share of total income [in the reform years]. However, while in the 1980s the gains were shared by everyone in the top percentile, in the 1990s it was only those in the top 0.1 per cent who made big gains.”
“The average top 0.01 per cent income was about 150-200 times larger than the average income of the entire population during the 1950s. This went down to less than 50 times as large by the early 1980s. But went back to being 150-200 times larger during the late 1990s.” All the evidence suggests it has gotten worse since then.
Industry’s hostile response to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meek comments on CEO salaries is just a sign of how entrenched such privilege now is. The editorials of most newspapers blew Dr. Singh out of the water. So it is odd and worth noting, that one of the very best pieces on concentration of wealth in recent times comes from the Executive Director of Morgan Stanley. (The Economic Times, July 9, 2007). “We believe,” writes Chetan Ahya, “that the social pressure arising from widening inequality has increased in the past few years, driven by globalisation and the rise of capitalism.” He finds the “rising social challenge on account of the rise in inequality” a worrying trend. He also finds that “the inequality gap in wealth is even starker … Our analysis indicate an increase in wealth of over $1 trillion (over 100 per cent of GDP) in the past four years — and that the bulk of this gain has been concentrated within a very small segment of the population.” Mr. Ahya rightly sees “social and political upheaval,” as the outcome of some directions we are taking. As in the case of farmers and SEZs.
Structural inequalities
The first lead story on the front page of a major English daily four weeks ago was striking. A young man from Chandigarh had paid Rs.15 lakh for a ‘fancy’cellphone number. It wasn’t long before the rest of the media got into the act. Soon we saw his parents distributing sweets to mark their son’s achievement. Newspapers editorialised (in front page ‘news reports’) on how this reflected India’s new confidence. Our ‘aggro’ in the period of economic reforms and liberalisation.
It surely reflects something. A class exists to whom it is perfectly natural for a leading Indian magazine to act as luxury scout. Its publisher’s letter tells them that “for $115,000 a box, 500 limited edition Dragon Gurkha cigars are now available. In 80 year old camelbone boxes that once belonged to a Rajasthani ruler.”
The average monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) of the Indian farm household is a long way from Rs.15 lakh. And further from $115,000. It is, in fact, Rs.503. Not far above the rural poverty line. And that’s a national average, mixing both giant landlords and tiny landholders. It also includes States like Kerala where the average is nearly twice the national one. Remove Kerala and Punjab and the figure gets still more dismal. Of course, inequality is rife in urban India too. And growing. But the contrasts get more glaring when you look at rural India.
About 60 per cent of that Rs.503 is spent on food. Another 18 per cent on fuel, clothing, and footwear. Of the pathetic sum left over, the household spends on health twice what it does on education. That is Rs.34 and Rs.17. It seems unlikely that buying unique cellphone numbers is set to emerge a major hobby amongst rural Indians. There are countless households for whom that figure is not Rs.503, but Rs.225. There are whole States whose average falls below the poverty line. As for the landless, their hardships are appalling.
It is not that inequality is new or unknown to us. What makes the last 15 years different is the ruthlessness with which it has been engineered. The cynicism with which it has been constructed. And the scale on which it now exists. And that’s at all levels, even at the top. As Abhijit Banerjee and Thomas Piketty put it in a paper on “Top Indian Incomes 1956-2000,” “The rich (the top 1 per cent) substantially increased their share of total income [in the reform years]. However, while in the 1980s the gains were shared by everyone in the top percentile, in the 1990s it was only those in the top 0.1 per cent who made big gains.”
“The average top 0.01 per cent income was about 150-200 times larger than the average income of the entire population during the 1950s. This went down to less than 50 times as large by the early 1980s. But went back to being 150-200 times larger during the late 1990s.” All the evidence suggests it has gotten worse since then.
Industry’s hostile response to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meek comments on CEO salaries is just a sign of how entrenched such privilege now is. The editorials of most newspapers blew Dr. Singh out of the water. So it is odd and worth noting, that one of the very best pieces on concentration of wealth in recent times comes from the Executive Director of Morgan Stanley. (The Economic Times, July 9, 2007). “We believe,” writes Chetan Ahya, “that the social pressure arising from widening inequality has increased in the past few years, driven by globalisation and the rise of capitalism.” He finds the “rising social challenge on account of the rise in inequality” a worrying trend. He also finds that “the inequality gap in wealth is even starker … Our analysis indicate an increase in wealth of over $1 trillion (over 100 per cent of GDP) in the past four years — and that the bulk of this gain has been concentrated within a very small segment of the population.” Mr. Ahya rightly sees “social and political upheaval,” as the outcome of some directions we are taking. As in the case of farmers and SEZs.
Structural inequalities
All this comes atop existing structural inequalities in rural India. In 60 years, we never resolved the issue of land. Nor those of forests and water rights. Or of appalling levels of caste and gender discrimination. We never really addressed our structural or other inequalities. Now we’re working hard at making them worse.
Even at the start of the reforms period, the bottom half of rural households accounted for less than 3.5 per cent of total land ownership. The top ten per cent of households owned well over 50 per cent. That’s for all lands as a whole. If we took into account only irrigated land, the picture is more frightening. Add productive assets, and it gets still worse. In one estimate, over 85 per cent of rural households are either landless, sub-marginal, marginal or small farmers. Nothing has happened in 15 years that has changed that situation for the better. Much has happened to make it a lot worse.
