Blissful Life

When you apply skepticism and care in equal amounts, you get bliss.

Author: akshay

  • The Logic of Social Justice

    Today in a discussion at IPH, Meena said “we should all fight against discrimination”. And Prashanth asked “Isn’t that your personal politics? What if people don’t agree with it?” What Prashanth was really asking was “Is there any logic to the demand for social justice?” “Isn’t it just politics?”

    This is the same discussion I had over lunch with Viswanathan (CVN) at MFC’s mid-annual meet in Kozhikode. CVN is widely known for saying “Science is the only way of knowing” which I have wrote about in the past. In the meet also CVN made the same point (I have posted a transcript of the comment here). CVN told about the enlightenment project

    […]By the term “modern society”, I mean a society that upholds the values of “liberty, equality, fraternity and justice”. These values, which we call constitutional values, are really values of ‘Enlightenment’ – or ‘European Enlightenment’ if you insist.

    Enlightenment project is a sociopolitical project that nobody likes in today’s India. The right wing hates it, the left wing has only contempt for it. Of course, this was always a minority’s concern in our country, historically speaking. Unlike the ‘National movement’, this ‘movement’ – if you can call it that name – came up from the ‘depressed castes’. If I am to name a few ‘big names’ that would represent this camp, almost everyone comes from the Dalit-Bahujan background. Mahatma Phule, Babasaheb Ambedkar, Thanthai Periyar, Mahatma Ayyankali, Sahodaran Ayyappan – all from the depressed castes. This is a movement that developed as a response to the day-to-day existential insults heaped upon the depressed caste people over millenia.[…]

    So while eating chicken and ghee rice, I asked CVN, “if you say science is the only way of knowing, how do you know that the values of enlightenment is what we need to work towards?” I was asking what’s the “logic” of working for social justice. 

    CVN initially said “This is outside the realm of science. It is a question for morality.”

    But I wouldn’t relent. I was like “We KNOW that social justice is the right thing. And ‘science’ is the only way of knowing. Then what’s the logic with which we say social justice is the right thing?” I said it was important for us to articulate that logic or if not we wouldn’t have any way to convince others that it was important to fight for social justice.*

    *I actually said that we do have a few other ways. One is to use guns. Another is to use love. And that I am exploring the latter. But the quest for a logic was so important.

    CVN sought more time to think about it.

    And that brings me to an important fight with the postmodernists. In mfc group, I’ve had several sleepless days debating with a bunch of people who think that we have no way of knowing whether homeopathy, ayurveda, etc could be bullshit. That there’s a “possibility” that these are true. That our ability to know the “truth” will always be influenced by where we’re coming from. They think we’re living in some crazy world where we can never know anything, and just everything could be true.

    In that fight, it became clear to me that there is some sort of “logic” which I was looking for in everything. That it is this “logic” or rationality that I was calling science. In another discussion with Prashanth we decided to not call it ‘science’ because it was confused by several people to mean the establishment, but to call it ‘jnana’ or so.

    So, science (broadly construed), or rationality, or ‘jnana’ whatever you call it, is how we tend to get answers to everything.

    Then what’s the science of social justice? What’s the logic of social justice? 

    How do we ‘know’ that social justice is necessary?

    That’s the crux of the challenge.

    One way to answer this would be that this is beyond the realm of science. That it is politics. Or morality.

    If you’ve gone through Michael Sandel’s famous course or book on “Justice”, you’ll notice that MS gives many different “logics” – utilitarianism, libertarianism, Kant, Aristotle, etc. But again, the choice is left to us. So we’re again left with the question of “what’s the logic of our choice to work for social justice and how do we objectively describe it to a skeptic?”

    Let’s do the 2024 thing, and ask Claude.ai what it thinks.

    You’ve raised a profound and challenging question that gets to the heart of moral philosophy. You’re correct that there’s no universally agreed-upon, objective foundation for pursuing justice or any other moral goal. This leads us to the realm of metaethics – the study of the nature of ethical statements and judgments.
    There are several perspectives on this:

    • Moral Realism: Some philosophers argue that objective moral truths exist independently of what any individual or culture believes. Under this view, pursuing justice could be objectively right, even if we can’t always discern what justice entails.
    • Moral Relativism: This view holds that moral truths are relative to cultures or individuals. From this perspective, justice is indeed optional, as it’s just one of many possible value systems.
    • Moral Non-Cognitivism: This approach suggests that moral statements aren’t truth-apt (capable of being true or false) but are expressions of emotion or prescriptions for action.
    • Evolutionary Ethics: Some argue that our sense of justice and morality evolved because it was beneficial for group survival, but this doesn’t necessarily make it objectively “true.”
    • Pragmatism: This view suggests we should pursue justice because it leads to better outcomes for societies, even if we can’t prove it’s objectively correct.

    You’re right that, in a sense, all moral frameworks are “optional.” There’s no physical law of the universe that compels us to be just or moral. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that morality is arbitrary or unimportant.
    Many philosophers argue that even without an objective foundation, we can still have robust, rational discussions about ethics and justice. They suggest that we can use reason, empathy, and shared human experiences to build ethical frameworks that, while not objectively provable, are defensible and beneficial.
    Moreover, from a practical standpoint, societies need some shared ethical framework to function. While the specifics of what constitutes justice may vary, the concept of justice itself seems to be a near-universal feature of human societies.
    In the end, whether to pursue justice (or any moral goal) is a choice we make as individuals and societies. But it’s a choice with profound implications for how we live and interact with others. The lack of an objective foundation doesn’t negate the importance of these choices; if anything, it makes our moral deliberations even more crucial.

    That should settle it. If generations of philosophers haven’t found an answer, can we really find a logic to social justice?

    But there’s an alluring charm to the search for a logic. If only we had an objective way to say justice is right, we could go about our lives much more easily. We just have to tell everyone the logic and abracadabra they are now working for social justice too. The whole world could just be transformed.

    Yet there’s no logic. And therefore the fight for social justice is hard. It is an illogical choice. It is something we enter into through our own free will. And so all the methods of how we transfer “knowledge” comes of no use for us. Because it is not “knowledge”. Social justice is a choice. How do we convey our choice to someone else? That’s the question we actually need to answer. 

    As I’ve written before, after exploring power and realizing it doesn’t work I’ve been exploring love as a framework for this. I’ll write soon about how this has been working out for me in the last two years.

  • Don’t Jump On Private Healthcare

    People from Koodam asked for opinion on the PIL in Supreme Court regarding fees in private hospitals (and clinical establishments act). They shared a folder collating views of various individuals, including this excellent working paper which I refer to in the text below as Oxfam publication.

    ***

     Hi Gayatri, I went through the whole folder. All I wanted to know was
    what Koodam was. But, lol. Anyhow. What I’m going to write is obviously
    my personal understanding of the transformative nature of law (and the
    limits of it). It is going to be biased by my worldview. I’m going to
    label them explicitly as much as possible.

    Regarding the nature
    of documents in the folder    . The compilation, over all, is very nice.
    That’s mostly because of the excellent documents prepared by JSA. Minus
    that, the arguments and the scholarship is rather weak. Koodam which
    explicitly says “diverse views” has the least diverse of views. The
    Oxfam publication by Abhay Shukla, et al is perhaps all that one needs
    to read.

