Blissful Life

Category: politics

  • How To Live With Opposition

    There are enough number of people in the world who will tell you that the world is becoming “increasingly polarized”, that respectful political debate is “a thing of the past”, that people talk past each other “all the time”.

    You will also be forced to pick a side. “You’re either with us or against us.”

    These ideas come from a binary understanding of the world. By looking at things from a single dimension. Even in that dimension, the middle ground is stripped and only the two extremes remain as options.

    How do I know? Because I’ve straddled that path, found it unlivable, and found a better alternative.

    I must thank Adam Grant for the book “Think Again” which helped me with timely insights while I was going through this journey. And I would recommend it to you (along with Eugenia Cheng’s x + y).

    So, what’s the answer?

    The short answer is that you shouldn’t worry a lot.

    The long answer is fairly complicated. Let’s first go through some axioms.

    The human world is complex and chaotic

    Chaos meaning nothing is predictable. And complex meaning we don’t yet know what to make of things. Economists, sociologists, stock market analysts – people who work very closely with the human world – are the most successful if they embrace this complexity and chaos. Adam Grant gives the example of the election forecaster who predicted that Donald Trump would become President of the United States much before anyone else did. The reason?

    “The single most important driver of forecasters’ success was how often they updated their beliefs. The best forecasters went through more rethinking cycles. They had the confident humility to doubt their judgments and the curiosity to discover new information that led them to revise their predictions.”

    This is so because the world is very chaotic and unpredictable. At best we can predict things just before things are going to happen – only if we are constantly holding our beliefs to scrutiny.

    It is not that nothing can be predicted. There are several things which will follow patterns – but in controlled settings, where all the confounding variables have been controlled. And we can’t isolate all confounding variables in the real world.

    This is the reason smart people in public health research use tools like realist evaluation framework.

    This is why it is useful to think of the world in terms of complex adaptive systems.

    Simple, pure points are rarely correct

    Even if Twitter didn’t have character limits, people would choose simple straightforward “pure” intellectual positions. These are easier to articulate, easier to think about, and easier to argue for/against.

    But if a point is being made about the real world and it doesn’t capture the nuance of the chaos and complexity then chances are high that the point is incorrect or at least incomplete.

    Almost all perspectives are correct

    This doesn’t contradict the previous point. Different people look at things from different perspectives. The human brain is amazingly capable in that it sums up all the experiences it has had in the past when looking at an issue – and it does this automatically. Each perspective that a human brings to any conversation is a summary of that person’s entire life experience – even if they aren’t conscious of it.

    The secret is in finding the convergence of differing viewpoints. Before we discuss that, we will discuss the reason why there seem to be irreconcilable differences.

    Brain’s ability to reason and articulate such reasons is far too limited

    Our brain produces incredible insights through “gut feeling”. But when it comes to explaining these or articulating the exact feeling, it falters. This is based in neurobiology. Reasoning is a brain function that is different from the decision making function. Therefore, while our brain maybe excellent in making certain decisions, it could be very poor in articulating the reason for those decisions. This is not just a deficiency of language. It is also a symptom of how nuanced our brain’s responses are – and how it summarizes one’s life experiences. It is much easier to do things than to explain why. Even if one beautifully explains why, the explanation would probably not have captured the complete picture.

    Disagreements result from lack of nuance

    When different perspectives are seemingly irreconcilable, the reason is that they’re articulated in simple, pure ways which conceal the underlying (reconcilable) shared values. If people are able to pour their insides out, they’ll find that everyone is looking forward to achieving essentially the same things. One perspective might consider an “obtuse point” as “checks and balance”, while another perspective considers those checks as the “main thing”.

    Also, everyone doesn’t have the same set of life experiences. Therefore, one person’s nuance will be missing in another person’s nuance. It is often helpful to figure out the life experiences that someone brings in which leads them to a particular nuance. Because when you put several different experiences together (and experience those, even second hand), you get to produce better nuanced positions.

    What to do with these axioms?

    Think like a scientist. Adam Grant uses these exact words. But that’s also what MK Gandhi used to do. Think like you’re perpetually seeking the truth. Look for answers everywhere. Take every perspective as an empirical observation. And expand your theory to fit those observations (bring nuance). Everyone has theories about the world (that’s how our brain works). Make your theory all encompassing. That way, you won’t have opponents at all – you’ll only have a theory that accounts for nuances. Don’t be scared to get into debates. But get into debates with an intention to expand your view. (Of course, social conventions apply.) Watch other people argue and while you grab popcorn, also grab your microscope to analyze why different people are saying different things. Ask clarifying questions. Make it not about you or them, make it about the “truth”. And remember that the truth is probably more nuanced than anyone can ever understand.