The direction of policy on farming — central to rural India — is simple in its main idea. To take agriculture out of the hands of farmers and place it firmly in the hands of large corporations. Every move, every policy, only pushes this idea further forward. We are witnessing the largest displacement in our history. It is not happening in a dam or a mining project. It’s happening in agriculture. And we haven’t a clue yet what we will do with the millions we’re busy shoving off the land. This is not being done with tanks and bulldozers. We just make farming impossible for small holders. And we create no options for those whose livelihoods we so cheerfully destroy.
The early decades were at least decades of hope. There were improvements, significant if not impressive. In literacy, life expectancy, and other human development indicators. There was a sense that “India lives in her villages.” The slogan that caught the nation’s imagination, even if in wartime, was ‘jai jawan, jai kisan.’ The farmer was seen as carrying the nation’s future on his or her shoulders. (More normally ‘his’ since women are to this day denied property rights and not seen as ‘farmers.’) At least, that was the image.
Sixty years on, rural India is a shambles. The most severe agrarian crisis since the eve of the Green Revolution rages on, but does not hold elite or media interest for long. Farm incomes have collapsed. Hunger has grown very fast. Public investment in agriculture shrank to nothing a long time ago. Employment has collapsed. Non-farm employment has stagnated. (Only the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has brought some limited relief in recent times.) Millions move towards towns and cities where, too, there are few jobs to be found. Many move towards a status that is neither farmer nor worker. A huge pool of menial labour or domestic servants. (In one estimate, there are close to two lakh girls from Jharkhand in Delhi alone, in work of this kind.)
A credit squeeze has pushed lakhs of farmers into bankruptcy. This after encouraging, even pushing them towards high-cost cash crop cultivation with its attendant risks. In Kerala of 2003-04, raising an acre of vanilla cost 15 to 20 times what it took to raise an acre of paddy. But farmers were asked to rush in regardless. The price of vanilla has sunk and the credit flow has stopped. And several such growers have taken their own lives.
We fail to invoke even those measures the blatantly unfair WTO allows us; this means the prices our own farmers get for products like cotton collapses by the season. The huge subsidies attached to U.S. cotton — over a million bales dumped on this country in just 2001-02 — are not challenged. Duties are not raised. We’re glad to trade the interests of our poor for another 30,000 H1B visas.
The government tells us over 112,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1993. A gross underestimate but the figure is bad enough. These are suicides driven by debt. And the indebtedness of the peasantry, so the National Sample Survey tells us, has almost doubled in the past decade.
It is not as if there is no resistance, no voices raised. The people have spoken to their governments and all of us in election after election. In protest after protest. And good things, too, have happened. Like the NREGA. But the larger direction is overwhelming. And it is one that races towards catastrophe, disaster having already been achieved. We, however, are more interested in the cellphone number worth Rs.15 lakh. And maybe there’s a point in that. The ‘fancy’ number was purchased on borrowed money. Our orgy in inequality plays out on borrowed time.
Even at the start of the reforms period, the bottom half of rural households accounted for less than 3.5 per cent of total land ownership. The top ten per cent of households owned well over 50 per cent. That’s for all lands as a whole. If we took into account only irrigated land, the picture is more frightening. Add productive assets, and it gets still worse. In one estimate, over 85 per cent of rural households are either landless, sub-marginal, marginal or small farmers. Nothing has happened in 15 years that has changed that situation for the better. Much has happened to make it a lot worse.
The direction of policy on farming — central to rural India — is simple in its main idea. To take agriculture out of the hands of farmers and place it firmly in the hands of large corporations. Every move, every policy, only pushes this idea further forward. We are witnessing the largest displacement in our history. It is not happening in a dam or a mining project. It’s happening in agriculture. And we haven’t a clue yet what we will do with the millions we’re busy shoving off the land. This is not being done with tanks and bulldozers. We just make farming impossible for small holders. And we create no options for those whose livelihoods we so cheerfully destroy.
The early decades were at least decades of hope. There were improvements, significant if not impressive. In literacy, life expectancy, and other human development indicators. There was a sense that “India lives in her villages.” The slogan that caught the nation’s imagination, even if in wartime, was ‘jai jawan, jai kisan.’ The farmer was seen as carrying the nation’s future on his or her shoulders. (More normally ‘his’ since women are to this day denied property rights and not seen as ‘farmers.’) At least, that was the image.
Sixty years on, rural India is a shambles. The most severe agrarian crisis since the eve of the Green Revolution rages on, but does not hold elite or media interest for long. Farm incomes have collapsed. Hunger has grown very fast. Public investment in agriculture shrank to nothing a long time ago. Employment has collapsed. Non-farm employment has stagnated. (Only the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has brought some limited relief in recent times.) Millions move towards towns and cities where, too, there are few jobs to be found. Many move towards a status that is neither farmer nor worker. A huge pool of menial labour or domestic servants. (In one estimate, there are close to two lakh girls from Jharkhand in Delhi alone, in work of this kind.)
A credit squeeze has pushed lakhs of farmers into bankruptcy. This after encouraging, even pushing them towards high-cost cash crop cultivation with its attendant risks. In Kerala of 2003-04, raising an acre of vanilla cost 15 to 20 times what it took to raise an acre of paddy. But farmers were asked to rush in regardless. The price of vanilla has sunk and the credit flow has stopped. And several such growers have taken their own lives.