    Regarding non-additive nature of law, and the paradox of
    how parts are worse than the whole    . I am not sure how well I can
    articulate this. But basically, for law to act in transformative way, a
    series of measures that are all reinforcing each other need to be
    enacted together. This is hinted to in the JSA/Oxfam publication. If
    there’s unbalanced law that’s enacted, it creates all kinds of
    unpredictable troubles. In law, 1 + 1 + 1 is not the same as 3. The
    order of laws, the simultaneousness of it, everything matters.

    If
    there’s unbalanced push for price regulation, without other mechanisms
    that lead to a holistic transformative change (eg: competition
    introduced by well functioning public healthcare, financial support from
    government, in-sourcing of private healthcare providers, control on
    corruption, etc), then there’ll be more failures than success. Examples
    of this generated by AI: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/Give-me-examples-k9aCXE9ERCyq9LnFzWDvZA

    Private
    sector is not a homogenous villain    : Various documents here takes a
    black-and-white opposition to “private”. This is wrong in two ways –
    politically and conceptually.

    Politically, if one were to really
    get this going against the “medical industrial complex” and IMA and so
    on, one has to cleave the opposition (divide and rule). And the easiest
    (?) way to do that is to turn small clinics against big hospitals.
    Putting all private providers in one bucket only helps solidifying them
    as one bloc

    Conceptually, all the accusations against medical
    industrial complex applies only to big hospitals. But the “dominant”
    private healthcare system is not big hospitals, it is the clinics and
    the single practitioners. If the argument is that these are all corrupt,
    it is an unwinnable argument. Firstly, a lot of these clinics and
    single practitioners are not corrupt. They’re just people like you and
    me going about their daily lives, with as much influence of capitalism
    as every other profession has. Secondly, one just can’t call an entire
    class of profession corrupt unless one is also going to radically
    restructure the world and actually thinking of revolution.

    On the
    specifics of fixing price    : Fixing price is a thoroughly impractical,
    de-contextualized solution. Chinu’s very brief response is very
    important. Fixing price might actually cause increase in price. I have
    written about consultation fees in general practice https://mbbshacker.blogspot.com/2019/09/the-curious-case-of-consultation-fees.html
    – the biggest challenge for me as a practitioner is that I’ve to make
    it sustainable while at the same time charging a bit fairly. Fixed price
    almost never works for me. If I’m forced to, I’ll choose a higher
    price. And there’s nothing in the CEA that prevents me from choosing a
    higher price. So, in turn, there’s not much that transparency achieves
    (is this the point that Amar  is making? I read it too fast)

    On
    market    : My father had a sagittal sinus thrombosis a few years back. I
    am thankful that there was an Aster MIMS in Kannur. I didn’t care about
    the money at all. There’s an upper class in India (like my family) that
    prefers to not worry about cost, but only worry about health. This
    market exists.
    I hate capitalism. But one thing I know about the
    world is that when there is a market for something, there’s no
    regulation which can stop that from being capitalized. By hook, or by
    crook, things will happen. This is true for banning alcohol, weed,
    drugs, and so on. This is true for organ trade, human trafficking, and
    so on. This is true for almost everything. We really can’t fight the
    market.

    On the political climate: There’s a section on political
    economy in the Oxfam publication. But what about the political climate?
    What political will is there in the present political scenarios to look
    at deep societal transformation in the areas of health. This is a high
    risk gamble with low rewards for politicians.

    Am I being too
    pessimistic    ?: No, I’m really surprised why the Koodam didn’t take up the
    issue of “right to healthcare” which is much easier to understand, has a
    momentum going for it, and can be used to focus both on public
    healthcare and private healthcare. Taking CEA from a decade ago seems
    ill-timed. Unless of course, this is placed in the larger context of
    right to healthcare and the focus is shifted to the patient rights
    charter. We really need to build an alliance with small private clinics
    and practitioners. Something like patient rights charter is such an easy
    first step

  • What is mfc?

    A year ago, I asked in mfc‘s own e-group this question. You can read that long email and another long email after a week with more ideas of what mfc is here. It ends with an appreciation of what the website presently says about mfc:

    It is an organization which has operated for forty eight years as a
    ’thought current’ without allegiance to a specific ideology. Its only
    commitment has been to intervene in and understand the debates, policies
    and practices of health in Independent India. The understanding that
    our present health service is lopsided and is in the interest of a
    privileged few prevails as a common conviction.  It has critically been
    analyzing the existing health care system and has tried to evolve an
    appropriate approach towards health care which is humane, and which can
    meet the needs of the vast majority of the people in our country.

    [If anyone knows who wrote this, please let me know]

    Of course, this has to be updated to say “50 years” now because mfc just had its 50th annual meet at Sewagram last week.

    In the 49th annual meet during the general body meeting there was a comment by someone that they didn’t want people who ask things like “what is mfc” [in a mocking tone] in their volunteer group for 50th year meet. Funnily enough, the 50th meet and the bulletin released was revolving around exactly this question on identity.

    Ritu Priya’s article was titled “The Debt I Owe to MFC as the ‘Informal University’”

    Anant Phadke’s article was titled “My Reflections on MFC A Consistent Yet Feeble Pro-People Platform in Health care; The Fee-less, Open University of Community Health”

    Sathyamala quoted from their own previous editorial

    MFC is an organization. No, it is a circle of friends. No, it is a thought current. No, it is not even an effective thought current. MFC should debate issues. No, mfc should act. No, mfc is only for Mitra Milan. No, mfc should take stands. MFC has missed the bus. MFC members are unfriendly. MFC is like a family. The Bulletin serves no purpose. Bulletin must continue. Close the Bulletin. The Bulletin is MFC’s life line. Let us decide once and for all what is mfc. How can we decide once and for all what is mfc? MFC is not professional enough. MFC is too elitist. MFC which way to go, which way not to go. (Sathyamala 1998)

    Sathya then goes on to call mfc as an “epistemic community”.

    The rest of the articles are also about what expectations from mfc have been and what mfc have been able to or not able to do.

    Similarly, in the meet, there was a session about mfc and its future. There was the idea of forming a steering group to define a constitution for mfc and decide on questions like maintenance of website, bulletin, etc. The Q&A session here also spent considerable time in the question of what mfc is. This took the form of a debate between mfc defined as a “friend circle” and mfc as defined in the brochure:

    The Medico Friend Circle (mfc) is a nation-wide platform of secular, pluralist, and pro–people, pro-poor health practitioners, scientists and social activists interested in the health problems of the people of India. Since its inception in 1974, mfc has critically analyzed the existing health care system and has tried to evolve an appropriate approach towards health care which is humane and which can meet the needs of the vast majority of the people in our country.

    In this post, I’ll look at this issue once again and try to define what mfc is, or at least what mfc is not (as Ashok Bhargava once suggested).

    ***

    Before we go into that, we need to discuss a couple of things about defining mfc.

    Firstly, defining what mfc is and defining what mfc should be are two different things. What mfc is is a (difficult) question of describing the reality of mfc as close to possible which can be done by anyone who has spent sufficient time observing mfc. What mfc should be is an even more difficult question which requires consensus and vision, and brings up plenty of other operational issues. In this post I’ll focus first on defining mfc, and at the end venture slightly into what mfc should be.

