Should I raise my children as psychopaths?

Should I raise my children as psychopaths? 

Were Plato and the ilk preaching against the open and free society? They did have their ethics based on the intrinsic value of the ethics and nothing else. There was a scope left for the powerful to define the foundations of ethics according to what suited them and therefore conform the society to their rule. 

When someone goes to a luxury hotel, the services of the employees are like those of slaves of the older times. It’s remarkable, for the garb in which a customer is able to ‘enjoy’ these services come under the regimen of free market enterprise, the merit based culture and the competition selecting the very best. 

However, we have to realise that in the making of a successful man of this world, several factors are at work and many of them are outside of the control of the individual. A female, black, disabled,poor  Somali entrepreneur would not be able to get the same bang for his buck as a white, privileged Swedish man would. This much is glaringly clear that efforts are not always the straightest way to success, the circumstances matter too. 

Under the veil of our prejudiced mind, the mind that wants to appropriate whatever is advantageous for it, we easily disregard the hurdles that others might have had to face for achieving the same level of success as we did. My uncle had once remarked that anyone with the brain of Einstein would have been able to come out with the theory that he came up with, even if it was the case of a black man in slavery. He said that he wouldn’t want to help anyone with education and financial help, for it would reduce his relative position in society if such a thing was to be operationalised. “And any ways, it’s their own Karma”

The last thought struck me as something viscerally wrong in our conceptualisation of the world. We have built a system of ethics that has radically different levels of treatment based on the position of the person in a society. Ethics become the chains that keep the oppressed, well oppressed. But then again is that so? 

One cannot say why or what exactly turned us into civilised people who can read and think and neatly fold the napkins before disposing them into appropriate dustbins. The modelling effect that taught us many of our unconscious learnings is invisible to the naked eye. Not that we cannot see others, but precisely because we see the going ons at all times, we ignore it. Just like your nose, but the moment you start paying attention, you can see both!

The root of the question of ethics is that of the source. It’s nearly impossible to get an impartial one, without leaving rationality behind and it’s very nearly impossible to have a perfect code, if it’s impossible to change. Certain things in the society have the power to change the thinking of the majority. This becomes the new ‘right’ against the old ‘right’. Almost always, the definition of what is right is related to what has been happening so far and in which book it’s support comes from, but then a time comes when everything changes, even if slightly so. But was it the time which played the magic or was it because of some individual. 

The most emphatic phenomenon of the effect of an individuals will over an entire society comes from observing the rise of religions. India had long been an agricultural society, an expanding society where the land was still ample. As the boundaries needed to be constantly expanded, the priests could play the role of the explorer, depending upon the customary donations to make their living. They would spread civilisational ethos to the tribals and all that deserved that they be rewarded. Ages went by, agriculture covered all the lands that could’ve been covered and even then the priests wanted their customary fees, for a job that wasn’t relevant anymore. 

What was being done was good and should be continued, because the society hasn’t collapsed. Probably that was the line of thought that enabled the Priests 2600 years ago in India to keep on demanding the sacrifice of animals, money and sex services from their congregation. Buddha realised the farce, that was his Nirvana. He made an atheist religion, expounded a scientific outlook and an open society. His morals still had the fear of divine punishment as the backing, but  it worked and soon India became almost wholly Buddhist. 

However, that wasn’t the point, that was me digressing. The point is that around that time, the Indian trade with Rome was making the merchant class fabulously rich. They needed to change the Hindu feudal morals that was making them guilty and unhappy, for no reason. Buddhism was a perfect company. 

A thousand years later, the Roman trade collapsed. Society relapsed into an agrarian model, where the domestic product was the produce of the farmer and to appropriate it another system of ethics was required, that of the Hindu hierarchal society and of the divisions. This ensured that masses toiled and the elites could enjoy their hard work without guilt. Sunshine and laddoos! That might also be the reason that the ultra rightist parties of India want to go back to that glorious time. 

Leap forward to today, the 22nd of September in the year of the lord two thousand and sixteen. I have seen the heroines of the 60’s reverting to clothing of the 20’s when they wanted to appear ‘cultured and good’ and those of 2020’s reverting to that of 80’s to do the same thing. Old people of every generation determine what is ‘good’ and that’s how it goes, not only with the clothing, but with morality and language and culture.

Information is pretty free today compared to the stone tablet era and yet we haven’t become the liberated, thinking individuals that would have broken the shackles of the ‘information less’ stone age. Still, society pretty much functions on the basis of ‘what is old is good’ and ‘the new is against the culture’ paradigm. Maybe it’s how the wiring of the brain is done, to form some sort of sense of the world. To change it would mean attacking the core of our beliefs lie, where the illusionary ‘self’ resides and to change that would take so much psychic energy that we prefer status quo of the ‘flawed but okay (flokay)” old philosophy to the ‘perfect but ever changing ( panging)’ new one. 

These are the contexts laid bare.The nature of the human mind to idealise a certain philosophy as good against the evidence of it’s rottenness makes the initially good philosophy a shield to do all sorts of shits. Christians massacred millions in the new world, in the name of piety. Hindus legalised slavery in the name of Karma and all the way to today when we are turning humans into robots in guise of meritocracy and constant flashy optimism to live a good life, which like a rich man’s house is filled mostly with empty winds. 