We fail to invoke even those measures the blatantly unfair WTO allows us; this means the prices our own farmers get for products like cotton collapses by the season. The huge subsidies attached to U.S. cotton — over a million bales dumped on this country in just 2001-02 — are not challenged. Duties are not raised. We’re glad to trade the interests of our poor for another 30,000 H1B visas.
The government tells us over 112,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1993. A gross underestimate but the figure is bad enough. These are suicides driven by debt. And the indebtedness of the peasantry, so the National Sample Survey tells us, has almost doubled in the past decade.
It is not as if there is no resistance, no voices raised. The people have spoken to their governments and all of us in election after election. In protest after protest. And good things, too, have happened. Like the NREGA. But the larger direction is overwhelming. And it is one that races towards catastrophe, disaster having already been achieved. We, however, are more interested in the cellphone number worth Rs.15 lakh. And maybe there’s a point in that. The ‘fancy’ number was purchased on borrowed money. Our orgy in inequality plays out on borrowed time.
Saturday 28 July 2007
incoherent ramblings: on being hatke, distrust and the big bad world!!
Peace like Mongoose:
In cobra country a mongoose was born one day who didn't want to fight cobras or anything else. The word spread from mongoose to mongoose that there was a mongoose who didn't want to fight cobras.
If he didn't want to fight anything else, it was his own business, but it was the duty of every mongoose to kill cobras or be killed by cobras.
"Why?"asked the peacelike mongoose, and the word went round that the strange new mongoose was not only pro-cobra and anti-mongoose but intellectually curious and against the ideals and traditions of mongoosism.
"He is crazy,"cried the young's mongoose's father.
"He's sick, "said his mother.
"He is a coward,"shouted his brothers.
"He's a mongoosexual,"whispered his sisters.
Strangers who had never laid eyes on the peacelike mongoose remembered that they had seen him crawling on his stomach, or trying cobra hoods, or plotting the violent overthrow of Mongoodia.
"I am trying to use reason and intelligence,"said the strange new mongoose.
"Reason is six-sevenths of treason," said one of his neighbours.
"Intelligence is what the enemy uses,"said another.
Finally the rumour spread that the mongoose had venom in his sting, like a cobra, and he was tried, convicted by a show of paws, and condemned to banishment.
Moral:
Ashes to ashes, and clay to clay,
if the enemy doesn't get you your own folks may.
EOP (End Of Parable)
suspicion
Today seems to be a day of extremes for my restless mind! Crazy parable and these are exactly the kind of conclusive morals that seem to help people justify their own acts. The world out there is bad, if you have to survive you have to learn to deal with it and manipulate it and find your way through it. How many times do we communicate this to our children? How we slowly make them wary and conscious and suspicious of everything around.
age and experience
Buchamma once strongly reprimanded me for repeating once too often that she was older than me so it was OK if she was rude to me. "Beware of age and experience!" she said. With age come fears and apprehensions and incorrect generalizations based on specific experiences. And old people insist on transferring fears, their judgements to the young and in this process propagate them.
distrust
Naseeruddin Shah's character in Sai Paranjpe's Katha says. "main taala-sanskruti ke bilkul virruddh hoon!". And of course gets taken for a ride all through the movie even until the end.
Have been trying to rebel against the "taala-sanskruti" with little success within myself. But I would like to believe there is more distrust in the world than untrustworthy people..Hope I am still able to transfer this learning when I acquire the requisite age and experience so someone is willing to listen!!
In cobra country a mongoose was born one day who didn't want to fight cobras or anything else. The word spread from mongoose to mongoose that there was a mongoose who didn't want to fight cobras.
If he didn't want to fight anything else, it was his own business, but it was the duty of every mongoose to kill cobras or be killed by cobras.
"Why?"asked the peacelike mongoose, and the word went round that the strange new mongoose was not only pro-cobra and anti-mongoose but intellectually curious and against the ideals and traditions of mongoosism.
"He is crazy,"cried the young's mongoose's father.
"He's sick, "said his mother.
"He is a coward,"shouted his brothers.
"He's a mongoosexual,"whispered his sisters.
Strangers who had never laid eyes on the peacelike mongoose remembered that they had seen him crawling on his stomach, or trying cobra hoods, or plotting the violent overthrow of Mongoodia.
"I am trying to use reason and intelligence,"said the strange new mongoose.
"Reason is six-sevenths of treason," said one of his neighbours.
"Intelligence is what the enemy uses,"said another.
Finally the rumour spread that the mongoose had venom in his sting, like a cobra, and he was tried, convicted by a show of paws, and condemned to banishment.
Moral:
Ashes to ashes, and clay to clay,
if the enemy doesn't get you your own folks may.
EOP (End Of Parable)
suspicion
Today seems to be a day of extremes for my restless mind! Crazy parable and these are exactly the kind of conclusive morals that seem to help people justify their own acts. The world out there is bad, if you have to survive you have to learn to deal with it and manipulate it and find your way through it. How many times do we communicate this to our children? How we slowly make them wary and conscious and suspicious of everything around.
age and experience
Buchamma once strongly reprimanded me for repeating once too often that she was older than me so it was OK if she was rude to me. "Beware of age and experience!" she said. With age come fears and apprehensions and incorrect generalizations based on specific experiences. And old people insist on transferring fears, their judgements to the young and in this process propagate them.
distrust
Naseeruddin Shah's character in Sai Paranjpe's Katha says. "main taala-sanskruti ke bilkul virruddh hoon!". And of course gets taken for a ride all through the movie even until the end.