    PS: This view of nuance unsettles a lot of people with strong opinions. They get scared that such “pragmatism” means a corruption of morals and politics. But, what I’ve experienced is that it is possible to fight a stronger fight when you’re able to find flaws in your own political positions – and address them proactively. It also helps in building bridges with “opposition” – because you would not have a large number in the opposition anyhow. It is also severely practical. It accomplishes a lot more than a purist politics.

    I’m sure you have something to add. Comments are welcome. I will add the nuance you bring into my theory 😀

  • Power is Useful

    In my post about giving up ideological purism, I talked about how it felt like activism was weak resistance, and not something powerful. I still hadn’t discovered an answer as to how to engage with and change the system powerfully. I have an answer now.

    Power.

    To make powerful change, one has to have power. Thinking about power as an anathema is not helpful.

    The first place I saw this articulated unambiguously is in a tweet thread by Jonathan Smucker. Jonathan talks in no uncertain terms about how “Knowledge of what is wrong with a social system and knowledge of how to change the system are two completely different categories of knowledge.”

    That’s true. And that’s where I was wrong too.

    What’s wrong with the system (from my perspective) is concentration of power in the hands of a few. My naive solution to this was to fight power itself. To not pick up power. To disown and discredit power. But it was indeed naive. One can’t defeat power structures by shying away from power.

    The rest of Jonathan’s thread is about how to organize politically and gain power. There was an article linked by someone else in reply about how to use words like “Power” and “Money” with transformational meaning.

    From the little I know, Ambedkar also was a proponent of this method. Ambedkar asked people to “educate, agitate, organize”. Ambedkar was essentially laying down the blueprint on how to change the system.

    Today I had a chat with Prashanth
    on these same topics. Through many examples, daktre articulated the
    same idea, although daktre used the words “legitimacy” and spoke through
    the field of academics and the power that academic work lends you.

    Daktre could also identify what was holding me back. The ambition of wanting to make large impact AND be perfect at the same time. The desire to make huge changes to the world (savior complex, but in an extreme scale) is fine. But the desire to be perfect while doing so is what causes problems. What if one is willing to let go of the want to be perfect? What if one is ready to make compromises in return of accomplishing a larger goal? One might personally become “blemished”, might get called out for being a hypocrite. But in the larger picture, one might be able to accomplish more.

    Yesterday Swathi and I were having a conversation over our lives and Swathi mentioned how it is screwed up to think that we can make large impact, that we can accomplish all we want. I was resisting by saying that we can indeed make large impact, we just have to find a way.

    I think the path in front of me is clear. Embrace pragmatism. Gain power. Wield it carefully. Be willing to make compromises (and be called out by others for it). Helpful to keep a group of close friends who can call out quickly. Don’t think of myself as the complete and perfect solution. Think of myself only as a piece of a larger solution.

    Now I know why Anivar was asking me to get a PhD. I think I won’t take the academic route to power. I’m looking towards the entrepreneurial route. Let us see where we reach.

  • Merit is Entitlement, not Privilege

    In debates around reservation and merit, there is a recurring pattern.

    First, someone will say “There is no level playing field. Someone starts from privilege, someone starts from lack of it. Therefore, merit is just privilege.”

    Then, the opponent will say “What makes you think I’m privileged? My parents struggled to make their ends meet. I burned the midnight oil.”

    The first person says “Do you know what inter-generational trauma that people from X background goes through?”

    Then the opponent will say “Well, but the beneficiaries of reservation are from well off families”

    This debate goes circularly with both sides saying they’re being unreasonable.

    That’s when someone else will come in and say “Reservation is not a poverty alleviation measure, it is about representation”

    That particular argument has a lot going on in it, which I’ll try to unpack here.

    ***

    Is merit a result of privilege?

    This is complicated by two things – we don’t know how to objectively define merit, and we don’t know how to objectively measure privileges.

    What is merit? Is merit the ability to score very high marks in an exam with multiple choice questions? Is merit the ability to use language very fluently? Is merit the ability to impress an interviewer? Is merit the ability to get a job done in real world? Merit could be defined as any of these. Who should define this? That’s a tough question.

    What about privilege? Is privilege one’s economic status? Is privilege one’s social capital? Gender? Caste? Ability? Skin-tone? Body shape? Which of the countless things that gives a person an advantage in the society should be counted towards one’s total privilege? And how should their influence be added up? Which ones should be given more weight and which ones less? This is probably the subject of what is called Oppression Olympics.