    Secondly, what mfc is and what mfc did are two closely related yet separate questions. Plenty of times people equate these questions and end up in a soup. The answer to what mfc did is indeed useful in understanding what mfc is. But if we just rely on what mfc did to define what mfc is, we will land up in improbable expectations from it.

    And finally, defining mfc is an attempt to seriously engage with mfc and should not be seen as an attempt to diss mfc.

    So, let us first look at what mfc is not:

    …an organisation coming together for collective action at times of a crisis

    Yes, mfc did it. During Bhopal disaster, mfc came together for collective action. During carnage in Gujarat in 2022, mfc came together for collective action. For access to drugs, AIDAN was formed collectively. But these are things that mfc did. There’s no guarantee that mfc will come together at times of a crisis. Manipur and Gaza were made discussion topics at mfc annual meet in Feb 2024 probably in an effort to resume this collective action. But that’s not what mfc is. mfc is not an organization meant for action. It doesn’t have a budget. It doesn’t have any paid staff. It is not meant for any action.

    …an epistemic community influencing health policy

    Yes, many people from mfc did participate in the run up to National Rural Health Mission. Yes, people from mfc have done judiciary activism. Yes, mfc has a big role in JSA. But mfc cannot be an epistemic community because an epistemic community is a network of recognized experts. mfc has always been open to anyone – expert or not. Of course, mfc does include experts who could form an epistemic community of their own. But mfc also includes non-experts. And therefore, by definition it cannot be an epistemic community. 

    …a friend circle

    This is probably the hardest to convince people in mfc that mfc is not. Even people who don’t want to define mfc primarily as a friend circle will say that it is indeed a friend circle, at least secondarily. I believe that this definition of mfc is also in the realm of what mfc did and also what mfc should be, rather than what mfc is. To define mfc as a friend circle, though, would be stretching the definition of friend circle. Sure, I have made and nurture several deep friendships through mfc. But mfc is primarily composed of strangers. In the e-group, as of today, there are 716 members. I barely know 50 of them. Most people in mfc don’t know most people in mfc. There are also people I find annoying within mfc. People I would never call friends. It is very difficult to call mfc a friend circle, no matter how warm the environment is and how friendly people are.

    …a think tank

    Think tank is defined as a “group of experts brought together, usually by a government, to develop ideas on a particular subject and to make suggestions for action”. mfc disqualifies for reasons mentioned above under epistemic community.

     …a thought current

    If you read the emails linked above, you’ll see that the word thought-current itself is a buzzword that leaves us no further than what we began with. If you define thought-current as think-tank above, then mfc doesn’t qualify. Basically, it is a circular definition.

    …a platform for exchange of ideas related to people’s health

    This probably would have been a nice definition for mfc in 1970s and 80s assuming there was no other platform for exchange of ideas related to people’s health. But in 2024 when you have plenty of avenues for publishing ideas and exchanging it with the rest of the world and instantly getting feedback thus furthering the exchange, to call mfc a platform would be demeaning the word “platform”. Of note is also the fact that mfc had a barely functioning website till last year. mfc continues to not have a social media presence. It is very difficult to convince someone interested in people’s health in 2024 to join mfc for exchange of ideas.

    What is mfc?

    Let me reiterate what I said above. By discarding these “definitions” I’m not trying to say that mfc has not served these roles or that mfc should not be these things. I’m simply trying to say that mfc needs to be defined more accurately to represent the reality.

    At this point, it would be a disappointment if I didn’t present an alternate definition.

    Let me first document a couple of definitions that I discarded.

    I had tried to draw an analogy to an alumni association. An alumni association is just a group that exists because of some historical coincidence. It doesn’t have particular objectives or structure. It is just a group that exists, have shared nostalgia, etc. This doesn’t accurately describe mfc either.

    Then I thought about saying “mfc is a hashtag”. mfc is like a hashtag people use on twitter where there is not much of a structure, but things could happen sporadically. And there is a lot of discussion around the same hashtag. But then I found something better (thanks to AI)

    mfc is a community of interest

    Wikipedia says the following:

    A community of interest, or interest-based community, is a community of people who share a common interest or passion. These people exchange ideas and thoughts about the given passion, but may know (or care) little about each other outside this area. Participation in a community of interest can be compelling, entertaining and create a community where people return frequently and remain for extended periods. Frequently, they cannot be easily defined by a particular geographical area. 

    The difference from epistemic communities and “community of practice” is that in community of interest, expertise is not a pre-requisite. Anyone can join a community of interest.

    Let’s not forget what a “community” is: “A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with a shared socially significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity.”

    mfc is a community of interest that’s formed around the shared interest of a pro-people, pro-poor health system. Experts and non-experts are welcome to participate. The main mode of exchange of ideas in mfc have been through yearly meeting, publishing a bulletin, and discussing on an e-group, all organized democratically and with a spirit of friendship that transcends ideological divides.

    mfc going forward

    I would have to be the kind of academic I hate to describe something to great detail and do nothing with that.

    Going forward, there are a few things I would like to do with/through the mfc community (that should be the name!):

    1. Tap into the knowledge that is embedded within individuals in the mfc community and make this tacit knowledge more explicit through discussions that are centered around such knowledge — for example, knowledge on how to solve some of the problems encountered while traveling towards Health-for-all.
    2. Surface individuals and groups that are setting good examples into the public consciousness through corrective and creative use of powerful tools like the internet.
    3. Develop the strengths of mfc as a healing community for saving disillusioned medicos from anti-people healthcare system and manifest in them the vision of a pro-people health system and the skillset required to reach there.
    4. Embrace the concept of an open/informal university and bring together all groups/individuals with similar thought-processes (SOCHARA, CMC Vellore, THI/travel fellowship, etc) to double down on the concept of open/informal university and internet based pedagogies.
    5. Nurture the/a community of practice within mfc that serves as a reliable knowledge respository for communities of action like JSA and SAA-K.
    6. …
    7. …
    8. … 
    9. …
    10. …

    References

  • Why Medical College Work Culture is So Horrible

    A number of junior residents at Jipmer have raised allegations of mental and physical harassment against the head of department, medicine, and called for action against the senior faculty.
    In recent complaints lodged with the Jipmer Dean (Academics), the residents alleged they were subjected to various forms of harassment at the hands of the department head during the three-year PG residency. They sought re-examination of the results of the exit examination on December 23 as they suspected they were deliberately failed in the practical segment by the faculty member.

    This is from The Hindu a couple of days ago.

    This is just one among the many thousands of such incidents across medical colleges. It would be really difficult to find a medical college which doesn’t have harassment and bullying.

    When this came up for discussion in a WhatsApp group I am part of, there was an interesting debate. While everyone acknowledged that there is a hierarchical culture in medicine and that this needs to be rectified, there was a slight disagreement on the exacts of how and why.

    One argument was that the medical college culture is an extension of the casteist culture outside and that it will go away only when caste based discrimination disappears. To this some disagreed a bit and said it is not the same in institutions like nursing colleges.

    Today morning I tweeted: “If you apply the corporate workplace harassment standards to medical colleges, you’ll have to fire *all* doctors. That’s how horrible that culture is.”