Have been trying to rebel against the "taala-sanskruti" with little success within myself. But I would like to believe there is more distrust in the world than untrustworthy people..Hope I am still able to transfer this learning when I acquire the requisite age and experience so someone is willing to listen!!
agnostic no more???
or like Anand says, if we consider only a moment of time in our life, we are always hypocrites as we are away from what we aspire to be (which is what we typically profess). but if we are consciously on the way towards being what we aspire to, we can safely say we are not hypocrites :)
today morning I don't feel like an agnostic :)
today morning I don't feel like an agnostic :)
the impossibility of limiting greed!
sold the Scorpio last month (though like Martin says, I should have given it away, or rather paid for someone to relieve me of the guilt:).
it took me 6+ months to actually do the deed. despite the fact that it did not make practical sense to own such a huge vehicle, considering it was used mostly only by me, that it guzzled fuel, that it occupied an unjust amount of road space, that it has been demonstrably dangerous for people outside the vehicle, that it was one of the many representations of what I profess not to believe in (economic inequity, being an environmental hazard, ostentation, creates a physical cocoon that limits our visibility to the world outside and a painful overload on the already screaming crowd and traffic in cities! but why then did it take more than 6 months to decide.
because I was caught in a comfort zone and was actually thinking how life would be without a car! How would I commute to work? What if it rained? Our house is fairly remote, away from civilization. Would riding a bike make me more vulnerable to being mugged, would bike commutes be more tiring? This really was distressing.
I realized how complexed life had become. And finally the trigger for the actual act was to see how I could simplify my life. Not be driven by the watch and distances and comfort. Is it possible for me to take life easy? Do I want to continue to be this workaholic manager rushing about from one place to another and not slowing down and reflecting and nursing this sinking feeling in my heart that has become a habit almost!
A decade ago I would have scoffed at the thought that I would actually deem to buy 2 cars and be hesitant to let go of one. That I was beyond temptation and it was not possible for me to succumb to this kind of vulnerability, of being obsessed with some things that I would find it difficult to let go. That material things did not matter to me, that there is a limit to the conveniences human beings need and I could stop at a point that I was completely aware of even then!
My needs are so limited. I did never have more than 8-10 shirts, not more than 4-5 trousers, i can eat at any place, all I need is food, enough clothing, basic shelter, love, music and friends...but how things creep in! Before I knew there were elements of our lifestyle that at best could be called atrocious for a 2 member family! a 2000 sq feet house, 2 cars, 2 bikes, a home theater, cassettes, CDs, movies, more furniture than our house can handle...
I thought “limited greed”, though I had not heard of the phrase then, was possible. am beginning to realize it is an oxymoron. Greed is there or it ain't . It is only limited by our capabilities to acquire (that doesn't only include physical or mental capabilities but also the amount of guilt our conscience is capable of gulping and forgetting), and that limitation is a frustrated one. the slightest opportunity we get, we strive to attain more! And then some of us graciously let go a bit to assuage the bruised conscience...like “selling” the second car and bragging (blogging) about it !
it took me 6+ months to actually do the deed. despite the fact that it did not make practical sense to own such a huge vehicle, considering it was used mostly only by me, that it guzzled fuel, that it occupied an unjust amount of road space, that it has been demonstrably dangerous for people outside the vehicle, that it was one of the many representations of what I profess not to believe in (economic inequity, being an environmental hazard, ostentation, creates a physical cocoon that limits our visibility to the world outside and a painful overload on the already screaming crowd and traffic in cities! but why then did it take more than 6 months to decide.
because I was caught in a comfort zone and was actually thinking how life would be without a car! How would I commute to work? What if it rained? Our house is fairly remote, away from civilization. Would riding a bike make me more vulnerable to being mugged, would bike commutes be more tiring? This really was distressing.
I realized how complexed life had become. And finally the trigger for the actual act was to see how I could simplify my life. Not be driven by the watch and distances and comfort. Is it possible for me to take life easy? Do I want to continue to be this workaholic manager rushing about from one place to another and not slowing down and reflecting and nursing this sinking feeling in my heart that has become a habit almost!
A decade ago I would have scoffed at the thought that I would actually deem to buy 2 cars and be hesitant to let go of one. That I was beyond temptation and it was not possible for me to succumb to this kind of vulnerability, of being obsessed with some things that I would find it difficult to let go. That material things did not matter to me, that there is a limit to the conveniences human beings need and I could stop at a point that I was completely aware of even then!
My needs are so limited. I did never have more than 8-10 shirts, not more than 4-5 trousers, i can eat at any place, all I need is food, enough clothing, basic shelter, love, music and friends...but how things creep in! Before I knew there were elements of our lifestyle that at best could be called atrocious for a 2 member family! a 2000 sq feet house, 2 cars, 2 bikes, a home theater, cassettes, CDs, movies, more furniture than our house can handle...
I thought “limited greed”, though I had not heard of the phrase then, was possible. am beginning to realize it is an oxymoron. Greed is there or it ain't . It is only limited by our capabilities to acquire (that doesn't only include physical or mental capabilities but also the amount of guilt our conscience is capable of gulping and forgetting), and that limitation is a frustrated one. the slightest opportunity we get, we strive to attain more! And then some of us graciously let go a bit to assuage the bruised conscience...like “selling” the second car and bragging (blogging) about it !