    Both of these questions can be answered definitively in very subjective ways. But, it is next to impossible to arrive at a public consensus on such answers. Nevertheless, the discussions around these are very educational and thought-provoking. And discussions can happen even if consensus cannot be reached.

    ***

    What’s the importance of the statement “Reservation is not a poverty alleviation measure, it is about representation”?

    It shifts the perspective from the subjective field of defining merit and measuring privilege into the objective field of representative democracy and distributive justice.

    Not that that comes without questions. The questions shift to “What is democracy?”, “What is justice?”

    What is democracy? The naive answer to this is that democracy is rule of the majority. But that’s not democracy. That’s an elective monarchy – where the majority elects a monarch and the monarch rules over the subjects in an authoritarian fashion. Democracies stand in contrast to such monarchies. Democracies are founded on values – equality, justice, liberty, fraternity, etc. That there are elections in democracies is just a side effect of these founding principles.

    That’s where the value “justice” comes in. What is justice? Justice is possibly a subjective matter as well. But it can be (circularly) defined as “fairness”. What is fairness? It is easy to jump from here to the earlier point and say “Someone who has struggled should be rewarded – is fairness”. But that’s a very individualistic view of fairness. The questions around reservation are not about individuals. It is about the democracy. For a democracy to be fair, it has to distribute power and resources among its citizens in a way that is “fair”. And at the level of the nation, that involves distributing power to socially marginalized sections of the society. That is justice.

    ***

    See how switching from the discussion on individual privileges to that of democratic justice gives lesser loopholes for people to endlessly argue on?

    In that perspective, when you look at merit, you don’t see merit as privilege. You don’t say that “What we call merit is just accumulated privilege.” Instead, you see it as entitlement. You say “What entitles you to claim that your “merit” should be considered above the values of our democracy?”

    That, arguably, is a stronger way to make the case for justice.

  • The Difference Between a Politician and an Academic in Politics

    If academics and politics seem like separate fields to you, that’s because your definition of academics has been corrupted by the academicians you have seen and their self-centredness.

    Academicians can be of two types. The ones who “care only about science (or “truth”)”. The ones who care about society in addition to science.

    Those who “care only about science” also care for something besides science. They care for themselves. They care for their own intellectual satisfactions or humane curiosities.

    So, academicians can be of two types. Those who care only about themselves, and those who care about society too. (Of course, it is a fluid spectrum. At any point one can care x% about themselves and y% about the society. I’m using a strict binary for convenience.)

    The academicians who care predominantly about society automatically engage in politics. Because that’s the only way to change the society. Like I wrote about earlier, politics isn’t just party politics. Politics also includes advocacy, activism. Academicians, by asking the right questions and “generating evidence”, influence policy making and politics. They can give legitimacy to certain questions that go unasked. They can strengthen or weaken anyone’s politics.

    So what’s the difference between a politician and an academic in politics?

    Their willingness to lie.

    An academic who is willing to lie for their politics is a politician. No matter how much they are in politics, an academic who will not lie for their politics is still an academic.

  • x + y by Eugenia Cheng – a Roadmap to Collaboration Between Social Justice Movements

    Spoiler alert: I discuss the central theme of the book x + y by Eugenia Cheng in this post. In the book, this theme isn’t revealed till the middle. In the first chapters, the author explains the context from which the book is written so as to eliminate bias from those who believe in social justice and those who oppose it. If you are a person who makes quick conclusions, you are better off skipping this post and directly reading the book.

    —

     

    It sometimes happens that feminists are accused of casteism, anti-caste activists are accused of sexism, etc. How can that be? Can someone who understands the oppressive ways in which patriarchy works not understand the same oppression in caste system? Or vice versa?

    What is the lowest common denominator of various schemes of oppression?

    Why do scientists lie? How can we replace competition with collaboration?

    Why does capitalism seem to be the “natural” state of society?

    Why are hierarchies so hard to get rid of? And how to get rid of them?

    These are some of the questions that are answered in x + y: A Mathematician’s Manifesto for Rethinking Gender by Eugenia Cheng.

    Imagine a bus stop where 100 people are waiting for a bus with 50 empty seats. What happens when the bus comes to the stop? In some places you see almost all of the people rushing towards the bus door in a tiny stampede with some folks staying back for the rush to settle down. 50 among those who rush do get a seat. All of the folks who stay back get no seat. If you don’t rush, you don’t get a seat.