    I do think there’re more issues that lead to the culture in medical colleges apart from casteism. I list down the potential causative factors here.

    As you might know, I believe in intersectionality and in the contribution of all these causes (including causes that’s not mentioned here) to the problem. The listing here is by no means a suggestion that “X is the reason ABC happens”. If you remove X, you’ll still have Y, Z, and so many other issues.

    There is a lot of work to be done in medical colleges

    A medical college (especially in government settings) has a lot of things happening at once. There’s out patient department and the rush of patients. There are new admissions being made. There are existing in-patients who need follow-up care. There are constantly new developments (new symptoms or worsening of symptoms, new investigation results). There are plenty of learning requirements to be met. There are procedures to be performed. There are resources that need to be mobilized. There is paper work to be done. There are a lot of people talking to each other, lots of communication and miscommunication. There are duty rosters and handovers. There are emotions and sickness playing beneath all of this.

    Almost everything requires to be done as soon as possible too, if not stat.

    There is a lot of gap in resources

    Often (especially in government settings) the resources required for getting a lot of work done is simply not there. This could be things like medicine, dressing equipments, and suturing material. Or this could be human resources like nurses, specialists, doctors, cleaners, attenders, pharmacists, and technicians.

    There is poor spending on healthcare in Indian budget

    As a country, India spends much less than what it should on healthcare.

    The science of medicine is imperfect and the art of medicine is really hard

    Medicine as we practice it has only evolved in the last few decades or so. We still have no idea what’s going on in a lot of situations. It’s an imperfect science. Biology has a lot of secrets.

    Add to that we’re dealing with human beings. The art of handling sickness and patient care is always complicated by the intensity of emotions.

    Who wants to work hard?

    I’ve left hospital based practice long ago. And I’ve not been even doing clinic based practice in the last couple of years. Because it is a lot of work.

    When there’s a lot of work, some people find ways to make it fun. They focus on the learning and growth. Or they focus on the people they’re serving. If you can make hard work fun, you can do it for a while.

    But it is not possible to do it forever.

    Medicine is not fun

    After a point, you get a lot of similar patients. There’s plateau in learning and drudgery in work.

    Even when you find ways to enjoy some of that, you can’t enjoy death. People literally die. Despite all of what we do. How do you make death fun?

    There are not many options for a change in scenery

    It’s the same kind of work from the end of MBBS till retirement. You go to hospital. You see patients. Medical college faculties don’t even get transfer. You’re stuck in the same department of the same building for your entire career.

    Lack of skills leads to insecurities

    We established that medicine is hard. Many doctors lack skills – be it in the clinic, or in their life. They are sometimes aware of their incompetency too. And some of this manifests as insecurities.

    Everyone loves delegation

    The best way to get something done while hating it is to delegate it. Patient care is complicated. If it can be delegated, it is less of a headache.

    Delegation requires power structures

    The easiest way to ensure you can always delegate work is to ensure that there are people “below” you who can do your work at your command. Maintaining a hierarchy is essential for delegation.

    Hierarchies are easy to maintain in a hierarchical society

    How do we build a hierarchy? We just need to belittle others. There are numerous ways to belittle others when the society has trained many people in things like:

    • caste
    • gender
    • language
    • physical appearance

    In medical colleges there is a much easier way to belittle people – using their years of experience. Someone who is “junior” can be belittled easily as they will have that much lesser experience.

    Individuals can’t fight the hierarchy

    Because medicine is hard no individual can do it alone. You can’t run a hospital by yourself. Especially if you’re a junior doctor who is still learning, you absolutely would be terrified of doing patient care without support from seniors. How can you fight someone whose support you need for your work?

    There’s always something more urgent

    There is no space for conflict resolution in medical colleges. Patient care always comes up. There’s no time for cooling down. There’s no time for empathy.

    The individuals who get in are of questionable merit

    Most doctors are doctors who have gotten good marks in an entrance examination. This is a test of their memory and cognitive skills in a very narrow domain. This makes the selection process to medical colleges be highly skewed. The skills in various other domains – like social skills, emotional intelligence, empathy – are not regarded at all.

    Without these other skills, it is very difficult to even acknowledge when something wrong is happening.

    There are not many role models for better culture

    Where does one find examples of good work culture in healthcare in India? Very few “alternative” healthcare institutions provide such an exposure. This is not accessible to a wide variety.

    Medicine is mostly seen as a job, and not as a passion by many

    There aren’t a lot of people who think in terms of quality improvement, safety, etc in medicine. For many it is a job. A way to make money and live.

    And hundred other reasons

    These are what I quickly wrote down. I’ve not gone to a medical college in a powerless position since about 7 years. I do go to medical colleges very often as an “external” “senior” instructor. I’ve used this “power” to understand some of the power structures within medical colleges from up close. That has led to some of the insights above.

    There are possible many other things that contribute to the mess. Some of the ones above could be wrong too. There are possibly many interventions one can do on many of these problems.

  • How the World Should Be and How the World Is

    There are two modes of thinking in society and social work. “How The World Should Be” mode, and “How The World Is” mode. There is a constant friction between these two. This friction explains hundreds of debates I’ve been in and many of my own moral dilemmas. Understanding this friction and being able to categorize arguments/politics into these categories helps in navigating the human world.

    Let’s start with simple examples.

    Examples

    Example 1

    Situation: Let’s say you’re driving on the road. You drive at a reasonable speed using indicators and avoiding sudden movements of your vehicle. Suddenly someone cuts lanes and jumps in front of you forcing you to break and swerve to a side. Another vehicle behind you hits your back.

    How the world should be: “Nobody should be cutting lanes all of a sudden. That’s dangerous. People who do that should face consequences.”

    How the world is: “People cut lanes. People drive unsafe. You can try to drive defensively, yet you can get involved in an accident. And you will face some or the other consequences.”

    Example 2

    Situation: You’re taking a sick patient to a hospital. You dialed 108 emergency ambulance service which is supposed to be free. After reaching the hospital, the ambulance team wants ₹₹₹ from you.

    How the world should be: “Ambulance service should be free. Healthcare should be free. People shouldn’t have to suffer from lack of money in accessing healthcare”

    How the world is: “There is a lot of corruption. People demand bribe in healthcare in many different ways.”

    Example 3

    Situation: It is election time. Politicians are using religion to swing votes. Issues like healthcare, education are being neglected.

    How the world should be: “People should hold politicians accountable and not let them get away with corrupted politics”

    How the world is: “People are voting for the corrupt politicians (for whatever reasons they may have).”

    Differences

    As might be obvious from the examples, there are several differences between how the world should be and how the world is.

    It is easy to see how the world is. One just has to live in it. Every day is a lesson in “the world as it is”. It doesn’t take much effort to understand and study it. It is accessible to everyone at all times. It is, in fact, unavoidable.

    The world that should be is an imaginary world. It requires us to think of something that doesn’t exist already.  It is set in the future. It is described using values, morality, and philosophy. It is harder to envision.

    The world that should be is controversial too. Different people believe in different futures. There is often mutually exclusive worlds that come up. You can’t have hyper-industrialized cities and clean air together. You can’t have an authoritarian state and a democratic state together. You can’t have religion and science together. Sometimes the imaginations aren’t that starkly different, but they’re still different in nuanced ways. It is those nuanced differences that leads to very many debates and fights within progressive groups.