Sunday 15 July 2007
if sharks were people...
"If sharks were people," his landlady's little daughter asked Mr. K, "would they be nicer to the little fish?" "Of course," he said, "if sharks were people, they would have strong boxes built in the sea for little fish. There they would put in all sorts of food plants and little animals, too. They would see to it that the boxes always had fresh water, and they would take absolutely every sort of sanitary measure. When, for example, a little fish would injure his fin, it would be immediately bandaged so that he would not die on the sharks before his time had come. In order that the little fish would never be sad, there would be big water parties from time to time; for happy fish taste better than sad ones.
Of course, there would be schools in the big boxes as well. There the little fish would learn how to swim into the mouths of the sharks. They would need, for example, geography so that they could find the sharks, lazing around somewhere. The main subject would naturally be the moral education of the little fish. They would be taught that the grandest, most beautiful thing is for a little fish to offer himself happily, and that they must all believe in the sharks, above all when they say that they will provide for a beautiful future. One would let the little fish know that this future is only assured when they learn obedience....
If sharks were people, there would of course be arts as well. There would he beautiful pictures of sharks' teeth, all in magnificent colours, of their mouths and throats as pure playgrounds where one can tumble and play. The theatres on the bottom of the sea would offer plays showing heroic little fish swimming enthusiastically down the throats of the sharks.... There would certainly be religion. It would teach that true life begins in the sharks' bellies... In short, there could only be culture in the sea if sharks were people."
From 'Kalendergeschichten' by Bertolt Brecht.
Of course, there would be schools in the big boxes as well. There the little fish would learn how to swim into the mouths of the sharks. They would need, for example, geography so that they could find the sharks, lazing around somewhere. The main subject would naturally be the moral education of the little fish. They would be taught that the grandest, most beautiful thing is for a little fish to offer himself happily, and that they must all believe in the sharks, above all when they say that they will provide for a beautiful future. One would let the little fish know that this future is only assured when they learn obedience....
If sharks were people, there would of course be arts as well. There would he beautiful pictures of sharks' teeth, all in magnificent colours, of their mouths and throats as pure playgrounds where one can tumble and play. The theatres on the bottom of the sea would offer plays showing heroic little fish swimming enthusiastically down the throats of the sharks.... There would certainly be religion. It would teach that true life begins in the sharks' bellies... In short, there could only be culture in the sea if sharks were people."
From 'Kalendergeschichten' by Bertolt Brecht.
Tuesday 19 June 2007
the impossibility of objectivity
Shyam advises me to write a journal about this new phase in life that I am going through. The people I am meeting, the varied experiences I have...he says it will be beautiful to write it all down and then reflect on it later. Will be entertaining of course, but will also show how my thoughts evolved over the period.
Frankly this has been a very tempting thought for me...I have even attempted it once or twice but funnily enough, I experience writer's block even when I know it is only me who is going to read it. (Ninad was commenting on my inherent shyness leading me to write better than I speak. But I think the shyness manifests itself in my writing also. )
What would one want to document? Bare facts or our interpretations at that moment in time.
If we want to just document facts, there is an issue. The moment one tries to pen (or keyboard) this, our interpretations of the events we want to document start clouding us. We start thinking of what we felt, what we perceived. We just can not keep aside our reactions (deep or subtle though they may be) when we remember an event can we? Memories are not just bare facts. They are not stored in our head as they are (how dry and boring life would be if that were true :) . They are interconnected with existing data and thats how we remember. So objective memory seems almost to be a myth. (Kurosawa's 'Rashomon') The memory is clouded, cajoled, coaxed into being modified by earlier memories. I read that even physiogically that is the way memory cells work. Also our experiences largely determine what we chose to observe, unknown to ourselves. I have experienced it numerous times. With Ninad and me, it is a ritual to spend time reliving our school days whenever we meet. Quite often we speak of the same set of people, same incidents and so many times we have seen that he remembers different aspects and different people who are part of an incident, I remember different ones. In fact we have seen contradictions between our versions many times!
Below is an extract from a book a dear friend is writing on educational theories...a comparision between "filling" a page with text and "filling" a brain with knowledge.
- The text I enter will remain in this exact form, potentially forever. Human memory, on the other hand, is extremely gist- and meaning-oriented. Nothing is stored or recalled in verbatim form, unless that were the intention (as when we memorise a poem).
- The page I type on is blank, and new sentences, when typed, do not transform old sentences (thankfully!). Human memory, on the other hand, works by incorporating new information into organised, existing information. Further, the new information transforms the old: thus if I read something about birds of
- The file I type in is stored in a folder, within another folder, within another and so on…And within the file the information is stored in a linear fashion, one sentence following the other. Human memory, on the other hand, is organised in exquisitely complicated and subtle ways – in fact, depending on the context, different memories appear to be connected, and therefore to elicit each other.
If we want to document our impressions, I think people rarely achieve such a level of spontaniety. We are constantly analysing ourselves, analysing our reactions, our impressions, comparing it with the personality we believe we are, juxtaposing it with the public stands we have taken in the past and hence the impression we think people have of us. These keep interfering with what we write what, we document. (Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle).