    At this point, the debate can be about whether it is ethical to rush or not. There can be nuanced statements made about who should be given priority in seat. Whether the physically stronger should be made to wait while those who are vulnerable gets a seat. Whether those who have been waiting the longest should get the seats first. Whether those who have the most urgent things to attend to should get the seats. And so on. These are all valid ways to analyze this situation.

    But one can also discuss the reasons why there are only 50 seats. The reasons that force people to rush. And the possibilities of changing the system altogether such that there are no advantages to being selfish. Such that people can stop worrying about individuals and start thinking about everyone.

    That’s the central theme of Eugenia Cheng’s book. The individual centered (selfish) character traits are called “ingressive” characters and the society centered character traits are called “congressive” traits. And Eugenia Cheng is eager to ensure that readers look at this as a different dimension of looking at the problem and not as a way to replace the existing dialogues.

    Eugenia Cheng thereby introduces two very valuable words to discuss problems in the society. These words are not connected to the background from which people come. Gender/race/caste doesn’t directly lead to ingressive traits or congressive traits. There are indirect correlations. But the point of the book is to avoid looking at the correlations and start looking at the traits in each individual in an intersectional way. x + y is a classic in intersectional thinking.

    More importantly, x + y is an extremely practical guide on what to do about the deeper problems. Awareness of the problem doesn’t equate to solving the problem. x + y introduces a framework of thinking through which we can systematically destroy the oppressive notions ingrained in our societies. It is a tool of liberation for all victims of the system, irrespective of their privileges. It is an effective way of changing the “system”.

    It is a must-read for everyone who cares about social justice movements and equity.

  • Why Politics isn’t for the Honest

    This is not a pessimistic post. I’ll explain why honest people can’t do well in politics. And then I’ll also urge honest people to be political.

    When I say politics isn’t for the honest, I mean that the identity of a politician isn’t for the honest. They cannot win elections on their own. They cannot sway votes on their own. They can’t do anything in politics on their own.

    Why? Because the country is full of human beings who are irrational and we have a first-past-the-vote voting system.

    Winston Churchill probably never said that “the best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Nevertheless, that’s true. And it doesn’t require you to have contempt for others to agree with that statement. You just have to remember that we are all humans and that we are all bound by cognitive biases.

    We stereotype, we assume, we guess, we make up, we are swayed by public perception, we change our stances under social pressure, we are biased, and we have cognitive blind spots. We are all irrational human beings.

    When it comes to an election we choose a candidate based on our view of the world and our view of the candidates. Both of these are colored by the biases I mentioned above.

    Here’s where the first-past-the-vote system comes in. The vast majority of people won’t vote for a candidate they think do not have any chance to win. “Why waste your vote on a candidate who will anyhow lose?” The elections are therefore already reduced to a two-party (or a three-party) election.

    You can still start a new party and enter the three-party race (like AAP did in Delhi). It requires entering the consciousness of voters at large and, mostly, at once. AAP could do this because of the wide media coverage of India Against Corruption. Another way of attaining this kind of prominence is to split off from an existing party. In essence, being in people’s minds is the first step to being a potential winner.

    Now that is already our cognitive biases in action. And at this point the line between irrationality and reality blurs too. For, how do you do governance if you don’t have the trust of the people. Why should people trust a random party based on their manifesto?

    Trust. Trust could thus be considered the defining force of winning election. And trust is at the edge of what is called irrational. We make up trust in politics based on the circumstances. If we feel like there is a threat of war, we will trust the person/party which appears like it has the ability to win a war to lead us. If we feel like there is a threat of breakdown of social order, we will trust the person/party which appears like it has the ability to keep the society together to lead us. Our trust depends a lot on how we feel.

    This is where politics becomes a game in which honest people have no chance. You can manipulate people’s feelings in two ways – you can change their threat perceptions and you can change their perception about the ability of different political candidates to handle those threats.

    How you feel about the how big a problem terrorism, war, global warming, fascism, or sedition is depends a lot on what you’ve been fed by the world and how rational you are. For example, let me take me. I am a person who avoids news. I do so because I believe that news is about sensationalization of the trivial matters because they’re newsworthy. For me, matters like terrorism are quantitatively less important than matters like road safety. Whereas it is totally possible that another person looks at road safety as an unavoidable problem but terrorism as unwarranted, avoidable threats to the psyche of our nation. The perception of what the largest threats we face are can be manipulated by manipulating the media that people consume – be it news media or social media.