What about goals of life? Surely, if a person doesn’t develop the good bad paradigm, how would they determine where they would want to head? But, as I already said, nobility and radicalisation has done more wrongs than a clueless ‘dude’ could ever have. And not knowing the societal good would help them realise their internal definition of ‘good’ and if according to them, good is killing people, then so be it!

It’s too late for me. I already believe in truth and goodness and all sorts of humbug superstitions.Non believers of this creed are termed as psychopaths. But I can turn my children into psychopaths so that they like the leaders of our society can use the farce of ethics, religion and optimistic meritocracy to reach the top and kill me and my wife to get some more cash. And then, and then, and then, I don’t know. Was that the goal? Rewind. 

So ,the top secret plan was to make my children free of the guilts. Human beings are naturally perceptive. They’d empathise with others and set some automatic boundaries on their behaviours. Yes, they wouldn’t kill me I am sure. Further, as they experience the world, without the framework of ethics to guide them/bog them down, they’d align themselves to the Kantian line of thought, that their actions be judged by how they themselves would feel if someone had done the exact same thing to them. 

What about the sins? Overdoing pleasurable things only serves to make you sadder at the end of it, if only because you drop from the happiness cliff. Aren’t ethics instrumental for us in the sense that they help us to cultivate that serenity in life rather than experiencing the brutal ups and downs, the detachment makes us who we are, for otherwise, we wouldn’t be differentiable from our surroundings… I don’t know actually. I think it’s a personal management skill, personality skill that can be learnt without relying on philosophical intellectualisations. 

Respect would have to be earned, artificiality would become redundant and mind games of priests/people they meet in life wouldn’t work on them. I just hope they’re not total a&&holes and psychopaths, not that there’s anything bad with that, it’s just my own chains that constraint me into thinking along those lines!

I am not against the children studying and discovering new value systems after they mature and have developed their own internal sense of good-bad, but until then… I’d let them be free of it all. 

IF your life was a movie

The lives of  a minor character of any move have remarkable consistency generally. It's intentionally done, so as to keep the focus on the main character itself. I think I'd be a side character in my own movie.

The hero has some verve, drive and at the very least, interesting things keep n happening to him. My picture is either some drab art movie where the entire plot is meant to confuse the critics into submission or it's still the opening scene of some hero movie, but the darkness before it starts hasn't lifted yet, so everything is a kind of a prelude.

I only hope, I don't star in some geriatric movie. I don't have any qualms with the oldies, just that the idea of starring in my only movie makes me choose a romcom rather than a cynical end of life film. I've not yet seen a heroine, or a villain or even a grand story. It may be a petite french film, that show without subtitles and are really just monologues, and turn out to be a dream within a dream in the end, with a twist.

This lack of a plot is the writers fault. What should you do in such a movie where the director and the script writer have proved to be absolutely worthless ? One should take charge and tackle the story in whatever manner one feels fit. This way, atlas it wouldn't be a confounding ending.

the ironical thing about philosophy is that it's really overthinking, does formally. Even if I were to succeed, I would only reduce everything to absurdity. That's why you don't have nice little moral of the story in most of the philosophical tales, you take a teaching according to your own level of understanding.

A Panchtantra tale I remember is pertinent to the point. 6 men go up to a holy man and ask him for some sort of a boon. He gives them 6 feathers and tells them to climb a tall mountain, with an instruction to dig wherever their feathers fell.

When the first feather falls, they dig to find bags of wheat and barley. "let's go home. This is more than enough for weeks altogether. The mountain is endless and who knows what troubles lie ahead" But the others disregard him. Eventually he goes back.

Similarly, the second feather falls and they find a roomful of copper coins. The same routine takes place again and again, till finally the 5th feather falls and there are only two men left. It's a room full of diamonds and rubies that they had discovered. "Brother you can't possibly find a richer haul, lets' go back. It's a straight slope ahead and impossible to climb."

 The last man disagrees, " I want to see what destiny has in store for me" He says bravely.

The path is very treacherous and with severe difficulty he reaches the top to see an empty throne. Just as he sits there, a shining crown descends upon him. Soon a blinding pain engulfs him. "What is it" he says between his cries.

"Thank god you came, I had been waiting for centuries for someone to come up and take my place". Saying this, this other man leaves and the 6th man suffers for many centuries to come.

THE END

I never could understand what the tale meant. It could be a cautionary tale about not going too far in the quest of your goal. But how far is too far? And who's to say?

Or it could be telling us that to be happy is to be satisfied with what we have. A person who is forever unsatisfied, can't be happy even if he reaches the top.

I'd like to re-write this tale, but let me re-write my life first.

Direction and Flow, the meaning of my life!

What gives meaning to a work of art? A friend of mine seems to think that it's the flow which does. Is life similar? Does lie also get it's meaning due to the flow that it has? I mean, if my life had to have a flow... then it would probably be a kind of distorted sinusoidal curve... or graph or whatever it's called.

The highs weren't that distorted, just the lows, they became even lower. That's how life works for me and every time I fall, I bales it on my inflated ego from the last high. Even more is the  guilt of enjoying what I had, without thinking about others. There's a guilt in enjoyment, the guilt of having too much fun!

That and that, maybe it's due to how my childhood was. I had a theory that the general direction someone's life is like their parents personality. The combination of their parents personalty determines broadly how events would shape up in their lives and how happily or sadly they lived it. I didn't have any proof for this theory, just an intuition, based on my own life, with it's ups and downs.