I think memory is not layers of experiences neatly laid on top of each other but a grand collage of numerous events, facts interlinked and networked with each other. When a new piece of data enters the mind, there is no telling which piece of existing data the brain will chose to bring forth and make an association with. (with me it is determined largely by my "mood"),
When we talk or say something or even write, we start imagining who is going to read this, what their responses will likely be, how this fits into your known image and whether you are wanting to negate it or reaffirm it...in fact I realized recently that my thoughts are almost always in the form of conversations.
There is a topic that bothers me and I am thinking about it, I imagine a dialogue with someone I think is equally or more interested in the same topic (it is usually someone who contradicts my view). This helps me evolve and formulate my thoughts and sometimes detect lacunae in my arguments through difficult questions the other person asks. Of course depending on how strongly I feel about the topic I either choose to react to the difficult question or bypass it and ask a counter question instead! Most of our opinions don't have much worth by themselves. They exist in the context of other opinions...if there was an objective truth this may not have to be the case...things would matter irrespective.
Sree Kant once happened to say, "thats my objective opinion...and I realize this phrase is an oxymoron" It is true isn't it? I think we just have a plethora of subjectivities that we all indulge in and each one of us chooses the subjectivity that is most comforting, and most comfortable to be with. Some adventurous types try to challenge it and live a difficult life...in a different kind of subjectivity! Objectivity could as well be an over rated myth!
Tuesday 22 May 2007
the impossibility of empathy?
In a teacher program, I was in a conversation with a teacher from one of these elite schools about issues with govt schools and the need for an equally if not more rigorous development programs for rural schools and govt school teachers.
I was trying to make a point about the need to empathize with them, need to see things from their point of view and she was completely in agreement...with the caveat that the discussion and decision should be based on logic! "I can talk to anyone so long as they are logical!".
that we should address any such issue of disparity through a supposedly universal and objective frame of reference "we" call logic!how patronizing and indulgent we are to the simplicity, earthy spirituality, naive common sense of our rural counterparts. how we enjoy intellectualizing about this; how we indulgently smile at their naivete and inability to deal with larger complex issues even if they are related to "rural development"; addressing their very existence and livelihood; and maybe making an ever so slight dent in our pay packets by virtue of a slight increase in taxes.
But how rigid we are in our definitions of logic? How clear we are of what is acceptable and what is not? And how we are so clear (almost adamant) in expecting that everyone in the world irrespective of cultural, economic differences or with differences in experiences and world view conform to our definition of logic.
this is the point of contention for me (and this does confuse me no end). how we have our own notion of what is logical, what is rational, what is efficient, what is efficacious and what people in "those villages" need. We determine what basic needs are and what luxuries are. We do this based on our frame of reference, our world vision driven by material acquisition, desire for choice, efficiency in service delivery, consumer rights. We use these criteria to determine what development should ultimately mean and what the poor should really be asking for...
would we ever be able to empathize with the struggle a dalit community has gone through for centuries and how big a deal it is for them to be able to draw water from the same well as an upper caste family does? choice is a far removed and alien concept for them. luxury is a complete unknown, our definition of efficiency is something he will not relate to...he doesn't even know how the heck "good education" is going to give him all these opportunities that we speak of...and he couldn't care less. he wants food, clothing, shelter, dignity and respect a human being deserves!
and some of them have forgotten to ask for even that. You just have to look into the eyes of the people begging in the streets of Bangalore. They are not ashamed or worried...they don't even know they are deprived!the kind of decisions we make on behalf of society even if they are in casual beer conversations or in serious arguments are appalling to say the least!
- a stable job is far better than independent farming which is so risk prone...let the large corporates deal with risks; the rural poor imprisoned in un-ventilated, crowded garment factories do earn a regular stable income don't they? good accomodation, respectable work hours and a decent living standard is higher in Maslow's hierarchy. now they need to work harder for it!
- development means urbanization; what is wrong in a poor man aspiring for a car ? or admission for his children in an elite urban school. Of course not, nothing is wrong. but yeah it will take them centuries if at all they achieve this state and personal dignity can wait until then! no matter if in the process we create a multi-layered society and a clear economic hierarchy!
- equity means doing things to put the poor on the path to a lifestyle equivalent to ours...look at Dhirubhai Ambani, he was a gas station attendant. didn't he make it???? of course there are less than a 100 people who are allowed and capable of achieving this given the circumstances they come from.
- reservation for a generation of the underprivileged is really more than enough, now the next generation is already on the path to progress, the Khairlanji massacre and huge dropout rates caused due to lack of relevance in education notwithstanding.
- of course I want my maid servant's son to get the same education my child does...but why in the same school??? why can't "their" schools be improved to make it like my son's? I pay my taxes don't I?
at risk of this sounding like a digression (but its my blog isn't it :) I am reading Kancha Ilaiah's "Why I am not a Hindu?" It deals with this same point in a completely different context. an underlying point one can not deny. how definitions of rationale, frames of reference, perspectives on social norms can vary, and how respecting diversity really means looking at different things and being accepting within a framework that has to be far more basic than logic and rationale. a fundamental framework that demands human dignity, human rights and freedom as a basis!
I was trying to make a point about the need to empathize with them, need to see things from their point of view and she was completely in agreement...with the caveat that the discussion and decision should be based on logic! "I can talk to anyone so long as they are logical!".
that we should address any such issue of disparity through a supposedly universal and objective frame of reference "we" call logic!how patronizing and indulgent we are to the simplicity, earthy spirituality, naive common sense of our rural counterparts. how we enjoy intellectualizing about this; how we indulgently smile at their naivete and inability to deal with larger complex issues even if they are related to "rural development"; addressing their very existence and livelihood; and maybe making an ever so slight dent in our pay packets by virtue of a slight increase in taxes.