    The next kind of manipulation is one that people routinely employ all around, but is the bread and butter of politicians. Image management. For a politician to succeed they need to project an image of leadership that suits the “largest threats” that we are facing. Image is ridiculously irrational. For example, let us look at very personal things that are all part of the image – clothing, fashion, colors, facial hair, hairstyle, make-up, facial expression, gait, speed of walking, phone, spectacles, … Everything that you can think of affects the “image” one projects.

    Let us take the biggest example in front of us. In 2007, 5 years after Godra, Karan Thapar did an interview of Narendra Modi. Narendra was not so much of an adult at that time and ended the interview at 3 minutes because Karan started with questions about Narendra’s murderer image. A lot of people don’t know what happened after that. In another video, Karan talks about it. The interesting bit is that Narendra looked at that 3 minute interview many many times afterwards to learn from their mistakes and do better. Maybe Narendra gave up and stopped doing interviews instead. But the fact is that playing to their strengths allows Narendra to project an image of a strong leader.

    Every successful politician has done this. They’ve managed the perception they create in the mind of their voters. Barack Obama has done and wrote about it. It maybe interesting to know about how Michelle Obama in the first few speeches about Barack’s presidential campaign was being perceived as an angry person and immediately course corrected with softer speeches (and clothing choices). Rahul Gandhi must be trying really hard to do this after Narendra knocked down Rahul Gandhi’s image.

    That brings us to another point. It is not just your image that you manage in politics. You also manage others’ image. You tell voters how to look at other candidates. You make them look like fools, you win.

    Now why does all of this matter for the honest politician? Can’t they project an image of their own honesty and succeed? Not as easy. If you are an honest politician and if you believe that terrorism is not as big a problem as global warming or road safety, and you take that idea honestly to a set of voters who believe strongly that terrorism needs to be curbed, that is pretty much the end of your political career.

    You will have to bend the truth, if not lie. And bending truth has its limits. There is only so much you can accomplish with bent truths, especially if your opponents are fighting with lies.

    But politics is so important that you can’t give up just because you don’t have a chance to win. What should honest people do about politics?

    First, they have to realize how irrationality rules politics. Then they have to use that knowledge to guide how they approach people. They need to turn the irrationality on its head and make it question the lies. 

    They might have avenues other than politics to reach powerful and influential positions where it is easier for them to sway people’s perceptions. 

    IMO Research is also political; a way of convening influence and is likely to reflect/aggravate/amplify/mitigate unfairness that we see outside research; for far too long it’s been framed as “higher truth”…more on this soon…

    — daktre (@prashanthns) June 18, 2021

    Maybe they can be excellent researchers and use research as a political tool. Maybe they can be good artists. Or programmers. Or doctors. Or teachers. Or anything! Anyone who does their thing well gets some power and influence. And they can use those to sway irrational voters to things that matter.

    Politics is for everyone. And honest people have their own options.

  • Annihilation of Caste

    Jat-Pat Todak Mandal probably wanted to be the #DalitLivesMatter of their time. That’s how they invited Ambedkar to their annual conference in 1936 to deliver a speech. Organization of conferences in that time and today have at least one thing in common – communication gaps. JPTM wanted Ambedkar to talk about abolition of caste. Like many social reformers, they wanted reforms that do not disturb the status quo. Ambedkar’s speech pointed out how caste is strongly intertwined with Hinduism. If one were to agree with Ambedkar, abolishing caste would require shaking the fundamentals of Hinduism. JPTM did not let Ambedkar know that they would rather not speak logic to the Hindu elite who attend their conference. At least, not when they sent the invitation.

    When the organizers saw the print of the speech to be delivered they straightened the record. Either Ambedkar can stay clear of criticizing Hinduism or they will find a way to cancel the speech. Ambedkar had by then printed a few hundred copies of the speech and was neither interested in changing the text nor in speaking at JPTM’s conference. The speech, thence, became the book. Annihilation of Caste.

     

    *  *  *

     

    Reading this book drastically changed the way I look at Indian independence movement and contemporary Indian politics. Very little of that was brought about by the content of Ambedkar’s speech. The speech is a rather predictable compilation of reasons why Hinduism flares up casteism. It is well written and logical. The points Ambedkar put forward can be directly used in debates even today. The politics around the book, though, is eye-opening.

    It is the same politics that made this book slip under my radar. It is why I have never asked the questions “Did Ambedkar really draft the Constitution?” or “What else did Ambedkar write?”. It is the politics of caste.