As far as philosophy is concerned, I haven't been able to find a unifying theory that would suffice for my entire life, reaching to it's every corner. Maybe, there's no such thing. We change and keep on doing that, making an over reaching theory impossible.

But, if I had to, if I really had to think, then probably I'd say being a stoic would've been a much calmer way of going about it and yet, what's the use of a dispassionate life? So instead of curbing passions, I would try and curb the tendency of getting destroyed due to these passions.

Direction- that's far more important than the speed. The wisdom of choosing direction is something I'd have to cultivate! For more than anything, it's the direction which gives the meaning and let's say it's the flow too, just to humour my old friend.

When You'd Not Prefer the Truth

My faith died several years ago. It was a natural death, no brouhaha involved. Since then, I've been loitering around the ocean of believes, trying to construct a raft of my own to get across. It's not always easy to loose belief, to become someone who's unhinged and clueless about your own concept of the world.

An American Indian was taught the doctrine of original sin and redemption with Christianity. The wise old man asks the priest, "If you'd not told me about this doctrine, would I still have sinned?" The priest says, "well you can't sin if you don't know about it."
The pained reply came, "Then why did you tell me?"

Nowadays, nothing makes sense any more. I preferred the certainty, even if it was false. But, I can't undo it and so, I have to swim in the currents of time. Recently though, I had a thought that even if we are all swimming in a giant virtual reality, the maya of the Hindus, the temporal world of the Abrahamic religions and reality is infinitesimally more complicated.... even then... even at the cost of living in the false world, we do have ONE real thing to hold to.

What I feel, what I've learnt, what I've experienced, they're all real, because they would've been real even if the world is only a virtual reality. Even in a game, you can do all of these and incorporate these into your grander scheme of moving on or whatever.

This thought in fact, gives me the strength to take more risks, to love more and to enjoy my life more. Because, in a world which has been termed false since centuries, these would become the only real things to care about. 

Originality as Slavery

              Originality as Slavery; Everything is possible in India. 

What’s the worst thing that the British did to us ?

Was it the partition, the economic drain, the theory of races and the loss of confidence? 

I think it was something more sinister and something more unplanned. What the perception of imperial intellectual superiority did was to deprive the colonies of their confidence in their faith, beliefs and consequently even any hope of redemption.

Modernity was something alien, foreign, not only in origin but also in development. All sorts of developments came from a mystical land abroad where the fountainhead of all the progress was located. This resulted in the demeaning of the brown/black/yellow man’s experience, the denial fo their reality, the suppression of their self. 

We might argue that it wasn’t their mistake that they were much more advanced and that in lieu of the character of those times, what happened was completely natural and would have happened the other way round too. I am not here to judge on the moralistic aspect of the phenomenon. I can only give my views on the impact that the entire event had on the intellectual sphere of the indigenous people. 

People of the 'orient' suddenly found themselves at a disadvantage. I say suddenly because they were not abreast with the latest developments taking place in Europe at that point of time. The cultural shock was perhaps more than the technological one. End of feudalism, equality of man and the belief in self to think rationally and believe in one’s own experience rather than what has been handed down by ages, were all antithetical to the major streams of thoughts going on at that time in East. 

Science pervaded the colonies with the advent of the modern products, the modern administration and obviously the superior arms. Along with these self evident advancements were the subtle one’s too, the intellectual browbeating and decrying the primitiveness of the eastern belief systems. It’s true that many scholars like Max Muller were prominent in 'orient'al studies and gave due respect to the ancient texts that had reached a very advanced line of reasoning, but then the centuries of dust gathered upon those texts prevented the masses from being aware of their own heritage. 

The consequent disillusionment saw the ‘aping’ of the modern western traditions. Even this wasn’t too bad. Atleast the people would have had a framework within which they would have consequently developed their original thoughts and life experiences, after they had lost their timidity with the foreign and adopted it as their own. 

In the process of ‘revivalism’ of many of these ancient cultures, a counter reaction developed. It was here that the fine lines of modernity and cultural imposition was tightened into a boundary wall. Only what could be derived from the ancient culture was considered good and anyone who tended to disagree was a foreign stooge and anti-nationalist. 

In the subcontinent, such a tendency aggravated communalism, led to partition and also in the intellectual realm produced another stupor, for the reform movements were now warded off with hostility. The chains of past redoubled in their strength, for now they were self imposed and the ways of progress for the East were closed. 

WHY? 

The primary factor, the most important factor that led to this dehumanising experience for entire nations was the military superiority of the men who won them over. It left a psychological scar, a deeply debilitating act of suppression of the originality of the men who were reduced to status of chattel. You can’t reason against victors, but you surely can reason with them. 

Perhaps a vast percentage of Indian population had the same sort of experience in differing guises of caste and religious restrictions, social taboos and then even entire philosophies that prevented the rise of a thinking man ( Read Untouchables, Varna system, Finality of Vedas) . 

Culture isn’t something that is formed a byproduct of the material advancement. Rather it is the framework within which all of the changes take place, it is the cradle that determines the pace and the nature of the growth. Indian culture has evolutionary roots going back thousands of years and it  serves the dual purpose of giving wisdom and binding people to within it’s limits. 

The growth of any civilisation depends on the vigour of it’s people. New information, revelations and discoveries inevitably assist in the advancement. The role of philosophy is to reconcile people to the new emerging reality and simultaneously direct the processes of growth. It is this philosophy that has the power to gradually shape cultures, to shape the institutions that guide a society and give it the ‘incentives’ and ‘disincentives’ to grow and not the other way round as the authors of the book - Why Nations Fail,  Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have hypothesised in their book. 