    Implication

    The differences between the two ways of looking at the world immediately leads to the following important points.

    There is a vast amount of things to know about how the world is

    What’s happening in the world? How do human beings behave? What guides their actions? Is there any predictability? Why is there corruption? Why is there caste? Why is there religion? Why are people violent? Why is there inequity? Why is there gender? Why is there sickness? Why is there hate? Why is there love? Why is there harmony? Why is there peace? What is it that makes human beings tick? How do humans survive? What is the human spirit?

    There is a vast amount of things to know about how the world should be

    How might the world be? How would it be organized? What will be the weaknesses of that world? What would the strengths be? What challenges will we face? What human potential will we unlock in that world?

    There is a vast amount of things to know about how we can reach the world that should be from the world that is

    Knowing how the world should be is one thing. Knowing how to get from here to there is another thing. Any action we need to take towards the world that should be should start from the world that is. Firstly because that is the only world we have access to (by the laws of physics). But more importantly because it is the same people we are talking about. It is the same human beings. It is the same world that we want to transform.

    We need theories of change. We need experiments and examples. We need strategies, intermediary states/goals, milestones, checkpoints, and so on.

    Many dilemmas are manifestation of the friction between these stages of change

    I have struggled thinking about power. I hate hierarchy. And I see power as the core of hierarchy. In my “how the world should be” thinking, I used to constantly do things to give up power. But then, I discovered that without power it is very hard to do anything useful. This was very hard to accept though. I found even more reasons to not gain power. I said “Love is Enough“. But love wasn’t enough. “Love without power is sentimental and anemic” says Martin Luther King. 

    Here’s how the above framework helps in my dilemma.

    How the world is: Power centered and hierarchic.
    How the world should be: Love centered and anarchic/anti-hierarchy.
    How do we go from here to there: Power and love applied as needed for the change.

    There is another dilemma that’s been with me since my childhood. That of religion. I am a rationalist. I do not even use the word “atheist” to describe myself because I don’t want to discuss the idea of god even for saying that there is no such thing. For a long time I stayed with the idea that religions should be rejected en masse. Then I realized that a very huge number of human beings are deeply religious. So as per the framework this is how it should be resolved.

    How the world is: Religious and intolerant.
    How the world should be: Rational and secular.
    How do we go from here to there: Infuse rationalism into and through religion.

    This is very much in line of how Gandhi uses Gita and Rama to make Hindus become better. Or how Ambedkar uses Buddha to make life better for many people. Religion has been used by them creatively. They infused modernity into religion.

    Conclusion

    If you find yourself in the middle of a heated debate with people who are politically aligned, or with yourself (dilemmas), see if you can categorize the sides into “How the World Is” and “How the World Should Be”. Then think about how you would strategize for going from here to there.

  • What’s the Most Important Scientific Research?

    Post-facto rationalization. That’s something human beings are good at. If you decide to do research in a specific field, you’ll come up with hundred ways to justify why that research is important, if not the most important.

    I have been listening to Ravikant Kisana the last couple of days. In the podcast episode about Chandrayaan, RK calls Chandrayaan “completely useless”. A summary of the episode is the description of the episode: “Buffalo wonders what the Chandrayaan benefits are, while pondering over the crumbling education system. We take a moment to acknowledge the hot mess that is Gen Z.”

    Palani Kumar makes a very similar point in the talk about manual scavenging in CMC Vellore. “We have too much technology, we have lots of technology, we went to moon also, the other side of the moon, we haven’t saved anyone’s life among manual scavenging people”.

    I’m part of Sarvatrika Arogya Andolana – Karnataka which makes the consistent demand that we need to put more money into primary healthcare and have free medicines in government hospitals and so on.

    That’s the context in which I come across this thread by Nandita Jayaraj about a couple of breakthrough researches. Before I finished reading the thread I tweeted about it: 

    “Reading this thread made me think about how scientists in their lab coat are viewed in a very neutral or positive way by me whereas some of them are quite cunning and will do anything to get funded. 

    There are so many scientists hyping up rare diseases because that is where they get money to play with genes.”

    I hate universities. A lot.

    It is easy to argue with me by saying that universities are important and they create safe space for learning and that I can reject universities because of my privileges, and so on. But my intense hatred for universities has been validated by Ravikant Kisana in the Mind Your Buffalo podcast about institutional murders. The universities and the academia and the intellectual elite of this country are indeed a big part of the problem.

    And that’s where I come from. A position of intense hatred for scientists for their ignorance of how they’re part of the problem.

    And then these people who are held in high regard, in general, by journalists, people, and everyone, talk about research. From their pure and apolitical viewpoints. All I can hear when they open their mouth is “I want money. I am so smart. I do the most important work on Earth. Give me money.”

    Let us set all of that aside and look at this question “objectively”. Isn’t this sort of a trolley problem? You’re forced to choose between space science and sanitation technology. You’re forced to choose between rare diseases and common diseases.

    One could say “let us put some money in everything” because that’s one way of thinking about it.

    One could also think in purely utilitarian ways and calculate the cost (somehow) of each and measure benefit and do some kind of optimization.

    One could operate purely on empathy. But that has its own problems (Malayalam talk).

    Anyhow, answering this question is very hard. But it is indeed possible to look at it from a lens of caste, privilege, etc as seen above in RK’s podcast.

    (more…)

  • What Ails India’s approach to Universal Health Coverage is Elite Solutions That Have No Basis in Reality

    “Poorly maintained registers of doctors”. That’s the first five words of the article What ails India’s approach to Universal Health Coverage in Times of India by four people from Vidhi Centre for Lobbying Legal Policy. Let’s talk about that after we look at universal health coverage.

    “Universal health coverage (UHC) means that all people have access to the
    full range of quality health services they need, when and where they
    need them, without financial hardship. It covers the full continuum of
    essential health services, from health promotion to prevention,
    treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care across the life course.” ~WHO

    That’s quite an ambitious goal, isn’t it? People having access to a full range of health services where they need them, that too without putting them in poverty.

    The community medicine HoD of PGIMER, Chandigrah ends an article about achieving this as:

    “In summary, to achieve the universal health coverage, major challenge in India is promotion of health, prevention of diseases, and provision of health care in a balanced manner, which will require innovative public policies, strategies, and programs in many sectors. Development and implementation of a multisectoral approach to achieve sustainable development goals is the need of the hour. Establishment of a Public Health Commission will go a long way in achieving coordination of various initiatives not only in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare but also in many other relevant ministries/sectors. At least 5% of the gross domestic product should be earmarked for public health and a responsive governance mechanism as outlined above should be set up, to achieve universal health coverage by 2030 as envisaged in the United Nations sustainable development goals which are also endorsed by the Government of India.” (emphasis mine)

    Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, the Indian version of People’s Health Movement, suggested in 2012 a national debate, while also saying that “providing entitlements must be accompanied by a clear framework for accountability and grievance redressal” and that “highest priority must be given to significant expansion and improvement of public health services”. (emphasis, again, mine)

    The Lancet lobbying group for “reimagining India’s health system” in a theory of change also talks a bit about accountability.