    Having grown up as an Indian elite, I did not (and do not) know well the politics of caste. To compensate for this elite ignorance, the book is now prefixed by Arundhati Roy’s essay “The Doctor and the Saint”. This essay is the red pill. If you take it you go down the rabbit hole of Indian politics.

    After that it won’t really matter whether you read the speech or not. Yet you will read it. Like you reached an oasis in a large desert you were thrown abruptly into.

  • Understanding Socialism

    A few days ago one of my colleagues had expressed the idea of decreasing the pay gap between the highest paid employee and the lowest paid employee in our organization. I didn’t give a lot of thought to that at that moment.

    Yesterday morning YouTube showed me a video of Sunil P Ilayidom in which he talks about Gandhiji. I’m embedding that one here. It is in Malayalam.

    Somewhere in the middle he talks about how Gandhiji was in South Africa till his 40s and didn’t know how the poorest Indians lived and then how once he returned from South Africa Gandhiji walked into the hearts of Indian farmers. He talks about how Gandhiji’s political campaigns always started with the real life problems of the common person. And he talks about how Gandhiji’s first Satyagraha in India – the Champaran Satyagraha – was fought with the simple demand that farmers should get compensation for their crops.

    If you can understand Malayalam, Sunil Ilayidom’s talks about Gandhiji (powered by YouTube recommendations) makes you sit and listen for hours and hours together.

    Another point that Gandhi made which SPI reiterates is “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

    Yesterday evening we had our weekly ECHO session in the primary healthcare fellowship and Dr Vivek Kumar from BHS told the story of a lady who was diagnosed with Tuberculosis a second time in the last 1 year (after taking 6 months of ATT the first time). Her haemoglobin was 6.9, weight was just 35kg, and it seemed like even if she took ATT continuously forever, her body might not have enough strength to protect herself from tuberculosis. In that context he described how the average haemoglobin in men, women, children, everyone in the villages he serves in is about 8-9. For about 5 minutes I could simply not believe that this could be explained by nutritional deficiencies alone.

    So I searched online and found out a paper by last years’ Economics Nobel Prize winners about fortifying grains to reduce anemia. This study was done between 2002 and 2009. Which means this is a well-known problem. People live in abject poverty and there is absolutely nothing that seems to work.

    Our discussion rightly turned to policy changes that maybe required to bring change. Dr Vivek mentioned Aajeevika Bureau as an organization that was working with farmers to help them secure livelihood.

    We also talked about community based participatory research which is the idea that any kind of research should begin from the community, be designed and developed by the community, and be owned by the community to be ultimately useful for that community. People from outside have their limitations in understanding what works, and what doesn’t. When I was making this point I was imagining Dr Vivek as an insider, and me as an outsider. But then Dr Vivek replied reaffirming the point and considering even himself an outsider. And I had the realization that even being co-located with the community doesn’t make you an insider.

    Today morning on the bus I was reading Che Guevara’s “Global Justice: Liberation and Socialism” and a paragraph stood out at me:

    “The way is open to infection by the germs of future corruption if a person thinks that dedicating his or her entire life to the revolution means that, in return, one should not be distracted by such worries as that one’s child lacks certain things, that one’s children’s shoes are worn out, that one’s family lacks some necessity.
    In our case we have maintained that our children must have, or lack, those things that the children of the ordinary citizen have or lack; our families should understand this and struggle for it to be that way. The revolution is made through human beings, but individuals must forge their revolutionary spirit day by day.”

    I should probably be reading carefully the Pedagogy of the Oppressed soon. But this paragraph in the context of yesterday’s discussion made me think about poverty and the reasons why we are struggling with elimination of poverty.

    Two related points.

    The “combined total wealth of 63 Indian billionaires is higher than the total Union Budget of India for the fiscal year 2018-19 which was at Rs 24,42,200 crore.“

    Pirate Praveen had once said this:

    “Every privileged person thinks its their god given
    mission to help the poor and show their kindness. They do not want to
    acknowledge that their privilege is the result of historic oppression
    and they are part of the reason why they remain poor. They think poor
    people needs charity and kindness. What we really need is a conscious
    collective effort to end systematic oppression of people and that will
    need questioning of our own roles and privileges. Accepting our role in
    creating the poor is much harder than feeling good about helping poor.”

    Putting it all together made me finally understand the problem. The problem is us. The capitalists. The people who believe that a software engineer’s time is worth 10 times more than the farmer’s. The people who believe that it is okay to accumulate wealth and make profit.

