Facts vs. Fantasy

Facts vs. Fantasy

 

24/1/20

 

Has morality changed over time?  Well, I am not thinking time in an evolutionary sense, but more like within the life time of humans – a few decades.  When I was in high school, the issue of truthfulness was presented as a great virtue, and we in our country had put the value of truth in the national emblem itself – truth alone triumphs.  Not only the father of the nation shared his ideas about truthfulness in his book ‘My experiments with truth’ – but all sensible leaders from many walks of life had extolled the need for pursuing and adhering to truth under all circumstances.  The story of was oft repeated to influence all influenceables.  But things have changed, particularly in the past few years.  New terminologies like post-fact, alternative truths, virtual realities, etc. have gained currency.  Truth can be found in many different flavors, it can be open to interpretation and can be morphed into whatever version that suits to one’s persuasion.  The reason for such a change is clear, it is driven by the position one takes on any of the variety of positions available.  In polite circles this could be called political ideology.  And the fault lines between ideologies have become deeper in recent years, and the consequence is the identity of what constitutes truth or truthfulness is completely blurred.

The middle class morality which guided my persuasions while growing up discouraged involvement in political ideas.  So, even in the midst of Emergency in the early 70s we in college were secluded and not directly affected one way or the other.  We were apolitical, not in the reproductive age group, not rising any demands from the state for anything at all.  We were encouraged to mind our own business, meaning don’t look at the outside world.  Subjects like ‘ethics’ were not even brought up in the classrooms or campuses.  I didn’t realize that we were trained to be cogs in some grandly planned wheels of the society, and developing the mind was not part of the deal in the campuses. I have realized much later that no one can be apolitical.  If you don’t have any position on any ideology, even due to ignorance (as recently claimed by Imran Khan in reference to the plight of Chinese Muslims), you declare that you are not a part of a society comprising of humans.  By default, everyone is political – for, against or apathetic.  You need to decide one way or the other.  The purpose of education, analysis, influence, propaganda, etc. is to help one decide which way.  As we can see there are legit and illegit, fair and unfair ways by which people could be persuaded to be political.  If there was no need for persuasion, we might all be sheep or cattle, led to our destiny by some grand design.

Of the fair ways education is an important mode.  Education is to help us to decide and to train us to do.  Beyond this there is no grander purpose of education.  Decision making cannot be assumed to be easy or simple, and thus education helps to develop tools, information and techniques for decision making.  It is much easier to make machine decide better and faster than humans because the machines could be prevented from getting influenced by unfair means.  However, the definition of fair/unfair in itself is not easy.  Thus, machines can be designed to cheat, like for example distort the stock price of a company, or trade using insider information.  But ultimately the fairness or unfairness is to be specified by the humans behind the machines.

Policing the State

Policing the State

16/2/20

For one thing we are not accused of as a country is for being monolithic.  Although the US is famously pitched as a melting pot of civilization, Indian history is replete with actually being the case for thousands of years.  It is not only our history books but also mythology, architecture, cuisine, languages, artefacts, etc. all point out this idea of being a culture of diversity.  Our mythologies not only mention people coming from other parts of the world but also from heaven and hell, lands of oceans and snakes, and other planets visiting, influencing events and luck.  In spite of all this, the current government has taken up an agenda of homogenization, with the justification of some kind of correction of history.  If you cannot correct today’s problem, it is much easier to say you are trying to correct yesterday’s problem.  We can be sure of one thing, we will certainly have new problems for today and tomorrow, whether we solve yesterday’s problem or not.

We have witnessed a lot of violence at public spaces in the last few months.  Earlier the violent scenes involved the army and the paramilitary, now it includes the police as well.  There have been lot of comments that police have violated the oath to the constitution they are supposed to have taken.  But looking at the pictures going around, I am not sure these individuals who are clothed in police uniforms might even know whether there is something called the constitution, let alone their responsibility to protect it.  For that matter, I doubt some the senior political leaders would ever have had a chance to look at our constitution as a third of our elected leaders have a criminal record before their current job.  I am only following the advice of our prime minister that I am trying to infer the motives of individuals from the clothes they are wearing.  It appears to me that we have created a very human lime (humanoid) robots that have been programmed to behave in a particular fashion, and at this juncture it appears that the strategists and thinkers in the police department have conveyed the message of action without cause or consequence to those implementing the actions.