Who Opposes Change?

Behind the culture of progress that enabled the Europeans to come up with new institutions and patterns of growth was the originality of it’s thinkers. The 'orient'al mind during that time had been so engrossed by it’s strictures and taboos that it didn’t dare to think beyond it’s natural boundaries. 

Furthermore, the progress of many of these nations today is still a struggle between the traditional and the new, the destruction of the unyielding old culture and the ‘imposed’ outside one that is behind all of the progress. 

Unless, there’s a self confidence in the validity of a cultures own experiences and its own developments, the progress even when created by the people living inside the country would be viewed intellectually to be as outside the realm of the culture as possible, even perhaps as a kind of slavery; originality as slavery, yes it’s possible. 

The very fabric of a culture can be counterintuitive to certain types of growths. A hierarchal culture would not support questioning, a culture where social respect is placed at too high a pedestal would not suffer any changes, a culture where religion takes the central position, would not progress at all and stay in the 'heaven' of it's sufferings ( material ones only). 

Again, I do not want to judge any sort existence. Modernity isn't something that is has been nutritious for the human soul. But, I do want to lay a strong case for rebellion against the morasses of dead culture, dead thoughts, dead Gods. They are dead because they are no longer alive in the thoughts of the present generation. We need fearless thoughts and ceaseless self inquiry to develop a framework that validates "our" experiences, "our" truths and "our" lives and not merely of those dead and gone.

Freedom don't care

Practically speaking, the aim of all the hard work that anyone does in their life should be a greater amount of freedom. RighT?

I mean, if you can't what you want to do, really want to do... then what would be the purpose of ever doing the stuff that we do?

Sure, there are greater motivations, like for the sake of science, the universe and so on... but these seem to be choices that we make, simply our choice to further the cause of science. IN other words, by itself science would not have a meaning. It would be a warble of sounds amongst the many that can be produced by a vibrating larynx, and that's it. But, since we attach some meaning to it, we make it something bigger than it is.

So, the work that we do, ensures that our personal meaning gets transmitted to the world. Freedom is what allows us to do that. But, the question, 'the' question is... what if we loose the sight of it/ the meaning of it/ the joy of it doing the work that we do, for the hardness turns our heart cold.

Let me Clarrrrrify

My dad. Maybe everyone has had some kind of issues with their dads. I don't have an issue per sae, just a reformatory zeal to make him see the world in a more kinder, gentler, livelier way. He was in the army for 3 decades. I don't think that he has a 'personal meaning' for living his life anymore. There was a training mind wash, a peer conformity mind wash, an image conformation mind wash and he has been standardised to a stock army officer.

That is, I mean that shouldn't be, but that is sad. The valiant life, the life of glories, but for what. You, the dear reader taking in the retinal messages and converting them into some sort of syntactical patterns from your memories, the 'you' must never ever leave the sight of this meaning. Otherwise, diamonds wouldn't be pieces of stars that seal marriages only pressurised carbons and ice creams wouldn't be the rush of childhood, merely fats and cream.

FIzzLING

The process of maturation, dealing with life stressors and hardships is bound to make us less curiouser and curiouser. It packs us into silos of personality less, grey packing that has the safest security standard, the least mad and the most useless in the same breath.

I remember the joy of finding out that the chocolate feast Ice-cream that I loved, was now offered with a free mango Dolly, I mean that was heaven once. I have the money to eat that everyday today. I don't however, give a rats shit. Not that rats shit too much. They might, I don't have any experience, but the point is that I don't have that excitement towards life anymore. It's the process of dying staring at me and the boredom of going on living is propelling me headlong into it.

Our age doesn't have an overreaching goal/fight/ambition. Just a bunch of facebook noobs that have nothing better to do than getting dressed up/buffed up and showing it to others. I know I am being judgemental, but that's maybe because I don't find meaning in the life that's churning around me, fizzling into endless snores.

The Solution....

The meaning of living on and on - I

I have always wondered, if anything worthwhile is achievable without pain. I don't mean the pain that you undergo doing what you've always wanted to do, like an athlete feels while training for a big match or even what an entrepreneur might feel while doing stuff that's gonna make his dream come true.

The pain I am talking about is the same as that the slaves in the galleys floating in Atlantic in the 18th century felt. They knew that they had to keep working in order to survive, they also knew that the consequences would be swift if they're not followed... but then that isn't the kind of work that inspires passion, desire, hope! 

IN the name of our lord and saviour jesus, let down your arms and kill yourselves. That's a random statement, I don't know where it crept inside from. Maybe I was thinking about all those Crusaders who gave up their lives for something they believed desperately in. Now, I am not judging them, but the fact remains that whatever their motivations might have been, they were pretty pumped in doing whatever they were doing. 

The line of work that we are engaging in, that I engage in offers no redemption, except that it gives the promise of still more work at a higher rate of compensation. There's no meaning to it, even at that point and if I had the courage to give up the dreams of the 'big' life, then there'd be no reason at all to follow through. 

Our culture, the work hard, achieve whatever you dream and losers are just quitters culture doesn't recognise the worth of human existence beyond the paradigm of a cob. We're the part of a system and everyone must work within those very boundaries. It's an efficient system, something that's essential to the survival of the billions who feed off of it and enjoy the luxuries that it provides. But still, why do I search for meaning and why do I abhor this meaningless work? What is wrong with me? 