    The free market will never pay a farmer well. The free market is stacked against farmers. Why is it that way? Why are things priced based on their demand and supply rather than their intrinsic value?

    Because that works well in favour of those few who are privileged to accumulate wealth. For things like food, they won’t have to pay a lot. And they can use that money to spend on things like AC cars. They can hire a home-help for 4000 rupees a month and get them to cook for them. They can hire cheap labour and sell the combined thing for much higher value. And they can keep all the profit.

    The farmer may spend all their time in the farm. Like a full time employment. But if you can pay not for that time, but for the onions they produce, it may turn out to be much cheaper. Which means you can buy more onions for the same money. And you sell those onions at a higher price. So, your profit increases. While the farmer remains poor.

    This is how it works. The entire system of capitalism is based on rich becoming richer and poor becoming poorer. “Specialization” and “rare-resources” are ways to become rich. And once you are rich, you have the license to exploit the poor.

    Socialism is where the farmer sets the price. (And not a “free” market). The farmer demands what is their due. The farmer does not have to give up their life to produce a season of crops. The farmer can say their “full time” is equivalent to that of a software engineer. And who would you be to deny?

  • Understanding the 1/5 Unconstitutionality of Aadhaar and What You Can Do About It Today

    What is the difference between a monarchy and a democracy?

    I am Tipu Sultan. I rule the kingdom of Mysore. I ensure that my kingdom flourishes. In order to ensure that, I will make certain rules. I will punish those who do not follow the rules. Welcome to Mysore.

    We are the people of India. We will decide what happens in India. We will elect representatives among us to make rules for India. We will keep changing these representatives. We will ensure there is social, economic, and political justice; that there is freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, and worship; that there is equality of status and opportunity among us; and we will promote among ourselves fraternity assuring the dignity of each of us and the unity and integrity of India.

    Which of these places would you want to be born in? Mysore or India?

    I was born in India. I was not born when India was in hundreds of pieces and ruled by different kings. Neither was I born when India was under the British emperor. I was born after Indians came together, said “enough is enough” and claimed India for themselves, and having drafted for themselves the Constitution of India, decided to live by it as a democracy where justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity will prevail. Thank goodness I was born in a democracy.

    Here is a picture of the constituent assembly. Whatever they discussed while drafting the constitution is available on the Loksabha website. Reading through the constituent assembly debates is in my bucket list as well. 

    Anything more than incremental change is hard. Except during revolution. During revolution, change is the norm. India’s independence from Britain was a revolution. Because of our experience with monarchy, we chose democracy as our governing moedel. A strong constitution is fundamental to the survival of a democracy. We drafted a strong constitution taking inspiration from various strong democracies. We set that in stone. We set our democracy in stone.

    The beautiful thing about principles is that well-thought principles rarely need to change. For example, Mahatma Gandhi made truth and non-violence his principles. He could live his entire life on those principles. It is principles that give rise to many of the organizations we see around us. When the principle dies down, the organization too. The way we operate, the rules we follow, the things we do, everything can change. But the principles won’t. Indian constitution defines the principles of our nation. Whatever happens in our country should be in line with the principles laid down in our constitution.

    Think about it for a second. The constitution is the foundation of our democracy. If we do not uphold the constitution, we are destroying our democracy, we are giving up on all the principles that the constitution stands for. Hold that thought.

    The constitution alone is not sufficient to run a country. Which is why the constitution allows for setting up of legislative, judiciary, and executive branches for the democratic government. Legislative to write laws. Judiciary to read laws. Executive to execute laws. (Like Unix file permissions). And there is clear power separation between the branches on who can do what.

    The distinction between branches work well when everyone is doing just what they are supposed to. Law gets passed by legislature that from October 1 people should ride their vehicles on the right side of the road. Police fine or even arrest people who are riding on the left side on Gandhi Jayanthi. They are produced before the court and the court gives them the punishment prescribed in the act.

    Things get murky when the constitution is involved or invoked, though. Vrinda Werkijal who was arrested on October 2nd, goes to the court and says “It is my constitutional right to ride on the road as I please. Rather than punishing me, you should strike down the law that says I can’t ride on the left side.” Then the court would be happy to point out to Werkijal that there is no constitutional right to ride on any side of the road and put Werkijal in jail.

    But, imagine the law was about free speech. Say UP passes a law tomorrow that says people should not use the word “beef” in the state. Abhish Mathew could go to the court even before he gets arrested and argue that the law is against the fundamental right of freedom of speech and therefore should be struck down. Easy peasy.