    “Finally, the fourth proposed intervention relates to creating accountability and trust in public and private health systems. Enhancing the scope of political engagement is a crucial step toward this, along with developing and disseminating performance reports on the functioning of various health systems. Communities should be able to conduct social audits of the health systems they use along principles of Community-Based Management (CBM). Establishing or strengthening the legal framework to protect and empower communities would also be essential, and a robust grievance redressal mechanism should penalize malpractice and negligence. However, care needs to be taken to ensure that caregivers are not unduly penalized.”

    One could indeed say that accountability and grievance redressal forms, or ought to form, a part of the path towards universal health coverage.

    And that’s indeed what Vidhi set out to study as per the three reports they released on Dec 5 all of which start with “Holding Healthcare Providers Accountable”:

    And the next paragraph in the TOI article makes it abundantly clear that they’re indeed talking about these: “Healthcare providers in India are held accountable by the state through four primary mechanisms — courts, consumer fora, medical councils that regulate healthcare professionals, and regulators of clinical establishments”

    This is where I begin to disagree (and this is probably where my shock comes from in reading that “poorly maintained registers of doctors” ails the approach to UHC).

    When the rest of the world is talking about holding healthcare providers accountable, they’re talking about the healthcare providers being held accountable by people, society, or basically healthcare consumers. For example, in the Lancet group’s article above, they talk about social audits. But when Vidhi is studying this, they put on an irrelevant criteria — “by the state”.

    If they meant state in a larger scope wherein state includes citizens (people, society, and healthcare consumers), then they’ve gravely erred on the “four primary mechanisms” through which healthcare providers are held accountable in India.

    When one glances through the report this becomes obvious as they have very nicely documented the numerous reasons why all of these fail to hold healthcare providers accountable. Here’re some statements from their three report landing pages:

    • “the apparent reluctance of courts to convict healthcare providers of medical negligence under criminal law raises questions as to the role of this mechanism as a tool of accountability in the healthcare space”
    • “However, SMCs fail to perform their adjudicatory functions effectively. Very few complaints are instituted, and even when instituted, the most common disciplinary actions are warnings or mandating attendance of continuing medical education (CME), with very few instances of an RMP being removed from the register either temporarily or permanently.”
    • “Enforcement has continued to be unsatisfactory in various states that have adopted it. The Act also has various gaps, like the absence of grievance redressal systems, that prevent it from being an effective and patient-centric healthcare regulation. “

    Yet they have persisted in their belief that these are the “primary mechanisms” of holding healthcare providers accountable.

    If their argument is that they’re only researching how the “state” can hold providers accountable, then there is a case to be made that “holding accountable” is not a function of the “state” — which in many cases is the “provider”. The state itself has to be held accountable (at least in the case of public healthcare system). “Holding accountable” is almost always the function of consumers and citizens.

    If their argument is indeed that these are the main mechanisms, and they’re wrong, then what are the real primary mechanisms of holding healthcare providers accountable?

    I have written about this before where I talk about avoiding legal system altogether. I write in that that we could focus on activism, politics, journalism, and research.

    But what are the “primary” mechanisms?

    Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a healthcare provider.

    An independent private healthcare provider running a clinic. What they’re the most afraid of is a patient dying and people thrashing their clinic. The mechanism of accountability here is direct physical action.

    An HCP inside a private hospital. They’re most worried about the person who pays them salary. And that person is most worried about the reputation of the hospital being ruined by reports of inadequate care there. The mechanism of accountability here is social messaging.

    An HCP inside a public hospital. They’re mostly not worried about anything. But they are indeed answerable to their medical superintendent and district level officers (like the DHO) who have the power to transfer them. And these higher officials are most worried about politicians (minister, MLA, etc). And they’re the most worried about their political image being tampered by journalists writing up a series of negligent care in government hospitals.

    Through this exercise in empathy what I’m trying to say is that the biggest (primary) mechanism of holding healthcare providers accountable is “social pressure”.

    But Vidhi is a group of lawyers. The four authors of the TOI article are lawyers. And all they can see this is as a problem of law. They can look at it only in terms of clinical establishments act, and tort law, and NMC act, and so on.

    That’s absolutely fine. It is very much required to have well functioning regulatory mechanisms through law.

    The problem is when they claim they know more than what they know. You don’t reach Universal Health Coverage by focusing on law alone. And I don’t even want to go into how “poorly maintained register of doctors” has relatively little to do with holding healthcare providers accountable through law.

    But all I want to say is that Vidhi should stop writing TOI articles that help Nandan Nilekani build data maximization projects like the NDHM.

  • Imaginary Heroes and Why A Radical Commitment to Truth is the Only Solution to Inequity

    Imaginary Heroes and Why A Radical Commitment to Truth is the Only Solution to Inequity

    In my post about truth and Gandhi, I wrote about how a radical commitment to truth is the missing ingredient in the world today. In this post I will elaborate on that. To do this, I’ll first recap what it means, then talk about the “inverted iceberg” model of savarna mediocrity, and finally illustrate what a radical commitment to truth would look like in practice.

    Truth: a recap

    To know how powerful is truth one just needs to walk the path of a truthful person for a while. It is an incredibly powerful philosophy that’s accessible to everyone. A radical commitment to truth as I described with examples earlier, has three components.

    1) Being in touch with your emotions and feelings, and showing commitment to try to label them accurately.
    2) A commitment to yourself to not invalidate your own feelings. To not act in ways that go against your feelings.
    3) A commitment to follow-up on things that you are uncertain of – so that you can arrive at the truth.

    This requires conviction and courage. And it provides immense strength.

    It is easier to explain why this is “radical” by looking at the society as we have it today. A great example is provided in Ravikant Kisana’s article “Saving the World Like a Savarna”:

    In the first few weeks of my doctoral studies at MICA, Ahmedabad, the professor was teaching us about Paulo Freire and the “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” waxing eloquent about how the modern education system dehumanizes students and erodes their confidence daily. My cohort, though overwhelmingly Savarna, nonetheless had a few scholars from small towns. They didn’t have “good English” or “cultural polish” and struggled to follow the ornate vocabulary of our Brahmin professor. By this point in my life, I had mastered enough of the Savarna culture to pass off as “polished” and wealthy to their casual gaze.

    One day, in the privacy of her cabin, the same professor ranted to me about my cohort-mates, saying she could not believe how some of them had been admitted to the program and was counting on me as a “bright light” to get her through the course. I was shocked and struck by the contrast between talking so passionately about marginalized students’ issues in the lecture hall and making mean-spirited jibes at the same students in her office. In an immature move, I told the professor off and walked out. It immediately soured our equation and she, along with her husband who later became the Director of MICA, proceeded to bring the might of institutional hostility upon me for years, the effects of which still follow my career.

    This, Ravikant Kisana explains, is what is called “switching”. RK defines it as “the social behavior where Savarnas can pose as extremely radical and culturally progressive and then, with the flip of a metaphorical switch, slip back into their privileged family lives without the slightest existential friction“. RK further goes on to describe this like this: “Such posturing that borders on social deception is a public role to be played, a curation, a “look,” an outfit of sorts to mask what is fundamentally a conservative social core that is extremely difficult to unlearn“

    We could explain this in terms of truth (or the lack of it). The savarnas who do switching are living a lie. They are out of touch with their “inner core”. They fail to label their own feelings (1), they fail to act according to their feelings (2), and consequently they have no need to look for the truth(3).