But how rigid we are in our definitions of logic? How clear we are of what is acceptable and what is not? And how we are so clear (almost adamant) in expecting that everyone in the world irrespective of cultural, economic differences or with differences in experiences and world view conform to our definition of logic.
this is the point of contention for me (and this does confuse me no end). how we have our own notion of what is logical, what is rational, what is efficient, what is efficacious and what people in "those villages" need. We determine what basic needs are and what luxuries are. We do this based on our frame of reference, our world vision driven by material acquisition, desire for choice, efficiency in service delivery, consumer rights. We use these criteria to determine what development should ultimately mean and what the poor should really be asking for...
would we ever be able to empathize with the struggle a dalit community has gone through for centuries and how big a deal it is for them to be able to draw water from the same well as an upper caste family does? choice is a far removed and alien concept for them. luxury is a complete unknown, our definition of efficiency is something he will not relate to...he doesn't even know how the heck "good education" is going to give him all these opportunities that we speak of...and he couldn't care less. he wants food, clothing, shelter, dignity and respect a human being deserves!
and some of them have forgotten to ask for even that. You just have to look into the eyes of the people begging in the streets of Bangalore. They are not ashamed or worried...they don't even know they are deprived!the kind of decisions we make on behalf of society even if they are in casual beer conversations or in serious arguments are appalling to say the least!
- a stable job is far better than independent farming which is so risk prone...let the large corporates deal with risks; the rural poor imprisoned in un-ventilated, crowded garment factories do earn a regular stable income don't they? good accomodation, respectable work hours and a decent living standard is higher in Maslow's hierarchy. now they need to work harder for it!
- development means urbanization; what is wrong in a poor man aspiring for a car ? or admission for his children in an elite urban school. Of course not, nothing is wrong. but yeah it will take them centuries if at all they achieve this state and personal dignity can wait until then! no matter if in the process we create a multi-layered society and a clear economic hierarchy!
- equity means doing things to put the poor on the path to a lifestyle equivalent to ours...look at Dhirubhai Ambani, he was a gas station attendant. didn't he make it???? of course there are less than a 100 people who are allowed and capable of achieving this given the circumstances they come from.
- reservation for a generation of the underprivileged is really more than enough, now the next generation is already on the path to progress, the Khairlanji massacre and huge dropout rates caused due to lack of relevance in education notwithstanding.
- of course I want my maid servant's son to get the same education my child does...but why in the same school??? why can't "their" schools be improved to make it like my son's? I pay my taxes don't I?
at risk of this sounding like a digression (but its my blog isn't it :) I am reading Kancha Ilaiah's "Why I am not a Hindu?" It deals with this same point in a completely different context. an underlying point one can not deny. how definitions of rationale, frames of reference, perspectives on social norms can vary, and how respecting diversity really means looking at different things and being accepting within a framework that has to be far more basic than logic and rationale. a fundamental framework that demands human dignity, human rights and freedom as a basis!
why education!
extract from "Schooling: the hidden agenda" - by Daniel Quinn.
Within our cultural matrix, every medium tells us that the schools exist to prepare children for a successful and fulfilling life in our civilization (and are therefore failing). This is beyond argument, beyond doubt, beyond question. In Ishmael I said that the voice of Mother Culture speaks to us from every newspaper and magazine article, every movie, every sermon, every book, every parent, every teacher, every school administrator, and what she has to say about the schools is that they exist to prepare children for a successful and fulfilling life in our civilization (and are therefore failing). Once we step outside our cultural matrix, this voice no longer fills our ears and we're free to ask some new questions. Suppose the schools aren't failing? Suppose they're doing exactly what we really want them to do--but don't wish to examine and acknowledge?
Granted that the schools do a poor job of preparing children for a successful and fulfilling life in our civilization, but what things do they do excellently well? Well, to begin with, they do a superb job of keeping young people out of the job market. Instead of becoming wage-earners at age twelve or fourteen, they remain consumers only--and they consume billions of dollars worth of merchandise, using money that their parents earn. Just imagine what would happen to our economy if overnight the high schools closed their doors. Instead of having fifty million active consumers out there, we would suddenly have fifty million unemployed youth. It would be nothing short of an economic catastrophe.
Of course the situation was very different two hundred years ago, when we were still a primarily agrarian society. Youngsters were expected and needed to become workers at age ten, eleven, and twelve. For the masses, a fourth, fifth, or sixth-grade education was deemed perfectly adequate. But as the character of our society changed, fewer youngsters were needed for farm work, and the enactment of child-labor laws soon made it impossible to put ten-, eleven-, and twelve-year-olds to work in factories. It was necessary to keep them off the streets--and where better than in schools? Naturally, new material had to be inserted into the curriculum to fill up the time. It didn't much matter what it was. Have them memorize the capitals of every state. Have them memorize the principle products of every state. Have them learn the steps a bill takes in passing Congress. No one wondered or cared if these were things kids wanted to know or needed to know--or would ever need to know. No one wondered or ever troubled to find out if the material being added to the curriculum was retained. The educators didn't want to know, and, really, what difference would it make? It didn't matter that, once learned, they were immediately forgotten. It filled up some time. The law decreed that an eighth-grade education was essential for every citizen, and so curriculum writers provided material needed for an eighth-grade education.