    Wish everything was so black and white. Many laws are huge. Huge in terms of the components in it. Take Aadhaar Act itself. It has 59 clauses spread over 8 chapters. And many of these are complicated compounded sentences with multiple sub-clauses. When an unconstitutionality claim on such a thing is claimed, it will indeed take months of litigation and thousands of human hours to decide on constitutionality.

    In short, there is only one argument against aadhaar: it ensures surveillance while claiming to ensure welfare and does not even ensure welfare.

    Let us imagine. What does it take to decide on this case? Even for a person who is not influenced by politics and not corrupt, it takes deep and philosophical understanding of:

    • the constitution
    • how surveillance damages democracy or how privacy is important in democracy
    • the disproportionate power that entities with access to big data obtain
    • the technology that is running behind aadhaar
    • the reality of welfare delivery in our country

    Unfortunately, superficial understanding of these won’t do. Someone with superficial understanding would say things like, “hmm, aadhaar will help catch terrorists”, “hmm, we can save money by removing fake accounts in the PDS”, “hmm, you don’t have to worry about surveillance if you have nothing to hide”.

    But if you go read the critiques of aadhaar, you can hear deeper perspectives on how biometric authentication is probabilistic and how arbitrarily a threshold setting configured on a software can either declare you undeserving or deserving for your fundamental rights; on how design choices enabled illegitimate enrollment which has lead to ghosts and fakes in the database – the very thing you set out to weed out; on how democratic voices are stifled in a surveillance state; on why Rajya Sabha is indeed a part of the parliament; and so on.

    Relevant section from Supreme Court judgement on Aadhaar’s constitutionality

    So, why would someone feel like aadhaar is unconstitutional while others don’t? Why is it 1/5 unconstitutional? You know the answer, don’t you?

    If you would like to spend more time crying over spilt milk, read from page 568 onwards of this PDF file.

    What you must do now

    As a citizen of India, it is in your own best interest to ensure that the democracy continues unharmed. The best way to do so is to elect representatives wisely. That is not an everyday choice though. But you do have a choice every day to engage with the government. For example, ministry of electronics and information technology has invited feedback on a draft personal data protection bill. The bill is riddled with issues. First, read analyses of it. Here are a few links:

    Looking at loopholes in sections of the Bill pertaining to data ownership, RTI and more
    Loopholes pertaining to empowerment of children, consent and surveillance State
    India’s data protection draft ignores key next-generation rights

    Then, write to the ministry with your comments.
    Through Ministry directly
    Through Maadhyam

    Be a good citizen. Live in a strong democracy.

  • Cough Up Some Patriotism, Please!

    Many Indians have a “respect” problem. To them, respect is physical. Bowing down, touching feet, keeping legs uncrossed, standing up, using the words “sir” or “madam” in every sentence, and so on. On the other hand they also have great difficulty in respecting others’ time, personal space, or opinions.

    They are ignorant of their hypocrisy. And this is what makes them intolerant when it comes to topics like national anthem being completely out of place for movie theatres.

    To them standing for 52 seconds for national anthem is their duty towards their country. And their duty ends there. They don’t feel the need to stand up against corruption by not paying bribes. They don’t feel the need to stand up against bureaucratic inefficiency by demanding rights. They don’t feel the need to stand up and be a good citizen in a democracy.

    Kindly stand up for the flag when you are reading this part of the post.

    Because, you see, like respect, concepts like participative democracy, growth and development, efficiency, and creativity are totally alien to them. They are used to one kind of lifestyle – that of meek subservience. They make it clear that they do not like to be forced to think outside the box. They are comfortable in their zones and are not to be disturbed by provoking thoughts. Their emotions are liable to get (butt)hurt if you consider poking.

    You cannot blame them for this. They have been brought up like that. Punishments were the most used tool for teaching and while growing up. And so, everything is tied to fear. And fear manifests as slapstick respect and all the irrelevant physical things that many Indians do to “show respect”.

    Maybe some of them are literate. Maybe they understand. My sincere piece of advice to them would be to replace respect and fear with love. Love thy country. Love thy countrymen. Let love guide you into doing wonderful things for the country and humanity in toto.

    More importantly, don’t judge my patriotism by your standards. Stop slapping people for not doing things exactly like you want them doing. There are multiple ways to be a good citizen. Forcing people into doing things to prove themselves will only do harm. Sitting or standing, national anthem is just a symbol. If you really respect your country, show some real respect for the democracy.

    Related read: The National Anthem and the Supreme Court’s Popcorn Nationalism