    The solution to this would be to invert this lie and switch to truth. Before I illustrate that, let us look at how this “switching” is internalized by the whole society and how that is damaging the way we do anything.

    The inverted iceberg model of savarna mediocrity

    When we look at an iceberg, what do we see? We see the tip of an iceberg. About 90% of an iceberg is underneath the water. 

    Here’s the artificial picture of a full iceberg. Created by Uwe Kils (iceberg) and User:Wiska Bodo (sky)., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. If you actually look at the physics, iceberg wouldn’t float this way as the stable orientation would be different.

    This iceberg model is applicable to human beings also. When we see a human being, we’re only seeing the tip of their unique lived experiences and life stories. Each person is at least 10x times more than what they are able to express. But, as is with icebergs, most people’s true worth goes unrecognized. We see the tip of the iceberg and we narrow the person down to that tip. But we can sometimes be reminded about what’s hidden behind the surface.

    This model accurately captures how most people get viewed by the society.

    But in the case of savarnas*, the iceberg is inverted!

     * Please note two things. One, I am using the word savarna as an umbrella to stand for elite selfish people. Two, in many ways I myself am a savarna.

    The savarnas are so loud, so much interested in talking, and hog up all the space. When this happens, rational people think “Oh, they must have a lot more to say and that’s why they’re speaking so much. Perhaps I’m only seeing the tip of the iceberg. I better see what more lies beneath the surface.” And this leads to them getting more and more space.

    Then, they repeat the obvious, they talk about the clichéd, they keep talking without saying anything.

    The savarna icebergs are inverted. What you see is all that is there. There’s nothing more than that.

    When savarnas do heroic things or give inspiring talk, they are at the end of their wits. When they make “deep” intellectual points, they’re talking from the maximum depth they can reach. There’s nothing more in them!

    But unfortunately we imagine that there is more. We create heroes out of them. We extrapolate their arguments and see them as bastions of hope and justice. We build imaginary heroes.

    I don’t want to name anyone, but if a savarna hero has ever shattered in front of you, you know who I’m speaking about. We thought they would do something because we built up a larger than life hero based on something they did/said in the past. And turns out we were wrong. We were too kind. Our hero was imaginary.

    How does a radical commitment to truth make things better?

    In a radical commitment to truth, we call out the mediocre as the mediocre. If there’s discrimination going on and ABC speaks against it but the discrimination still continues, we say “ABC spoke against it. Nothing changed.”. If there’s an organization that has worked 40 years in a sector and all they have managed to achieve is award after award and no justice, then we say “Well, this organization did work on this for 40 years and what they did is this much [only].” If there’s a savarna group which does the bare minimum, we say “Well, this group did the bare minimum”.

    We stop using the words “great work”, “admirable”, “amazing”, “super”. Let’s reserve the superlatives for the superlative. Let’s use mediocre adjectives to describe the mediocre.

    When an insanely privileged person does a PhD on something and comes up with a repetition of what’s already widely known, we call it “they have used their privilege to get a PhD by working on a topic and discovering nothing new”.

    When there’s a random new technology with no use coming out of an IIT, we say “these people with all the resources spent on them have come up with a technology that benefits nobody”.

    When a doctor treats their patient like a human being, we say “well, the doctor treated the patient like a human being as they should be”

    We start doing this and then we will be reversing a trend that has led to marginalization and oppression of a large majority. We will lead to a society where chasing (often fake) numbers instead of caring about people is questioned. We will challenge the capitalist assumptions of putting “efficiency” (read “profit”) above human welfare. We will challenge “merit”. We will destabilize the self-centered argument of “compromising for the sake of career”. We will put an end to the pragmatism vs idealism debate. (What’s preventing the ideal from being pragmatic?)

    We will stop being content with arbitrary measures of “impact” and we will settle only for equity and justice. We will stop glorifying the bare minimum. We will start demanding what’s right. We will rethink who we fall behind and whose voices we amplify. We will stop hero worship and rediscover the value of every individual in the community.

    And in that radical commitment to truth, we can be fully free. We can live our lives to our true selves. Often we will be forced to change. But there’s no reaching the truth without change. A radical commitment to truth is a radical commitment to change.

     

    Preemptively answering some questions

    How does this help?

    It forces us to improve. It forces everyone to improve. It creates an environment of growth.

    It also puts on display privileges and the contribution of those to people’s “achievements”.

    It creates a “level” discourse where the privileged doesn’t keep accumulating more privileges.

    Isn’t this discouraging for those who are doing work?

    If you really care about justice and equity, you know very well that what you’re doing is not enough. And you would be happy to agree with anyone who says how the world needs to improve.

    But shouldn’t we appreciate any step towards positive social change?

    We should. Our appreciation ought to be commensurate with how big the step is. It is the extrapolation and the superlatives that need to be avoided.

    By this standard, nobody will be doing good work

    Well, if we don’t apply these standards, we will keep getting the mediocre work that we have. Is that what you would like?

    Be comfortable with the idea that we can only be imperfect. Be comfortable with the idea of not having heroes.

  • Being Comfortable With the Non-Binary: A Code of Conduct Case Study

    Today morning I woke up to this message in FSCI‘s chat room:

    What happens here when a member reveals themselves to be a transphobe in another room? 🤔

    I immediately said “COC applies”. The FSCI code of conduct, which I have contributed to the making of, is very clear about keeping FSCI an inclusive space. It explicitly recognizes that gender identity and expression can be diverse. And someone gets called a “transphobe” typically when they go against this idea.

    But then there was this other question that came up in my mind. Would FSCI’s code of conduct apply to another room?

    My first instinct was to read through the actual code and look at the sections where it discusses the scope of the code: “all of this community’s spaces, including public channels, private channels and direct messages, both online and off.” There could be an argument on technicality as to whether another room could be considered as community’s space. There could even be a counter argument that the mere presence of another FSCI member in the other room makes it a private channel thus bringing it under the scope of the code.

    But I quickly realized where my “COC applies” comment came from. I wasn’t relying on technicality. I was relying on what I’ve internalized as the way a code of conduct works, and the way we influence others in the social organization.

    And that has got a lot to do with being comfortable with the non-binary mess.

    I was not like this earlier. I used to be very black and white, all or none about laws. I used to find comfort in the idea that anything human could be codified. Not just facts and information, but also implicit assumptions, emotions, social rules, and so on. So much so that I used to even think about building AGI with just symbolic AI through a comprehensive compilation of all these codified knowledge.

    But as I started learning more about the world and interacting with human beings in the “real” world, I started recognizing that many things about human society is much more complicated than what could be codified. I’m not talking about this being quantitatively so large that it is too difficult to codify. It is complexity on a whole different dimension that prevents codification.

    This complexity probably comes from free will. But what it practically amounts to is that there is no way to absolutely predict how human beings behave. (I leave it to the readers to draw parallels between this and quantum physics).

    This particular understanding manifests in two different ways in my thinking: intersectional and non-binary.