The police force and its various specialties are not known to be thinkers.  Otherwise we wouldn’t have a situation that several citizens have been jailed without any evidence of their crimes that could be documented and presented before any court for more than two years.  While talking about courts, again they have not covered themselves with glory either.  Judges don’t want to hear serious cases, and are willing to postpone decision making on silliest of pretexts – for example, incarceration of former chief ministers on the basis of imaginary crimes.  I do not know what mechanisms exist to keep the various branches of society true to their purpose.  I guess this is the definition of anarchy, which says that we may not be able to predict the future course of development as anything can happen in an anarchic society.  Thus, having police is a redundant expense on the society since everyone can act like a police now as there seems to be no rules to be followed.

Delhi Debacle

Delhi Debacle

 

15/2/20

 

There was one more state election, and it was in the capital city/state.  There have been the usual pre- and post-election analyses, debates, predictions, and to a large extent the result was foretold.  In summary, the incumbent won again with a sweeping majority and the party in power at the center picked up the spoils.  But on several fronts this election process was unprecedented, while the usual suspects remained suspicious.  Let me list my thoughts, first on the suspects and then on the new fronts.  The so-called independent functionaries like the election commission, the judiciary remained as spineless as in the recent past.  Many violations were permitted to the point of encouragement.  The election process was conducted in a manner to arouse suspicions of machine tampering, money laundering and booth capturing.  Notwithstanding these usual pitfalls, the results suggest that at best these factors become important in closely fought elections, but have small impact when the Davids score over the Goliaths.

But we must be proud of new programs initiated in this campaigning season.  The stump speeches by elected members of parliament canvassing for their party candidates were quite unparliamentary, although one suspects that these languages will find their way to the parliament soon enough, with these trends.  The only strategy one party followed was rabble rousing, there was no manifesto, no promises.  Even they didn’t talk about any of their achievements, if there was any, when they were in power in the state about a decade back.  This, I would presume, must have been a strategy – to unleash an unforeseen attach on the voters from whom they expect to get elected. Of course, as the power in charge at the center, whatever they claim as achievement has not been accepted so by the rest of the country.  Probably they were testing how dumb the voters were.  Sure enough, there are at least eight constituencies where such people outnumber the ‘normal’ voters.  This is just a reflection of the sad state of affairs in our society.

But on strategy they were brilliant. Within a month they were able to distract the public from the actual crimes they had committed inside universities to just rhetoric on the stump speech and a couple of stray incidences.  Their opponents think it was relevant to bring up.  Certainly, the public memory is short.  Thus, it is not surprising that a third of the voted citizens in Delhi were swayed by the rhetoric, and they don’t believe that their elected officials are to do some public good.

 

 

Books and Bans

Books and Bans

 

2/2/20

 

One of the phrases recently gaining currency is “aap chronology samajiye” – understand chronology.  In that spirit let me list out the chronology of an event that unfolded this past week, as it came out in my purview:

• There was an excerpt of a book which was slated to be launched shortly, in the middle pages of a newspaper
• The next day, the institution where the launch event was organized withdrew its permission for the use of their premises, two days prior to the event
• The following day there was a news item reporting that the descendants of one of the characters in the book expressed dismay at confirming certain events that happened in the past, and said that they felt cheated based on learning what topics the book might expound

 

Technology has made writing books easier, and hence the publishing business has become more competitive.  As a publisher, they want good sales, and towards that objective they are scouting for writers who can garner wider audience. Still this is a risky business since even the best of writers could bomb with some of their works in the market.  So, in addition to depending on the glamor of the writer, the publishers are also looking for good advertisement avenues for their books.  Writers, on the other hand, can hone their skill only by the quality of their research (if the book is to be fact based) or the scope of their imagination, rigor and attractiveness of their presentation, and their understanding of the expectations of the paying public.  Good as well as bad publicity always helps both the publisher and the writer, but no publicity is an anathema leading to obscurity and poor sales.  Thus, the chronology, I would presume would have come as a godsend for all the controversy it stirred up for the publisher.

 

There are two types of institutions in our country – public and private.  This distinction was initially used to indicate the support system – particularly financial support system.  But of late this also includes ideology of the funding agency and the financial support is only used as a leverage to control the expansion of the ideology of the funder.  This applies equally to the private and the public funding system, but it was always assumed to be the case for the private institutions.  Now, the public system has joined the bandwagon.  The problem is that the public institutions which were set up to promote public good has been hijacked by the government to promote the ideology of the party which is occupying the government.  Thus, there is a dissonance between the funds which come from all sections of society espousing all shades of ideologies in the country gets administered by the government to promote a limited ideology.  The consequence of this dissonance can be seen in the way academic and cultural institutions are enslaved by the political party in power.  No wonder we see the crumbling of public institutions, and cost of this damage is borne mostly by the public – the citizens, in terms of the deteriorating quality and esteem of the institutions in serving its clientele.