It's next to impossible to admit that majority of the people aren't happy with the way that things are. It's the reality, of course, and denying it would land you in some mental institute where they'd shock you to acceptance. But, the question is that why should we, I mean all of us we, participate in something that seems to suck the meaning out of my life and give me things that I necessarily didn't want in exchange. Maybe Zuckerberg finds meaning in joining the world, the CEOs find meaning in being rich and powerful and politicians find meaning in controlling other people and so on. Maybe I am not as go getting as them, which is why I don't have the incredible luxury of having meaning in my work. 

The work that most of the people on the globe do feeds off into the global repository of man hours for certain individuals, whose vision is driving the world. I am not even sure if the bankers, financiers, traders, administrators, analysts and myriad other drivers of our world find meaning in their work. I guess, meaning is all about finding what's important to you and then generating the resources to translate that into reality. That's freedom too. And the 'rat race' we are in is about being allowed to translate our personal visions into reality, rather than working for someone else's. 

Long Live the Raj, the Raj is dead

     Long Live the Raj, the Raj is dead

Ghost stories

The English have a saying, “The king is dead, long live the King.” India has taken a straw out of the English hat, for now we too have sayings like, “Long live the Raj, the Raj is dead”.And no, we are not talking about the pale ghosts of the British hovering around in the hills and old Bungalows.

This might be true of all the other post imperial colonies as well, where the structures of exploitation have been readily 'indigenised", the local elite taking over what was the position of the colonialists once, not only in the socio-economic terms, but also in terms of adopting the culture, language, dress, food habits of their former masters. 

Our  Indian independence was the death of the British Raj, but then for the people, the Raj simply never ended. It was a transfer of authority that they saw happening, but the same sort of mentality, institutional structure and public dealing of the Raj continued, with “Desi Sahibs” taking the coveted positions of our new masters. 

People see the Raj everyday, seeped into the uniforms of the police, carrying the same bludgeons. They can see the Raj in the un-responding legislators, running on the orders of their party whips. They can see the Raj in the apathy, the cowardice and ultimately the surrender of their own countrymen. 

Even as the red beaconed cars pass, children would line up the streets to see which which convoy it is, of the Maharajas of the modern times. Then the offices of these ‘Babus’ would be unapproachable, just like in the older times. People would still be beaten for demanding their rights in a similar manner. What is the most disturbing is that this non responsiveness, this brutal use of force against the citizens, this high handedness has become the norm and no one seems to mind!

Orderlies and Batmans

Foreign observers are more venerated in our country. ( Perhaps they’re the only ones who are allowed to speak their minds). One of them had this to say, “ Ostentatious pageantry and grandeur of senior officers was an obvious, visible form of authority. The morning parade and the salute to the commanding officer, the armed sentry at the superintendent’s gate,  and armed escort on their torus were symbols that placed the officers on a high pedestal. A deliberate paternalistic style of governance was created in which a few selected officers took all the decisions for the people.” (Griffiths 1971)

This form of governance was required in the Raj to maintain distance from the masses so that no one could complain, this distance was required to maintain the dignity of the few thousand “Sahibs” ruling over the millions. Tiger hunts and other entertainments were adjunct to propagating the myths of the Raj, thus institutionalising corruption in the ranks of the police. The subordinate officers had to arrange all of the entertainment and shelter for the large visiting party, making bribes, commissions a necessary part of duty. 

The same traditions of senior officers are still visible in a new manner. Since tigers have become rare, there are New Year parties, picnics and official get togethers at “Dak Bungalows”. The expenses for entertaining the senior officials are still passed down to subordinates. The officers are proud of their association with the British legacy. In some offices, the ‘succession list’ coming from the British period are still seen. The same palatial ‘bungalows’, house the present officers, the baton has successfully been passed to the IPS, army, Vice chancellors, collectors, Secretaries of government… and so on. 

There’s a wide gulf between the ‘ruler’ and the ‘ruled’. Class hierarchy even within the force is strict. Constable and middle level officers won’t sit in front of the SP. IPS officers still use constables as personal orderlies ( euphemism for domestic servant).Army officers have a more colourful name, that of the Batman ( no one knows the origin of this one). Drivers, coolies, gardeners, helps, call it by any name; all of them are state employees paid by taxes of people, taken out of their duty to serve whims of ‘sahib log’. The poor Kipling would have been infuriated with the misappropriation of his term for the 'bandar log' ( the monkey people). 

Un-Azaadi in Democracy?

We know that India is an elitist society, but the superior officers take it to scandalous level. The blatant use of official resources in name of cultural traditions is rarely criticised and accepted, to the point that the not accepting these would be considered deviant. 

One of the bitterest fallout of such cultural practices is that the democratic ethos of our society has been damaged to the root. Public institutions stifled by their own damning cultural practices cannot get out to reform themselves. We know that the police needs autonomy, needs an independent investigation department, we know that the IAS needs lateral entry, mid career checks for incompetent officers, we know that the army needs to be organised on more egalitarian lines without breaking it into regional silos, we know that the politicians need to stop interfering in every association/governing body/regulatory organisations. 

There are sporadic outburst of public disgust against the obsolete system. We saw the effects of it in the Anna Hazare’s movement and more recently in the JNU fracas. The consciousness of the people transcended the grumbling in bedrooms to the streets. Against the lathi charge, reminiscent of those six decades back, people demanded their ‘Azaadi’, the freedom to practice their religion, to live with their sexual orientation, to have justice, to be protected against discretion, to have accountability and to implement the constitution that we have given to ourselves. 