Monday 30 April 2007
there was a bird in the house yesterday
I was sitting in the basement pretending to work on the comp while Jimmy Page was hollering away in the foreground...I heard this flutter of wings and knew there was a bird in the house. poor guy. was this amazingly 'cute' (can not for my life think of any other adjective which could rightly describe it) little owl, around 7-8 inches high. he had found himself inside the house and instinctively knew he was imprisoned in a way. kept trying to fly away through this glass pane in the loft of our house and ended up banging and hurting himself. the guy was absolutely terrified.
the challenge was to slowly guide him out of the house...and realized how difficult it is to handle a bird that was so afraid, a bird that can see lesser when there is bright light, a bird that was considered scary but was just so beautiful at close quarters that after I overcame the initial nervousness just did not want to let him go...and moreover when it is dark he is comfortable you are not! I tried switching off all the lights, swithcing them on, throwing things in the loft so I could coax him out of that place. he was constantly banging against the glass paned window trying to fly out through the glass. took a good half hour while he travelled all over the house with me opening every window, switching on every light so it was darker outside and he would know thats where he wanted to go...finally it was sheer chance that he found himself flying out of the front door.
Actually I haven't felt this emotional pang for anything non-human until now. Shaddy (the dog that has adopted us among 2 other families that he has) was possibly the one that came closest; but this owl, the fear in his eyes, the absolute helplessness, coming from a bird that is usually associated with horror and eerieness. he was just so lovely. You should see the intricate patterns on his wings and the big eyes staring back at you while turning round the 270 degrees that he could move his neck around through and desperately trying to find an escape. I wanted to gently lift him, hug and him and tell him I didn't mean any harm! and that I would do anything to help him...
and NO I did not take any pictures...did not even occur to me and even if it did I wouldn't have wanted to petrify him further with a flashcamera!
the challenge was to slowly guide him out of the house...and realized how difficult it is to handle a bird that was so afraid, a bird that can see lesser when there is bright light, a bird that was considered scary but was just so beautiful at close quarters that after I overcame the initial nervousness just did not want to let him go...and moreover when it is dark he is comfortable you are not! I tried switching off all the lights, swithcing them on, throwing things in the loft so I could coax him out of that place. he was constantly banging against the glass paned window trying to fly out through the glass. took a good half hour while he travelled all over the house with me opening every window, switching on every light so it was darker outside and he would know thats where he wanted to go...finally it was sheer chance that he found himself flying out of the front door.
Actually I haven't felt this emotional pang for anything non-human until now. Shaddy (the dog that has adopted us among 2 other families that he has) was possibly the one that came closest; but this owl, the fear in his eyes, the absolute helplessness, coming from a bird that is usually associated with horror and eerieness. he was just so lovely. You should see the intricate patterns on his wings and the big eyes staring back at you while turning round the 270 degrees that he could move his neck around through and desperately trying to find an escape. I wanted to gently lift him, hug and him and tell him I didn't mean any harm! and that I would do anything to help him...
and NO I did not take any pictures...did not even occur to me and even if it did I wouldn't have wanted to petrify him further with a flashcamera!
Saturday 28 April 2007
freedom
funny really. I wonder if we tend to make too big a deal about freedom. I have had a holiday today, noone stopping me from doing exactly what I wanted to do, doing all those things we presumably don't have time to do otherwise...and then there is today...spent more than half the day 'catching up on email', doing some 'work', justified my claim to dedication by sending a few 'official' mails at 7pm on a saturday! what did I do with the temporary freedom I had, nought! took me more than 16 hrs to get to this computer and the keyboard and doing what presumably has been my passion in life...writing!! or does it really take a long time for some mere mortals like me to break out of the internal shackles that bind us to this compulsion for 'productive work'. Anand would promptly quote Camus and say you are among "those silent men who, throughout the world, endure the life that has been made for them" or better still " The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." . Sreekanth would probably do the same. PK and Panya (my alter egos in more senses than one) would call it intellectual masturbation. Ekta is convinced she will go mad if she doesn't work for a day. My father never worried about these things...never had the time to. Nishwath just silently deals with this, she considers this empty intellectualization. little wonder that she doesn't know about this blog...yet :) I think some of us are just condemned to a life of boredom. reminds me of someone (don't remember who) who said, human nature is determined by his/her social interactions. In itself it is nought.
nought is what I experienced today! yet again...
nought is what I experienced today! yet again...
Saturday 21 April 2007
i don't really know...
It came as a bit of relief for me, when I first encountered the term agnosticism, during one of those chance argument sessions which is common in the so-called formative years of our lives (as if we ever take a complete form). I first analysed this in the context of theism vs atheism...and then conveniently extrapolated this to other realms of life: capitalism vs socialism, existentialism vs shoonya-vada, reservation vs anti-reservation or bhindi masala vs baingan bharta.
And relief enhanced to happiness when I realized that this need not necessarily stop me from taking positions and even stances in life. So through my teenage in those seemingly interminable canteen conversations, I could quite happily vacillate between varying versions of idealism. From moderate rightism to a frustrated leftism, from compulsive spirituality to restrained rationality. I traversed the entire spectra of political, social and personal ideals. This helped me move from an acceptance of shy retirement to bumbling intellectual eloquence. At the end of it all it could be just a question of taking a position and engaging with life. The engagement being the priority rather than the stance.
I don't really know...
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