    I see the world in a heavily intersectional lens. Intersectionality is a framework that captures the many complexities of the world very well. It allows one to deconstruct (to use a word I used to hate) what’s happening without resorting to simplistic/reductionist explanations.

    But intersectionality without an understanding of the non-binary is a dangerous pitfall. Often what I see people doing is to think of intersectionality in a binary way, wherein instead of having a yes or no explanation, they would have a yes or no + yes or no + yes or no explanation. They would just superimpose multiple explanations. Easier to explain with an example. I had (more than) once heard a description of how a person who is queer and Dalit and Muslim suffer from “triple oppression”. This sounds a lot like someone trying to add up binary bits. That’s the antithesis of intersectionality.

    It is when you combine intersectional lens with a non-binary lens that you can see things more clearly and in more practical ways. In the non-binary lens not only do you see everything in shades of grey, you even see categories blurring. There’s no triple oppression when the very binary bits you are counting (Queer, Dalit, Muslim) cease to exist in well-defined boxes.

    Sounds like a mess? It is a mess. Maybe I’m struggling to explain this, and that’s okay. But non-binary is when you’re comfortable with the mess. (Hat-tip to Swathi who attended the Looking In Looking Out Workshop and gave me the word “mess”)

    Being comfortable with the non-binary mess is the key

    Incomplete information, inadequate resources, limited time. These are three things that make humans humans as opposed to Gods who are omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. We are doomed to live this way. And we might as well be comfortable with it.

    The Code of Conduct is a good case study here.

    There are some people who feel a code of conduct takes away freedom of speech. There are some who believe that it is best to leave the code of conduct very simple (“Be nice” folks). The FSCI code of conduct is rather long. It is a synthesis of many other similar codes.

    What makes me comfortable with a code of conduct like this is that I see it as a non-binary mess. The CoC is an essay on a social contract that we aim to uphold. It codifies certain nuanced understandings of the world and demands people to grow those understandings. That is a certain kind of politics. And that is exactly how the world works. It is a constant negotiation of politics. There’s no clear way to categorize what it is. It is a mess.

    The rules are rules. The rules aren’t rules. The rules apply to everyone equally. The rules don’t apply to everyone. The rules are clear. The rules are ambiguous. The rules ought to be respected. The rules can be changed. You can enforce the rules. You can’t enforce the rules. All of these things are true to various extent at various time in various contexts and situations. Everything is non-binary!

     So, does the CoC apply? It applies to the whole world!

  • How To Talk With People

    It was just yesterday that I read a book on behaviour change through positive reinforcement. Today I put aside all work and read another book: How to Talk with People: A Program for Preventing Troubles that come when People Talk Together by Irving J. Lee. It was recommended by Parth Sharma in response to my sharing Marshall Rosenberg’s video on nonviolent communication in my WhatsApp status with this note: “This is an old video on nonviolent communication. It’s been instrumental in my first steps towards using language carefully.”

    Language has always been a problem for me. More specifically, language used in interacting with people. That is, talking with people has been a problem for me. In my extended family I was the “adhikaprasangi” (a word that’s surprisingly common in Kannada and Malayalam — meaning “the quality of having too high an opinion of your own importance, and being too eager to tell people what to do”). In school I used to get into quarrels with teachers. In internet forums people have gotten so angry at me that I’m used to writing “I apologize profusely”. Even many of my close friends have sometimes felt I’m rude.

    There are people on twitter I know who proudly wear such attitude and continue to be assholes. But I’m in no way indebted to my past. And so, I keep looking for ways to improve the way I interact with people. The challenge, though, is that I don’t buy the “respect” argument. I consider it dishonest to use language to show fake respect. At the same time I have seen excellent videos like “The Art of Semantics” and the nonviolence communication one above which all talk about using language to move towards a better world. So the missing link for me was the logic that connects respectful expression with social justice.

    And that logic clicked in my head when observing people I care about disagreeing with each other on the wrong things. In some occasions I was also involved, in some I was passively observing. Either way, it has become a felt need for me — using language for productive communication and getting our acts together for social justice. On Monday, I had a conversation with Akshay who is part of a very well run organization and whose experience I trust and admire. He also convinced me that using the right words is worth it.

    And that’s where this book comes in. How to talk with people.

    About three-quarters of it had become clear to me through my own life experience even before reading this book. But a well-written book validating our experiences is immensely valuable to our learning. And in that way, this book is a must read. It also means I have one less book to write myself. I’m thankful for this book’s existence.

    The first chapter itself summarizes all the different problems we have in our conversations and what to do about them. It is a very great tl;dr for this book. But the whole book is around 134 pages and you can read it in one evening (at least with speed reading). I will quote from the first chapter to pique your interest.

    So as to indicate something of the scope and character of what is involved in this interest, the major findings and suggestions are here summarized.

    1. Misunderstanding results when one man assumes that another uses words just as he does. People are so eager to reply that they rarely do enough inquiring. They believe so surely (and wrongly) that words have meaning in themselves that they hardly ever wonder what the speaker means when he uses them.

    Suggestion: Committee members need exercises in listening. They must learn not how to define terms but how to ask others what they are intending to say. Our advice: Don’t blame the speaker alone for the misunderstanding. The listener is involved, too. It takes two to make communication.

    2. Trouble comes when somebody contradicts somebody else without seeing what the first man was talking about. The speaker says, “You can’t trust the Abibs.” The listener says, “Yes, you can.” Then they go at it. When the Speaker was asked to specify, he told about Samo and Har and Myri. And, of course, they were untrustworthy. When the listener specified, he told about Mil and Janx and Car. And without a doubt they could be trusted. If the contradictor had asked first, the contradictee might not have had his feelings hurt.And the committee might have come to conclusions without that waste of time. The trouble mounts when nobody bothers about specifying. 

    Suggestion: Both leaders and members need to learn how to spot temperature-raising contradictions. They must ask, ever so politely: Are you differing on the details or on the conclusion? Does your generalization refer to what his does?

    […]

     

    And so on it goes till 14 points. Each one putting into words the troubles that we see around us all the time. It makes a fun read for those who are tired of the debates on twitter.

    The only disappointment I have with this book is that it assumes the presence of a leader to solve many of these issues. The frustration I have with all the groups I mentioned above are that there is no clear leadership structure. Perhaps this book thereby unearths a critical challenge that anarchist systems face. Perhaps my disappointment is for me to resolve.

    Nevertheless, the leadership traits that are written about in chapter XIV (On Preserving Human Warmth) was particularly useful. It talks about our own leadership styles. There is The Director (like a movie director), The Councilor (an egalitarian participant), The Parliamentarian (the one with the “the Rules of Order” at their elbow), The Quiet One (who is just there), The Good Host (who sets positive mood), and The Chief Clerk (who’s the guardian of the group’s virtue). It was quite fascinating to see various people I interact with and myself showing many of these traits in many meetings.

    The book is from 1952. The language of “man”, “him”, “his” is quite striking. At the same time, it is very interesting to note that many of the problems that we see today where exactly the same then as well. In a meta way, therefore, this book teaches more than what it talks about.

    A modern counterpart of this book might be Adam Grant’s Think Again. But unlike Think Again, HTTWP is focused more on the practical methods of the conversation than about the larger reasons behind it. It might be good to read this book after Think Again if you’re planning to read both.