 Our sleeping destiny can awake only if implement what  we already know, that the ‘we’ the people of India should realise the power in our hand and exercise it by voting for the right candidate and civil society organisations. Our Independence didn’t come from the top, and our ‘Azaadi’ can’t come from the top, it has to come from within.

The only problem is then, that why do the people of one nation possess the ability and the will to wake up from their slumber and break the chains of the powerful few and why do others not do so and even if they do, they place someone else in that place. Is it the culture that's to be held responsible, or is it the geography, the religion, the race... what is it that allows the essential spark of men to flower and come alive in form of collective progress of a nation? 

Land Acquisition in a Modern State

Domain specificity.

 These two words are enough to explain it all. The misery of the farmer, the problems of land acquisition and the greed of the businessman. The odd thing about the aquisition is that no matter how far apart the two poles of the deal appear to be, they are essentially the same side of different coins. Or was it different sides of the same coin. Does it matter, if you get the gist?

Two parties are involved in the land aquisition business, the land taker and the takee ( a neoligism). The farmer (takee) has been working for years, if not centuries on the same piece of land. The intrinsic property of the soil, the minor fluctuations of the weather and knowledge of a host of local factors determine his ability to put his land to profitable use. The businessman does the same job, assessing intrinsic market value, gauge the minor fluctuations of the stock and credit markets, knowledge of a host of other factors to put his ability to put his resources to a profitable etc.

One shouldn’t bellitle the efforts of the farmer who is just as much of an entrepreneur as the businessman, if not more. The only difference is perhaps that of margins and that of the resources available. The businessman is able to outbid the farmer and not vice versa. In the end it all comes down to the output that a piece of land can achieve.

This story is older and is perhaps a sort of quid pro pro. The land that originally belonged to the hunter gatherers was taken over by the farmers.The hunter gatherer that the farmers displaced would have required twenty times the amount of land that the farmer did for the same level of food resources. The industrialist would require some 400 times less. The hunter gatherer has been avenged, the cycle of development continues and farmers would one day become extinct just as they killed off the hunters. 

To be honest though, we don’t really care about the farmers do we? If we only had humanitarian considerations in our minds, then help of some sort would have been forthcoming for the landless labrourers, who are the real losers in any deal of land aquisition. We care about our own food getting expensive, we are worried that one day, there wouldn’t be enough food for all of us to go by and we all know what happens when there isn’t enough food to run a densely packed metropolitian city. The people start leaving of course and settling again in the rural areas. You weren’t thinking of cannabilistic wars were you?

Government tries to support the farmers. They try incentives, subsidies and then a uniquely Indian phenomenon…. loan waivers ( which of course benefit the rich farmers the most). The upshot of all this is, that like an ailing patient kept on drugs, the agricultural sector too has been surviving on the tetherhooks. World over the governments don’t want to realise the painful fact that for the most part, the days of massive labour oriented agriculture are over. In an industrial world, where we consume everything on the industrial scale, the need of the hour is to have industrial level farms. 

It is here that the energies of private companies need to be diverted. Corporate run farms, with huge R&D and competitive markets that rewards the most efficient. This vision might horrify some with the prospects of grasp of profit hungry Blackberry boys on the vital issue of food security, but this picture isn’t too far from the on ground reality. The supply of the fertilizers, seeds, equipments and technical know how is already managed by these ‘companies’. As agriculture becomes unsustainable for the smaller farmers, the grasp of rich farmers would only increase. The climate shocks, the vast amount of R&D required would ultimately lead us there. 

The very first ‘wars’ in the true sense were fought by the hunter gatherer groups against the farmers .The hunter gatherers were trying to defend their turf upon which they had survived for thousands of years. The entire ecosystem was kept in balance by consuming only as much as was sustainable in the long term and by having a de facto cap on the population because of a lack of ability to store any food. All the species had their share in the environment and as far as any environmentalist is concerned, it was pure heaven. 

The farmers brutally burnt down forests, over hoarded food for leaner times and with their primitive methods, destroyed vast tracts of land. They were seen by the ‘wild’ men as being just as destructive as the ‘industrialists’ are seen by the farmers and the scales are just as unevenly balanced.

The romanticisation of the rustic rural life leads to opposition to any change in the current setup of things. The farmers lobby is also large and would stongly oppose corporate farming. This story is true world over. Once in the forefront of food production, the farmers are now the very people holding it back. Land which once seemed endless is now a precious resource, too important to squander it by living in the past. 

The human aspect of the problem is just as important. The business men and the farmers being domain specific people cannot be expected to work in different domains, which is part of the problem in relocation of farmers even from ruinous agricultural practices. A compensatory programme for the farmers might give them skills for a modern world. Just like the ‘wild men’ cannot function in a city, the farmers wouldn’t be able to do so in an urbanised world. The future would come, whether we want it to or not, but the question is, are we ready?

Owl speak- Cannot circle In Delhi

Owl Speak 

Beggarly Indifference

Hollow Hallowed Circle

In the lighted corner of a darkened world, you can see in plain sight the suffering that never ceases to cease. A child getting his first shot of drug, middle aged one getting his last. There are well heeled people passing all around, some wearing Prada’s, others with their Gucci’s strolling amiably through the bright white hallowed circle of Connaught, where none of them can see the perfidy of humanity

It is for the same reason that the circle should be named the ‘Cannot’ circle, for it is there that light never reaches. Ironical it is indeed that under the brightest lights, one can see the darkest face of humanity. Indeed, it is only in our country that no one can see the plight; the people pass as if they are some other species immune to the sufferings. The bright windows and the glittering panes of the shops are indeed far more palatable to the eyes. The bars that churn out the costliest spirits cannot be blamed for the stupor that has engulfed everyone. 

The issue is quite simple, inequality persists in our country and so does poverty. There are people who are willing to inflict gross self injury on their bodies daily, just to earn a piece of bread and another dose of their crack and they co-exist with the richest clientele in the poshest markets of the world. An evening worth of shopping that someone does there is enough for a beggar to get his annual rations. The question here is not that one has worked harder than the other; rather it is the condemnation that a part of society has suffered and is likely to suffer for a long time that contrasts with the easy money that the other has inherited. 

Pinching the eyes shut

The easiest and the most common reprieve for anyone who looks at a forlorn face, one of the countless ones in the city is that “these people” should not be encouraged. “These people” really don’t want to work; that there’s a gang that is involved in begging and that no matter how much one helps, one cannot help enough. 

By labelling the poor as another sub-class of humans, what essentially is being done is outright discrimination. It is discrimination because firstly, you have made out the beggars to be sub humans and thus undeserving of ordinary empathy and secondly by associating negative traits to them, you are forsaking your duty of helping your fellow beings. If parsimony has to be practiced, then the least we can do is to be at least open about our intentions, rather than downgrading the already fallen. 

It is not difficult to see, if you pass through the alleys of any market for that sake in the entire country, there are scores of people lying around, especially in the night when they have nowhere else to go. A society is known by how it treats its poorest and if a judgment has to be passed on our own standards then we should not flinch in calling our society double faced and spineless. While we talk of morals and the necessity of a good government to come up, there is dearth of simple humane actions by a vast majority. While we profess religiosity and spirituality, we cannot even stoop down to help up a fellow being and the cruelty of it all is like the scar, which cannot be hidden. 

If there are laws for mandatory education of children, then what are the millions of them doing on the streets with large plastic bags in their hands and heads addled with drugs. If our nation was so outraged with the rape that happened in Delhi, then why don’t we heed at the rapes that happen every night on these very streets. Young children are violated, mentally challenged girls are brutally taken and thousands of innocents are sold for paltry rupees… and all of this happens right in front of us, when we shut our eyes, utter our respective God’s name and turn away. 

If you happen to be awake in the early mornings, you will see children passing through the streets. Even in the harshness of January, the barefooted army would collect whatever they can lay their hands upon. Stale bread, broken syringes, outdated medicines and fight off the rowdy dogs on route. While the speakers of temples, mosques and Gurudwaras bray, asking the faithful to rise up, these children take their bags of rubbish and recede back into the darkness. 

Paper Tigers

Like any other thing our society couldn’t resolve, begging too has severe laws. The Bombay Prevention of Begging act, 1959 accords not less than 1-year detention in certified institutions, which of course don’t exist. Rehabilitation homes for disabled, for poor and orphanages don’t occupy the same status as those of malls. The organised begging rackets make sure that the policemen don’t bat an eyelid at the activities, and a lack of voter id means that the politicians too don’t care. Even as lack of employment forces many able bodied and literate youth into begging, the laws regarding begging are not clear.

The laws that we have chosen to adopt are a throwback to the Victorian era Europe, where the beggars were termed as an eyesore and impinging upon the civilised society. The nebulous definition of beggars can include anyone ‘looks’ poor and thus can even include the daily wage earners. Under Beggary Act, 12 statuary institutes were constituted to prevent begging and to train and employ them. These institutes however are mired in pitiful conditions without being able to impart the necessary skills to help people out of poverty. 

Being Human

Perhaps, it’s too early. We aren’t developed enough. No, its far too early, we are not kind enough, not humane enough, not concerned enough and certainly not developed enough. 

It’s sad because most of the begging that occurs is related to the basic needs of the people. Sure there are organised gangs of people and sure there may be some who are too lazy to work, but surely there is also an altogether other side that no one wants to explore. 

Talking to the beggar to know why is he/she in such a pain and what do they need. To at least treat them as a real entity and not as a piece of rag floating around in a drug filled wind sailing to nowhere.

I don’t know how to solve the problem, to give or not to give, to blame the government or the society. 

I do know that as a human being I have a duty to help another when I see him suffering.

A useless circular argument

    A Useless Circular Argument- The Indian problem of 00 

Picking Scabs

Listing failures is like picking scabs, the only use of it is the pleasure derived from the exercise itself. Parallels can be drawn to our meditations on national failures and this habit of scab picking; maybe it won’t heal anything, but still the exercise has to be carried out for its own sake. 

Every year on the Independence Day, we listen to the famous speeches given by freedom fighters and unfurl the flag, while enthusiastic anchors list all of the areas where India has advanced. I feel that counter poise has been missing in the digital age and sometimes a light needs to be shined on the wounds taking their toll. 

Even though we have climbed the GDP rankings and improved in several areas, we haven’t yet been able to provide to our masses the kind of freedom they had hoped for. Our failures are many, ranging from law&order, education, services, poverty, civic amenities, grassroots democracy etc. For now, let’s focus on some of the more important ones which have repercussions and interlinking with all the other areas as well. 

The biggest failure of our state in the nearly seven decades of independence has to be the wretched condition of a huge chunk of our citizenry, who make it by with the bare minimum. The Nehru-Mahanolobis industrialisation plan had put industries as the prime moving force of our economy and excluded the vast underprivileged, undereducated and undereverything population that has had to eke out a meagre existence at the mercy of the ‘sarkaar’. 

It is as much a philosophical question as it is a technical one regarding the aim of our progress. Gandhiji had derided progress without compassion as the biggest threat to the people who inhabit this nation. He had viewed the wealth of the rich as a responsibility that they owed to the society. But, in a modern world, purely socialistic economic principles have long been shown to be useless for their purported ends. The more important question is that why haven’t be able to have an equitable process of progress? 

The answer is also our second greatest failure. The failure of the Indian state to provide quality education to it’s masses is not only the result of years of corruption administrators, but it’s also a gross negligence amounting to criminal wastage of our huge human resources. Since we didn’t have capital or skills requisite for industrial revolution, we ought to have developed our human resources first. Uneducated masses became a burden rather than a boon and year after year we have used them only to beat population growth records. 

Blaming UGC, bureaucrats, imperialists is a common refrain, but the present reality demands it’s own explanation. Why haven’t we been able to learn, reorient and upgrade our educational setup after so many decades of abject policy failures and ineptitude? The more important question is that why hasn’t democracy worked to propel leaders to give us an adequate educational policy? 

Deeper Into Morasses

Vexing questions require more than what scratching of surface can achieve. We need a more comprehensive systemic analysis, for if we begin to look at the many endeavours that our subsequent governments have taken and the failure rate of various policies, we should have been able to find also an equal number of out of job politicians and administrators who were responsible for the corruption and ineptitude, but sadly we don’t. 

Now again if we look back to our evolution since our first Independence Day, we’d see a unique pattern of growth, a pattern that can explain away many of our present problems. Even though we became a democracy, with civil rights for everyone and constitutional institutions to protect them; we were somehow unable to fulfil the first mandate of independence, freedom for our masses. 

Freedom entails not only the removal of foreign yolk, but also the provision of such facilities and requisite environment for personal growth. Freedom means that each and every individual has the power to make choices and to guide his/her own life. Freedom, for much of India means merely the freedom from poverty, hunger and injustice and India hasn’t been able to give them that. 

Uneducated masses voting for corrupt politicians, who in turn control and corrupt the administration and who in turn enable the corrupt politicians to perpetuate their rule and make even more money is a short description of the entire gamut of our problems. There is no incentive to be honest as the institutions themselves are fundamentally flawed in their raison d’être. 

Ever since our Sardar Patel decided to continue with the services of the Imperial civil servants and their ‘steel frame’ was allowed to remain intact, we have also unwittingly adopted the philosophy and mindset of the colonial masters while governing the country. The philosophy of regulations and maintenance of law and order is different from that of governance. While one entails controlling the population at any cost towards some end decided by the state’s leaders, the other is fundamentally about ascertaining what the people want and how to best deliver it to them. 

Toxic Equilibrium

The dichotomy between what the people want and what the leaders set about to give them has only widened over the years. The people living in Naxal areas never wanted toxic pollution and uprooting of their sacred forests, the farmers didn’t want to live at the mercy of exploitative Ahatiyas, the vast population of unemployable youth didn’t want to eke out a miserable living doing low end jobs. The politicians did want stifling control over every institution, the old business housed did want to retain their monopolies, the bureaucrats did want complex rules. 

What I want to say is that there has always been a set of people who’ve gained from failures, as if an equilibrium has been maintained to benefit some at the cost of others. The real question is then to how to reset this toxic state of things, so that the people can benefit? 

The problem has to be systemic, for if it wasn’t, then the efforts of so many well intentioned officers, politicians, agitators wouldn’t have gone to waste. The solution too has to be systematically derived. If simply the people voted out those politicians who are corrupt and thus enforced their constitutionally given rights, then the problem would be sorted out over time.

The  problem is that the people are themselves uneducated and therefore also unable to take rational choices for their own good. But first we must improve their wretched condition, before they can invest in education, which brings us back to our initial argument of improving the governance to provide the requisite resources for the people to improve. 

Mirroring Problems

It needs sustained efforts of the civic society to spread this awareness, but our fragmented society has prevented the rise of a wide based secular people’s movement. The reality is that the vast majority of the people are themselves dogmatic, insular and not in the favour of social equity. Every section of our populace wants to raise their own position in the heirarchy, to seek special powers and favours and to increase it’s own prestige and not to level the field itself.

Rumi had said that the fault that we see in others are actually our own. Maybe the spectre of evil politicians and bureaucrats is a front for our own failings to develop an inclusive mentality, to not ascribe to equal rights, to follow the rules we expect others to follow and to show fraternity for our fellow citizens, the same which we expect them to show us. 

 The educated haven’t shed their prejudices, just found new avenues to base them upon, almost every Indian cheats on taxes depriving the state of resources to take action, almost everyone bribes their way out of the punishments required to maintain law and order, almost everyone gives colludes with the corrupt system while loudly denouncing the loss of morality.

Picking scabs doesn’t heal them, maybe it even perpetuates them, but there’s a pleasure in doing that isn’t there? Because sometimes, unless it hurts, we cannot determine if the wound has healed or not.